Sapphire's Place Featured Serials - Anything for a Moped 17

Anything for a Moped?
By: Dawn De Winter

The characters are fictional, their names and lives a fabrication. The story is not intended for commercial use and is not to be posted at any other site without the author's permission. It is intended for readers considerably older than its fourteen-year-old hero.

In the first twelve parts, Kyle found 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 would buy him a moped (a motor scooter). He's not quite sure how it happened, but somehow he has become Demi, a full-time cross-dresser with a gay boyfriend and a lesbian lover. Everyone believes that Demi's a transsexual, including her mother. Only Kyle knows he's taking sex hormones, and only Kyle knows that he'd still rather be a boy. If the original deal was supposed to 'feminize' Kyle's behavior as well as his clothes, it seems to have failed, unless it was the 'woman' in Kyle that caused him to dress up like Pocahontas and then his moped down a school corridor to scalp the coach. As this chapter starts, Demi has good reason to fear arrest and expulsion from school.

The drawings of Demi are by Britney. She can be reached at britneym@lycos.com

Chapter Seventeen: Jail Time for Demi?

Gulp. There it was. A police car! It was parked across the front entrance of Hoover High. As well as across the front exit. Indeed, to Demi's eyes it appeared to block all the school's exits. Empty, it had lots of room for her broken body. Where were the police? Demi knew: "They're waiting to nab me at the Principal's office. That's how they always arrest you. When and where you least expect it."

She shivered at the thought of the cold steel of a policeman's automatic pistol pressed up against the base of her skull as she lay prostrate and helpless on the ground, her arms painfully twisted and her wrists already reddening with welts from her manacles. And that was the best possible scenario, feared Demi.

For what would happen if she weren't gutsy? What if she tried to make a run for it? Would they shoot her in the back? The cops often shot first, and asked questions later, when it was a matter of apprehending someone wanted for 'attempted murder.' And that crime bulletin described Demi, didn't it? That's what the Vice-Principal had told her mother Barb: That the police were looking for because she tried to kill the coach!

Demi definitely needed a good lawyer. However, she was far from confident about the one she had. Robert Taft Dinkins was, her mother reassured her, one of the best lawyers in Des Moines. But Demi wasn't so sure about his credentials - former city lawyer and chairperson of the state's Law Reform Commission. And she'd have to take her mother's word and accept that he was a senior partner in the city's most prestigious law firm, whatever that was good for.

Demi was underwhelmed by these so-called 'credentials.' She focused instead on his negatives, starting with his lack of experience. She had asked Mr. Dinkins whether he'd ever defended someone accused of murder. His reply had been evasive: He'd said something about having pleaded several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Demi continued her cross-examination until she'd forced him to admit that not one of his cases had involved a murder or attempted murder. So he was a rank amateur.

Which perhaps explained his price. Lawyer Dinkins was taking her case for free, "as a favor", he said, "to a fellow activist in Iowa's environmental movement." However, Demi could see through the man's pretenses. He obviously needed to get a start somewhere, if he were ever going to become as crafty as the attorneys on Law & Order. He was working for free just to get the experience - that's how she saw it.

If so, why did he have to start with Demi's case? Wasn't Mr. Dinkins liable to lose his first time out? With such a tyro for a lawyer, the odds worsened that Demi would end up a lifer, picking cotton at the Angola prison farm.

With a lawyer so green that he dared not charge a fee, Demi felt she had a right to be nervous, even had 'Taft' not also been the father of Sherman Stokes Dinkins, or 'Sherm' for short. Yes, incredible as it seemed, Demi's lawyer was the father of the gang leader.

Did Taft know that his son was a Shark? Did the son know that his father was a professional barracuda? Demi had no real idea of the answers, but she would have run for her life, nevertheless, the moment that Taft had informed her that his son Sherman had told him about "Demi, the brand new girl at school," had Taft's chauffeur not been speeding at the time. When the 7-series BMW screeched to a halt in front of the high school, it was too late for Demi to run. And so, she asked, fearing the worst, "What did Sherm say about me, Mr. Dinkins?"

"Well, Demi, he didn't know what to make of you at first. I would be less than candid if I didn't admit that his first reaction was ... negative. Indeed, he feared for your safety."

Demi gulped.

"But Demi, he's come around. I think he even admires you now. But then, why shouldn't he? Demi is quite a girl, isn't that right, Barb? In any case, Sherman was delighted to hear that I'm representing you. He told me that Coach Bryant deserved what you did to him, and that the whole school is pulling for you."

"Sherm wants his father to defend me?" Demi silently fretted. "Jeez, that proves I'm being set up. Sherm knows I'll get the chair if I've got an incompetent lawyer. He wants me to fry."

As she thought through the implications of having a newbie plead her case, Demi wished she had dressed less flamboyantly. Her first instinct had been to dress with prison in mind. Her gray cotton panties by Calvin Klein were so unisex in appearance that they were the natural first choice for the men's hoosegow. But once she put them on, they didn't look right on her, not at all. Besides, they weren't likely to fool anyone about the gender of the clothes she was wearing, not if she wore the companion bra. And almost no one was going to accept her as just another guy in the lock-up if Demi wore her breast forms.

So Demi decided to dress as femininely as possible in the hope that she might distract or seduce one of the men who was about to decide her fate. They weren't supposed to see her gaff or lilac satin lingerie, with its white lace trim, a push-up bra and high, French cut panties. But they would, with luck, remark on her snug, shooting-star jeans, her burgundy platform sneakers, and her pink-strapped, burgundy halter top, which showed off some three inches of her abs. She'd wanted to plaster on the makeup, but Barb had insisted on her looking her age, inasmuch as a fourteen-year-old was bound to be punished less harshly than an older, more jaded teen.

The more Demi thought about her novice lawyer, the more she wished she'd gone to her showdown as Kyle. While he might have no future at Hoover High, he'd at least survive his first half-hour in juvenile detention.

As Demi contemplated her future prospects, her flash wardrobe, and the gold ring in her navel, she gradually became aware that her mother was also expressing some dissatisfaction with their charity lawyer. Barb was saying, "Taft, you mustn't tell Demi that her actions yesterday were in any way heroic or admirable, for they certainly were not. She behaved childishly, and today's she going to face the consequences."

Taft patted Demi's hand: "Now don't you fret, child, your mother and I will make sure that you don't pay an unduly high price for your youthful high spirits."

When they arrived at the Principal's office at high noon, Demi liked its color scheme: There was an absence of blue. Not a police officer was in sight, either at the office itself or in its antechamber. Indeed, there was only one person whom Demi didn't recognize. It was Chuck Jones, attorney for the school board. Also representing Hoover High were the Principal, Vice-Principal Cudmore, and Dr. Loupi.

The entry of Taft Dinkins into the office made quite an impression. Chuck Jones immediately rushed up to him, and started frantically pumping his hand, as he kept saying what an honor it was to meet, at long last, the man rumored to be the next appointment to the State Supreme Court.

Though Demi was still unimpressed with her attorney - after all, she needed a superior criminal lawyer, not a supreme type judge - the Principal surprised her by becoming quite deferential. She had never seen him in any role but High and Mighty Potentate. She didn't know he could cringe with the least of them. She would have been even more surprised had she known that the Principal was at that very moment revising drastically downward the punishment he had in mind for "the school lunatic."

Vice-Principal Cudmore seemed to be lost in thought - or was it in panic? Demi had no idea that Cudmore regarded Taft Dinkins not as an eminent attorney, but as a messenger sent to him by the real masters of Hoover High, the Sharks and the Jets.

For years Cudmore had kept the peace at Hoover by allowing the two gangs to operate unmolested. He knew they were extorting money from younger students, but he deemed their lunch money a small price for them to pay for the privilege of attending a safe school, which Hoover definitely was, thanks to the rough justice meted out by the gangs to anyone else who disturbed the peace. When the Vice-Principal saw that Sherm's father was Demi's advocate, he appreciated that he must classify Demi as a harmless prankster who deserved little more than a slap on the wrist.

Demi should have relaxed. She had the perfect lawyer.

It was Taft Dinkins who started the negotiations, once the pleasantries had ended: "May I ask where is Coach Bryant? I expected the coach to be here inasmuch as I have been led to believe that he has been threatening to have my client arrested for aggravated assault."

The Principal coughed nervously. He answered, "Coach Bryant is no longer a member of the school staff. It's a personal affair. There is sickness in his family, and he and I agreed that he should take an indefinite leave of absence until his two brothers get better. We've known for a while that his brother Arnie was ill, but it wasn't until yesterday evening that the coach learned that his brother Bernie also required ... er, hospitalization, and the coach agreed that he will be too preoccupied with the illness rampant in his family to be able to give full attention to his duties at Hoover for some time to come. We wish him well."

Turning to Demi, the Principal said sternly, "Young ... lady, the coach has told me that he all he wants from you is his hairpiece back. He told me that he doesn't want to give 'yet another little sh... er, teenager, a public forum for attacking his family.' He is uninterested in learning the reasons for your ... trying to humiliate him."

"Well, I can tell you my reasons, can't I?" Demi protested. She shot a disapproving look at her lawyer. He hadn't made a single objection to the principal's testimony. And it was full of 'heresay' evidence! A girl with a novice lawyer has to conduct her own defense, which Demi now did.

"The coach has been picking on people who are at all different. He's been acting unconstitutionally toward Brad Mitty, and he's been ridiculing Vicky and me for wearing a bra. What's it to him? Why should he care what young girls wear?"

Cudmore's eyes were ordering her to stop. He didn't like that allusion to the 'unconstitutional" treatment of a gay, underage youth known to have been the coach's 'pet'. The school didn't need a scandal. That was the reason the coach had been asked to leave, so that parents, hearing about the arrest of the second Bryant brother, wouldn't demand an investigation of the third.

Demi pressed onward: "The coach gives all the boys the creeps. It's the way he stares at you, I mean, at them. He's always hanging around the ...."

"That's quite enough out of you, Miss James," interrupted the Vice-Principal. "It's not the coach who is trial here. It's you."

"This is not a trial," responded Demi's lawyer. "You're not suggesting anything like that for Demi, I'm quite sure."

"No, of course not. It's not in the interest of the school for anyone to go on trial. Do you understand that, Demi? No one, I repeat, no one is going to air the dirty linen of this school in public. We don't need the police and courts to get involved. Is that agreed?"

A knowing smile came over Taft's face. He said: "Under the circumstances, there can't be any question of Demi's expulsion, nor that of any of her confederates, can there?"

"She has to be punished," grumbled the Vice Principal. "We can't have our students driving their motorcycles through our hallways. We cannot have them assaulting the staff. Her 'girlfriend' even threatened me with a sword. There have to be repercussions. Er, what do you recommend we do, Taft?"

Taft looked at Barb who nodded her assent, then authoritatively replied, "A two-week suspension strikes me as being in order - that's two weeks for Demi, since she was riding the scooter, and a maximum of a week for each of her co-conspirators."

Vice-Principal Cudmore reluctantly agreed. He had been planning to expel Demi, but everyone had let him down. The Coach had been the first to 'bugger off." Then the police he had summoned to the school to intimidate Demi and her mother had wandered off instead to scrutinize the Coach's files as he packed them away. Next, Demi had shown up with her 'gang lawyer' in a blatant attempt to intimidate the school administration.

And finally, Dr. Loupi had refused to co-operate. When asked earlier to certify that Demi was a menace to her fellow students, he'd threatened to resign rather than "harm that sweet girl." Indeed, Loupi warned Cudmore that anything more than a token punishment would do irreparable psychological harm to Demi at a critical moment in her transition from male to female.

"If Demi subsequently launches a lawsuit against the school board for damages," Dr. Loupi had warned its lawyer, "I am prepared to testify on her behalf. This school should be progressive enough to recognize that any transsexual is under enormous pressure at the moment she makes the decision to change her sexual identity. We should count ourselves fortunate indeed that Demi expressed herself with a moped rather than with a gun. Now that she has vented, I confidently predict, that she will become a model student - indeed, a far better one than Kyle, the boy, ever was."

Beleaguered and abandoned, Cudmore crumbled. Demi would get the token punishment recommended by her psychologist and lawyer. She had, of course, no idea how close she'd come to exiting the school and entering a holding cell. She only knew that her lawyer had let her down badly. .

Demi exploded: "I'm being framed! I thought Mr. Dinkins was supposed to protect my rights. He's been selling me down the river!"

Taft glared at Demi. Apparently he didn't find amusing her allusion to the slave auctions in New Orleans. Barb hissed, "Hush, Demi. We're trying to work out what's best for you. Please be silent and let the adults decide what's right."

Vice-Principal Cudmore saw his opening: "The motorcycle has to be part of the punishment, or Demi will have learnt nothing from her mistake. She has clearly proved herself too young and immature to be in charge of a motor. If we were to report her escapade to the police, she'd be banned from driving her cycle for several years. So I propose an indefinite suspension of her driving privileges on an informal basis. I'm sure you'll agree, Mrs. James, that your son ... er, daughter is not ready for the responsibility of motor-vehicle operation."

Barb answered, "I am inclined to agree with you Mr. Cudmore, but I will remind you that teens grow up remarkably quickly these days. I'm confident that Demi will soon develop the necessary maturity to operate a moped safely and responsibly."

"I understand that Demi is going to be 15 years old in May," Taft interjected. "Why don't we agree that she can get back her driving privileges on her fifteenth birthday if she has behaved in a mature and ladylike fashion in the interim."

Demi was too shocked to speak. She'd heard you could end up doing some serious time if you didn't have a smart enough lawyer. But six months without her moped? That was cruel and unusual punishment!

How could her mother be so foolish, how could the James family be so destitute, that they had to depend on a 'charity' lawyer so incompetent that he thought that it was his responsibility to recommend her punishment! Jeez, talk about hopeless! Didn't he realize that it was the prosecution that said, "Fry the bastard"? Demi resolved to look for a part-time job, any job, so that she and her mother would never again be so poor that they had to rely on a 'no-fee' lawyer.

And so it was agreed: Demi was suspended for two weeks, and Jo, Steve, and Tim for one week each. As well, the moped, so dearly purchased, was to be padlocked for six months. As Taft and the James family left the school, Demi could not remotely fathom why her mother seemed pleased with the verdict. Her mother was actually giving Taft a hug! Could you beat that? Adults! Who can figure them out?

Demi's punishment did not end at the school gate. Barb also cancelled the expedition with the Lancers to Chicago, and grounded Demi for three weeks. She wouldn't get, therefore, a second chance to wear her Pocahontas outfit. She was, however, permitted to stay in touch with her friends electronically.

As a result, Demi discovered the joys of phone sex with Jo, who'd insist on their describing every inch of their bodies in pornographic detail. When Demi realized that Jo became most aroused at the thought of making love to a 'genetic girl', she became one on the telephone. These chats did nothing for Kyle's male self-image, but they sure made Demi feel hot. "Lesbian sex is," she thought after one such call, "sure a turn-on."

One call upset Demi "to the max". In it, Jo admitted that her grandmother no longer approved of her seeing 'Kyle-slash-Demi': "She thinks you're a bad influence on me," Jo explained. "Gran says I never got into trouble before I started seeing you; and now I've been suspended from school for threatening to stab the Vice Principal. She blames you for that."

"That's no big deal," Demi replied. "She'll soon forgive and forget."

"Well, Gran did laugh out loud when she heard about your ride through the school, and she'd probably be willing to forgive you for getting me into trouble at school, if it weren't for the ... credit card."

"Credit card? What credit card," Kyle asked.

"Demi, I did something really bogus. I was so anxious to see you dressed right that I used my grandmother's Visa card without her permission. She actually accused me of forgery; she said I've been acting like a juvenile delinquent. Isn't that unfair for her to say?"

"Yeh, it sure is. But did you really forge her signature?"

"Once or twice - but it was for you, Demi! I had to help you. How do you think I paid for the gaffs, for the earrings, and the Pocahontas stuff? You needn't them, didn't you?" Jo then shocked Demi by starting to sob noisily at the other end of the telephone line.

"Of course I needed them. You did the right thing. Don't worry, Jo. I'll find you the money. Once she gets her money back, your Gran will forgive you."

"But how are we going to get any money, Demi, when everything we have goes to the Jets and the Sharks?"

"I don't know. I was counting on selling rides on the moped. I'll look for an after-school job, but you know as well as I do that it's not easy to find work when you're our age. The deck is stacked against you when you're not fifteen."

"It's so unfair," agreed Jo. "But there actually is a way we could earn one hundred bucks. Each of us! One hundred bucks! Are you interested?"

Of course, Demi was interested, but also skeptical: How could a kid earn a hundred dollars? Jo then explained that Melanie had freaked when she'd first heard from Jo that Barb had vetoed Demi's guest appearance on the Vera Smuttee show. However, Melanie had been in much better spirits three days later when she'd phone back to say that the Smuttee producer had recommended she get into touch with an independent Des Moines filmmaker who was making a documentary about 'special teens.'

Jo had then phoned Edwina Wood, the one-person production team, who promised each of the kids $100 (and, unbeknownst to them, $500 as well to Melanie) if "Demi" and Jo agreed to her filming a brief interview and then using it in her documentary for a cable channel.

"You mean that ... Demi would end up in a movie? I'd prefer it was Kyle," Demi replied, her voice crackling with tension.

"Don't be silly," replied Jo. "Demi's really cute and sexy. And she's an excellent dresser. She'll look great on TV, 'specially if she wears a dress."

"No dress!"

"Okay, okay. But you're going to help me out, aren't you? We need the two hundred dollars. Oh, Demi, if we don't pay back my Gran, she may never let me see you again. She said you weren't welcome at the house, until she was 'no longer tempted to give Demi and Kyle the spanking that they both so richly deserve.' Demi, if you really love me, you'll agree to make the film."

Did Demi love Jo? How could Jo even ask? Demi agreed to be interviewed by Edwina Wood. As she'd need her mother's permission, Demi outlined a campaign to guilt Barb into agreeing to the filming and to a rescheduling of her NBA weekend with Steve. While Jo was far from pleased to learn that Demi still intended to trade her virtue for basketball tickets, she had to admit that Demi's plan would probably bear fruit, even in the barren month of November. Demi said she would play on her mother's guilt for relying on an inept lawyer and for reneging on their moped deal. While Demi had little hope of getting the moped back before her fifteenth birthday - an eternity away - she did believe that if she whined often enough about losing her wheels, that her mother would soon be asking the price for her silence - which would be, of course, the filming with Jo and the weekend with Steve.

Steve was Jo's great rival. There were several nights recently in which he'd haunted her dreams. In these, always he seemed to be threatening Demi's life. In one dream, he hit her over the head with a club to drag her back to his cave where he planned to eat her. In another, he was an archer in a medieval battle whose errant arrow struck Lady Demi in her heel as she watched her champion, Joan of Ark, charge into the fray. In the most frightening dream, Steve was half-man, half-goat. He was galloping after both Demi and Jo like a ravenous werewolf, and just as they were about to escape the beast, he turned into a bat. Jo would awake in a cold sweat just as the great horned bat sank his fangs into Demi's throat of alabaster white. In the moonlight, Demi's blue blood had the color of lavender as it streamed down her neck.

As Jo feared that Demi might be bisexual, she figured it was just a matter of time before Demi betrayed her with Steve or some other boy, that is, unless Jo could isolate Demi somehow from male company. A girls' boarding school in rural Iowa was the obvious solution, and Jo had been spending most of her Internet time searching for a suitable prep school - that is, one that their guardians could afford and that the two teens would enjoy. The school also had to be one with a fairly liberal definition of who or what was a 'girl'. Judging from its website, a school in Ottumwa, Iowa might fit the bill.

Could Demi be talked into attending an all-girls' school? Given enough time, Jo felt the answer was definitely 'yes.' Jo was convinced that Demi's destiny was the company of women. But could Demi be persuaded to bury the remaining shards of her boyhood in less than three months time? Probably not, alas.

Even though she would have been living as a girl for several months by then, Demi might still believe that she was taking only a temporary leave of absence from being Kyle. Therefore, Jo concluded that there was only one sure way to get Demi into an all-girls' school by January: trickery. For her own good, Demi would have to be duped into thinking that she and Jo were going to be attending a co-educational school.

Did Jo feel at all guilty about her plan to trick Demi into attending a girls' school? No, not really, for Jo believed in her heart of hearts that everything she was going to do, or had ever done, was in Demi's best interests. After all, Demi must surely prefer to be her own woman at a girls' prep school than be a browbeaten boy at a public school.

Demi could stand tall at The Amazonian School of Ottumwa, Iowa, whereas Kyle would have to crawl cravenly on his knees at Hoover High until he was old enough and tough enough to stand up to the gangs. The other fourteen-year-old boys at Hoover didn't face such a stark choice, for no one of else was under gang orders to dress as a girl until he graduated.

Jo was certain that Demi would love The Amazonian School once she got used to the fact that it had no place in it for Kyle. It was, for starters, sports crazy. Not only was every girl expected to belong to several intra-mural teams, but it also had a record number of varsity sports.

Whenever possible, the Amazonians played in boys' or mixed leagues. In addition to such obvious sports for girls as synchronized swimming, weight lifting, boxing, wrestling and rugby, the school also boasted winning teams in skateboarding and BMX racing. While their website did not mention mopeds, these might be covered by the pledge of the headmistress "to provide whatever sports facilities our students need to develop into self-confident, physically fit adults."

The Amazonian School promised an extraordinary amount of physical activity - rock climbing at Devil's Peak, shooting the rapids of the Colorado River, cross-country running in the South Dakota badlands, hang-gliding in the High Rockies, and winter camping near Nome, Alaska. The cost of these excursions would be fully covered, it promised, by donations from the school's graduates, and by the students themselves through bake sales, car washes, and auto repair work.

The school was not all fun and games. It also promised to get its graduates into the nation's elite colleges, and to teach them the social and political skills to develop into "the leaders of tomorrow." To ensure that its students did not buy into gender stereotypes, the school uniform had optional trousers. And in any case, it only had to be worn on formal occasions, as the Amazonians normally wore jeans and sweats, so that they'd have no excuse to avoid the many physical challenges of their normal day.

The school seemed ideal to Jo. So she phoned up its admissions officer to see if they accepted transsexuals. The answer had been guarded and convoluted, but it basically boiled down to this: The school had no use for cross-dressers, that is for boys who got a sexual thrill out of dressing or acting like girls. It would, however, admit a genuine transsexual, that is one who was keen on transitioning as quickly as possible to the female sex, so long as he had the right attitude towards femininity. In other words, the school would expel any transsexual who deemed women the 'weaker sex' or 'femininity' as an excuse to mince.

To prove his bona fides, the boy would have to initiate his hormone treatments and show some breast development before he arrived. He was expected to complete his transition - that is, to have 'the operation' - within two years of his arrival. Any male student who refused to complete his sexual reassignment in a timely fashion would be asked to leave The Amazonian School.

"Had any transsexual ever attended The Amazonian School?" Jo asked, but the admissions officer refused to comment. Nevertheless, she left the distinct impression that the school had some experience in helping boys to become girls.

Jo came away from the telephone call really pumped. This was the perfect school for Demi and her. Confident that she'd find some way to enroll Demi at The Amazonian School when the time came, Jo badgered her grandmother to send her off to Ottumwa.

Virginia was at first leery of the idea, for she thought an all-girls' school the last place she should send her 'lesbian' ward. But Jo wore her down with the argument that the Amazonians regularly came into contact with boys - especially in sports like football and basketball - and held frequent dances to which they invited the cadets from the nearby O'Reilly Military Academy. Besides, if Jo went to school in Ottumwa, she'd have little or no contact with Demi, whose baleful influence would be left behind in Des Moines.

"A girls' school is the one place for you to put me if you're determined to keep me away from Kyle," Jo lied.

While Jo was chipping away at Virginia's resolve, Dr. Loupi was chiseling away at Demi's self-image. At his insistence, they met daily, even during Demi's two-week suspension, at the doctor's home in an effort to eliminate any lingering doubts Demi might have about the wisdom of completing her transition to girlhood. When she learned that the doctor had supported her in the showdown with the Vice Principal, Demi became eager to please him. So she pretended that Kyle was making progress towards accepting his innate femininity.

But Kyle didn't really feel that there was a girl inside him desperate to get out. Rather there was a boy inside Demi anxious to get back into his regular clothes - at least part of the time. Kyle had to admit that his favorite underwear and jeans all belonged to Demi. Still, he thought he should have as much freedom to dress in guy clothes as Jo had.

Dr. Loupi inquired as to how Demi's hormone treatments were progressing. At first, Kyle was stumped for an answer, inasmuch as his steroid intake was not being monitored by a physician. Was he growing breasts? Well, he'd better not be! He was supposed to be building muscle. And was he? Kyle wasn't sure, but he did think he'd detected the beginning of "something happening" when he'd checked out his chest two days previously.

He'd actually taken his breast forms off, something he rarely did even to sleep. His pectoral muscles, he could see, were definitely larger, especially when viewed from the side. He wasn't pleased, however, with his muscle tone. His pecs might be bigger, but they were flabby. Kyle blamed himself for not exercising more often.

"Jeez," he'd said to himself, "If I don't start lifting some weights, I'm going to end up with saggy tits - just like an old woman!"

As Dr. Loupi pressed him for feedback about the hormones, Kyle, remembering that one time recently that he'd checked out his chest, felt that it wasn't much of a fib to say, "I'm beginning to see a change in my body. I'm growing something that looks like tits." ("But are actually muscles," Kyle chuckled to himself.)

"How do you feel about your changing bust line, Demi? Does it please you to look more and more like a woman?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Demi, could you stand up? Yes, that's the girl. I want to see how you're shaping up. Hmm, very nice. Now turn around. Yes, even better. Demi, you're developing an hourglass figure. You'd best be wary from now on whenever an older woman offers you a candy bar or invites you to her apartment to see her collection of ballerina etchings. A girl with your figure has to watch out for lesbians. They're everywhere you look."

Kyle smiled. He was constantly watching out for one particular lesbian, Jo, the love of Demi's life.

"Now, Demi, do tell me. How much padding are you using to create your figure? Are any of those curves actually yours?"

"I'm wearing a body shaper right now. I wear it or a panty girdle every day. They're the reason I look like a girl."

"But Demi," asked Dr. Loupi thinking of the feminine hormones she was taking, "surely your waist and hips have changed a bit? After all, I remember the first time I saw you in those jeans - because of the plaid hem and pockets - and I'm sure they used to hang on you more loosely than they do now."

"It's possible I've been eating too many French fries. What you say is true, Dr. Loupi, all my jeans are tighter. It's the fault of the body shaper - it squeezes my waist, and my bod has to pop out somewhere."

It was true: the inch and a half subtracted from his waist seemed to have been added to his hips. As Kyle assumed that the rearrangement was temporary, he wasn't much bothered by it. He figured that his body would, like an elastic band, snap back into its regular shape once he took the constant tension off his waist. In the meantime, he appreciated that the extra width in his hips made it less likely that he'd be 'read' as a boy when he sallied forth in public.

Dr. Loupi was thrilled with Demi's replies. She seemed extraordinarily nonchalant about her sex change. Nowhere in the half-dozen abstracts that he'd read about transsexualism had he encountered anyone quite like Demi. She'd make his career!

What made Demi unique - to Dr. Loupi - was her uncomplicated transition between genders. Sure, she'd tried to kill the school's football coach and vice principal, but Dr. Loupi didn't blame Pocahontas's ride on 'Demi's transsexualism. No. Jo Smith was at fault. She was a "bad influence," and possibly even a "lesbian". So far as Dr. Loupi was concerned, the ride had nothing to do with Demi's gender dysphoria, or the doctor just knew that Kyle had fewer doubts about the wisdom of changing his sex than any other Iowan in U.S. history.

Dr. Loupi figured that the lingering bit of 'boy' in Demi would disappear even more rapidly if Demi were hypnotized and told to explore her essential femininity. He'd learned the art of hypnosis from a correspondence school, but had never had the opportunity to put anyone under - until now. But try as he might, Dr. Loupi was unable to hypnotize Demi, for she was wary of being given a post-hypnotic suggestion that might induce Kyle to have a sex change.

Ironically, Demi hypnotized herself one day. She became mesmerized by the hands of the wall clock that she was watching as Dr. Loupi droned on about lesbians. Fortunately, she came out of the trance when their hour was up, for the doctor had already made "this session is over" her cue for coming out of a trance. Otherwise, Demi might have ended up a zombie. Unfortunately, two of the doctor's statements had already entered Demi's sub-consciousness as post-hypnotic suggestions.

As a result of this foul-up, Demi soon had to give up one of Kyle's favorite pastimes since he'd reached puberty, namely the ritual inspection of centerfolds of 'naked ladies' in the company of other pubescent males. Why was that? Well, it seems that every time a boy commented on "those boobs," Demi would mechanically answer, "Yes, wouldn't you like to be a lesbian so that you could make love to a girl?" Naturally, the boys didn't warm to the suggestion that they'd have to change their sex to have any hope of getting a date - even if it were true for one or two of them. So Demi found herself excluded from their picture-swapping sessions.

Demi, or perhaps it was Kyle, also found it difficult for several years to stay friends with the politically correct because of a compulsion (eventually mastered) to blurt out, whenever anyone spoke within earshot of a 'pretty girl" - "All pretty girls are dykes."

To some extent, the doctor's obsession became Demi's. Even though Steve made her 'hot,' she agreed with the doctor that she must indeed be a lesbian since she was primarily attracted to girls. Indeed, she was quite turned on by the magazines that Dr. Loupi lent her as part of her sex education. Demi decided that the sight of two women having sex was far more erotic than the lingerie ads in the Sunday supplement. Gradually, Demi's sexual orientation changed to conform to the expectations of her psychologist and girlfriend.

Nevertheless, it upset Kyle to think of himself as a lesbian. It also bothered him that Demi dominated his dreams. Several mornings in a row he'd awakened with a start, after he realized that he'd been female in his dream. When he dreamt about riding his moped, there was always some telltale sign - his long, black hair, or his moccasins, or his buckskin jacket - which told him that Pocahontas was in charge of the bike and of his life. Even more disconcerting was his masturbatory life. After one orgasm unleashed by the thought of being the sexiest, most desired inmate in a prison for girls, Kyle was disturbed to realize that he'd been a female in every one of his eighty-nine sexual fantasies during the preceding twenty-four hours.

It was time for Kyle to take back his life from Demi. He had a feeling that if he didn't soon resume dressing like a boy, he might never be able to do it again. Demi would be too much in control. Kyle steeled himself, therefore, for a showdown with the gangs. They'd waste little time, he knew, in demanding an explanation from Demi for her continued refusal to wear a skirt or dress to school. And when they did, he intended to ask for "his life back" - that is, for the right to attend school as whatever sex pleased him. Kyle wasn't positive that he'd ever give up being Demi, but he wanted the freedom to choose.

Kyle was pumped for his showdown with the gang, for Demi had been treated like a hero on her first day back at class after her suspension. Almost everyone at the school knew about Pocahontas's ride and about its outcome - the disappearance of the reviled coach and the return of the school's star quarterback to the starting line-up.

They'd also heard (through rumors started by Cudmore himself) that she'd showed up with a mob lawyer who had intimidated the administration into giving the 'Pocahontas Gang' an extraordinarily light punishment for so grievous an offense. Demi had become, consequently, a Woman of Respect.

Derek could, therefore, finally admit to liking her. Indeed, he trooped up to her table at lunchtime with the black shirts to tell her, "Demi, we think you're one hell of a cool chick. You're welcome to hang out with us anytime you like."

"That invitation is for you, Demi, not for that sissy fag Kyle," snarled Jason. "If I ever see his face around this school again, I promise to smash my fist into it. But Derek's right - Demi is a righteous chick, and she's welcome to hang out with the black shirts."

Under his breath, Jason hissed to Demi, "One sex change we can handle, but don't you dare change back!"

Then Tristin, the newest black shirt, came forward with a shopping bag: "Look inside, Demi. We got you a present to show how much we respect you for sacrificing your moped for the good of the school."

With some trepidation, Demi put her hand into the bag to pull out ... a black cotton halter top across the front of which was scrolled in pink sequins one word, "Demi". The message was unmistakable: Demi had just become the first 'female' ever to be admitted to the black shirts!

Overcome with emotion, she started to cry. Steve wrapped his arms around her to comfort her. As he did so, Jo was startled to realize that she was not the only one with jealousy burning in her eyes as the couple embraced. Vicky and Brad did not surprise her, for Jo had never seen anyone more lovestruck than Brad was about Steve, and Vicky had been outrageously flirting with Steve during the week she didn't have to compete with Demi for his attention. No, it wasn't Brad or Vicky who surprised her. It was Derek! He had a hungry look in his eyes as he watched Demi nestle into Steve. Just what did he crave? Jo hoped it wasn't Demi.

Demi's membership in the black shirts didn't seem to have any downside, although it did occasionally bother her that Derek, Rob and Jason seemed even more intent on feminizing her than did Jo and Dr. Loupi. When she asked Tristin why the black shirts were constantly pressing her to have 'the operation,' he said that the gang felt uncomfortable hanging out with a 'demi-girl'. They wanted her to become the real thing as soon as possible.

Tristin thought his friends had mixed motives: "I think Jason regards all girls as inferior to boys, and so he believes that the more feminine you become, the more he'll be able to sneer at you. As for Rob, he simply goes along with whatever Derek wants, and Derek definitely believes you'd be happier as a real girl. I once heard him joke about dating you if you ever got your own hooters."

Demi's historic ride also impressed the Jets enough to make her a candidate for membership in their gang. She had met with the leadership of the Jets and the Sharks at their 'request' immediately after her first day back at school. She had gone alone, as she definitely did not want any of her friends to witness any disrespect she might show the gangs. She hoped the gangs might be more magnanimous if there were no outsiders to hear her demand her right to dress as she chose.

Her meeting with the leaders of the two gangs started with Markko demanding an explanation for her shooting-star jeans: "While I do admit you look hot in those jeans, Demi, why aren't you wearing a dress? You know that's what the gangs want you to wear."

"You asked me to wear a dress a school. And I did it once - to show my deep respect for the Sharks and the Jets. I almost got thrown out of school. Jeez, I almost got thrown into juvie jail, but I did as you asked. I also scalped the coach while wearing a dress. And here are two photos I took of myself wearing my leather dress and the coach's red mop. They're my offering to the gangs. They prove how much respect I have for you. But, if you have any respect for me, you will not insist on my wearing a dress or skirt to school. I am not a nerd, and I won't dress like one!"

She had raised her voice. How would the gangs react? Sherm spoke first: "You are the most amazing little dude I've ever seen. Or should that be dudette? Us Sharks think you've earned your right to wear long pants. You're definitely not the little sissy we thought you was."

"Does that mean I can be Kyle again? That I can go to school dressed like a boy again?"

"No, Demi, it doesn't mean that," replied Markko. "Demi, we like you. You're an okay chick. But we didn't like that little wuss Kyle. The school's better off without him. We talked this over with the Sharks, and we agreed that Demi is too cool to wear a dress to school. In fact, we like those tight jeans you're wearing. They make you look real sexy. You should definitely get some more of them. Understood?"

Demi nodded glumly.

The Sherm spoke: "I do hope youse understand your position, Demi. You've got our protection - for the current price - for as long as you go to Hoover. We're even going to make you famous as the first girl in the history of this high school to be elected as queen of both the junior and senior proms. It will be a great joke on Cudmore and the Principal, and the gangs will make sure that the students see the wisdom of voting for you."

"But I want to be Kyle again!" Demi wailed.

"Sure you can be Kyle, if you so choose," replied Markko menacingly, "but you should 'preciate that Kyle might not survive his first visit to the boys' washroom. The demijohn is the place for you. Bitch, never forget that you're now the sweetheart of Hoover High. Shit, we don't want to see that little puke Kyle ever again - even at the class reunions."

"So, Demi, do you want the gangs' protection or what?" asked Sherm.

Demi nodded glumly.

"Now, don't look so gloomy," said Markko with his oiliest voice yet. "You should be happy that the gangs like you. In fact, the Jets think you're such a hot bitch that we've gone and elected you a candidate member of the gang. You even get to wear our colors. With winter coming, we decided you'd look good in a blue and white silk scarf. We want to see it on you at all times."

Sherm then said an odd thing: "I want you to know, Demi, that the Sharks persuaded the Jets that you were still too young for full membership in their gang. You remember that. Us Sharks have been looking after your scrawny little white ass."

And so, Demi left her showdown with the gangs with two new rights - first, the right to wear jeans, so long as they were tight; and the right to wear the blue-and-white colors of the Jets. At first, she believed that a candidate membership in the Jets must be, like her membership in the black shirts, a blessing. But Derek disabused her the following morning when he saw her for the first time in gang colors (as well as her 'Demi'. halter top)

"My god, Demi, tell me they haven't made you a member of the Jets! Tell me it isn't so!"

"No, I'm only a candidate member thanks to the interference of Sherm Dinkins. He seems to have it really out for me. First, he got his father to give away my moped for six months - for no good reason! And then he talked the Jets out of making me a full member in their gang. I don't know why he hates me so much. He said something about my 'skinny white ass,' so I guess it's something racial."

"Demi, you're such a little fool," Derek riposted, while shaking her shoulders to get her full attention. "Sherm's not your enemy. He must be your friend if he prevented your becoming a member of the Jets."

"How so?" asked Demi suspiciously.

"You're a girl, right? So you'd be a female gang member, right?"

Demi had to agree - she'd be joining the Jets as a girl. Indeed, she'd be their first female member in more than a year. Dawn DeWitt had belonged to their gang for several months before having to leave school in disgrace. Pregnant, she had confessed that she had no idea who the father of her quints might be.

"So, Demi, do you have any idea, any at all, what the duties of a female member of the Jets just happen to be?"

No, she hadn't, but the tension in his voice raised some dire possibilities.

"If they make you a full member, you'll be the gang's bitch. You'll have to keep them all ... happy. I mean real happy. They'll make you soiled goods in the eyes of all the other boys. No one will want to date you once you've begun servicing the Jets."

There had been a lot of shocks for Kyle's system to absorb since he'd started cross-dressing, not least was the emergence of Demi. But nothing shook him more to his roots than the prospect of becoming a gang's whore. He fervently nodded when Derek recommended that Demi needed to change schools 'pronto.'

Hadn't Jo been talking up the idea of their going away to boarding school? Never had the idea been more appealing to Demi. That very afternoon, she raised the issue with Jo (shortly after they had enjoyed their first sex in more than two weeks). To Demi's delight, Jo had "good news": Her grandmother had submitted her application to The Amazonian School of Ottumwa. Jo didn't add, of course, that Virginia hoped to send her granddaughter to a place where Demi, still a boy in the eyes of the law and most educators, could not follow.

Over the next three days, Demi's reputation plummeted. No longer was she the school's heroine. Her blue-and-white scarf announced her new identity as the Jets' bitch. Though she tried to tell her friends that she was merely a 'candidate' member, fine distinctions were lost on her schoolmates, most of whom assumed she was 'putting out' for the Jets.

Vicky certainly believed her rival for Steve's affections had become a 'slut'. In the privacy of the demijohn, she whined, "Leave Steve alone. You know I want him. Surely the Jets give you enough sex. You can't do everyone in the school!"

Vicky simply refused to credit Demi's denials. After all, who would believe anything a girl said if she had so little self-respect that she agreed to become a gang's bitch? In fact, Steve and Jo did believe Demi, as did most of the black shirts, when she protested her innocence of all insinuations, but Tim merely said, "When I joined your table, Demi, I told you that you were my friend whether you were straight or gay, a cross-dresser or a leather fetishist. It's none of my business how often you have sex or with whom. It's got to be expected that there will be a bit of tomcat in any boy, even if she dresses like a French poodle."

As for Jason, he was thrilled that Demi was becoming known as the school's biggest slut. It served her right! Jason even fabricated some stories to ensure that her legend would grow. "No," he'd say, "I'm not sure that it was actually one of the Jets, but I definitely saw her lead a big blond dude by the hand into the demijohn. It's her own private brothel, you know."

As Jason's stories spread, it became obvious to Demi and her friends that her reputation had plummeted to such depths that the gang colors had become, ironically, her best protection. All the guys who believed her an easy lay would have to leave her alone as long as she wore the blue-and-white. None of them dared to pick a fight with the Jets by molesting their bitch. The hyenas knew they would have to wait until the lions were finished with Demi.

As the predators circled, Demi became increasingly desperate to get out of town. There was, consequently, no question of her turning down a second chance to go away with Steve and Elvira - this time to see a NBA game in New York City. Elvira, who had no inkling of Demi's bad reputation, still deemed her the ideal 'girl' to seduce her son into heterosexuality. Or at least, Demi was the most feminine-looking and -acting sex partner he was likely to choose at any time in the near future.

Barb had put up little resistance to the rescheduling of the basketball weekend. There were, she felt, lots of reasons to agree to Demi's trip. First, Barb hoped that her child would stop moping about her moped. With luck, she'd also become less irritable. In recent weeks, Demi had developed a temper, mainly around the house, but also whenever she went shopping with her mother.

Barb also hoped that a weekend in New York would draw Demi and Steve closer, while giving Demi's a respite from Jo's machinations. Barb had learned from Demi that Jo had been the first to suggest Pocahontas's reckless ride through the school, and had concluded, naturally enough, that Jo was a 'bad influence' on her daughter.

Steve, on the other hand, had been rising in Barb's esteem as she became more used to the idea that her son had become her daughter. Originally, Barb had been opposed to Kyle's friendship with Steve, for she did not want her son to become a homosexual. But the emergence of Demi had changed everything, except Barb's conviction that her child would be better off a heterosexual.

If Demi were truly a transsexual, and her ultimate fate to live life as a woman, then she should be, Barb now reasoned, dating boys. Barb even thought Demi should get as much sexual experience as possible with boys before Jo persuaded her that she was a lesbian-born. To make it clear that Demi had her mother's permission to 'have fun' in New York, Barb sent her off with a brand new, see-through, red negligee and half a box of condoms.

It wasn't that Demi was asking for permission to 'fool around' with Steve. Although they had petted a couple of times, and knew each other's mouth intimately, she knew that Kyle was still opposed to her going 'all the way' with a boy. While Demi was eager to learn more about her sexuality - that is, to discover whether she was bisexual - she knew that Kyle would have difficulty looking at himself in the mirror the morning after sex with Steve, even if it was Demi's face that stared back. So she was less certain than Elvira and Steve that she was heading off to New York City to 'lose her cherry.'

She was as tense as a cat the night before her trip to New York. Her nerves always seemed to be on edge, but then what would you expect? After all, not many girls have decisions as tough as Demi's to make. She had to decide whether to have sexual intercourse with Steve. She had to decide whether she could finish out the term without being 'promoted' to full gang membership, or demoted to the status of used goods available to every boy at Hoover High for the taking. She also fretted about the boarding school. Would Jo find one in time? Would her mother be able to afford it on a secretary's salary?

And finally, there was the question of the infernal itching under her breast forms. They had become so uncomfortable, the tissue under them so tender and swollen, that it seemed just a matter of days before she'd have to stop wearing the forms. Then what would Demi do to keep her figure? She was a girl with a lot on her mind.

She therefore jumped when the telephone rang at 9:30 p.m. Almost no one called that late in the evening, least of all for her. Barb did not approve of her daughter chatting late into the night. So Demi didn't even answer the phone, until Barb yelled out, "It's Jo. Now don't talk too long on the phone. Remember we have to head off to the airport at six o'clock in the morning, and you've not finished packing."

It was true - Demi had been unable to decide what to take. Her two dresses went into her suitcase; then they came out. They went in, they came out. It had been like that for a couple of hours, though she had made some headway when she finally decided to take just one pair of jeans - the pair she'd be wearing to the airport. She hoped she'd be allowed to wear skirts while in New York, but she knew that Elvira insisted on dresses. So into the suitcase they went, and then out again.

The phone call allowed Demi to defer her decision just a little bit longer. At the other end Jo was talking so excitedly that Demi at first had difficulty making out her meaning. But gradually it dawned on her: Two students had just been expelled from The Amazonian School 'for excessive timidity," and Jo, as a consequence, had been admitted to the school as of the January term.

"You said that two students were expelled. Does that mean there might be room for me too?" asked Demi, fearing the worst. She didn't want to have to face her fate in Des Moines without Jo at her side.

"Definitely. But you're going to have to hurry because the school told me they had just one place still open for the winter term. It's the most wonderful school in the whole world, Demi. You wouldn't believe their sports program. It's totally awesome. And they even send you off on trips to the Rockies and sometimes to the Amazon."

"That's probably where they got their name from," speculated Demi. "You know - the Amazonians take school trips to the Amazon."

"Could be," agreed Jo, though she knew better.

"How far is the school from Des Moines?" Demi suddenly asked. She was hoping it was far enough away for her to leave the Jets far behind.

"Oh, it's a zillion miles from Des Moines. It's in Ottumwa, and that's practically in the next state. The Jets will never find you there, Demi."

"You mean they'll never find Kyle at The Amazonian School. I'm going to be Kyle at the new school, because I don't think I can handle being Demi any longer. Jeez, she seems to get into more trouble than Kyle ever did."

"You can be whatever you want to be at The Amazonian School," Jo said soothingly. "That's in their brochure. They'll 'make you be the best you can be'. They promise to help you to achieve any ambition, whether it's army general or United States President."

"Wow, that's super. It sounds like a totally awesome school to attend. I definitely want to go to it."

The phone call ended with Jo promising to bring over the application forms for Demi and her mother to sign, as well as some selected literature on the school. In other words, she wouldn't be showing Demi anything that indicated that The Amazonian School was for girls only.

Would Demi be naive enough to sign yet another form without reading it first? And would Barb agree to her child's giving up all pretense of being a boy? Jo wouldn't know the answers until after, as she wrote in her diary, "Demi, that tramp, has finished shacking up with Stevie Lancer in a New York hotel that probably rents by the hour."

Chapter Eighteen: Do Coffee Beans Grow in Ireland?

"Young lady, you're inappropriately dressed! I expected you to be wearing a skirt or, better yet, a dress."

Elvira was furious. She might have slapped Demi, had Steve not been watching. They were at the airport waiting for the plane that would take them to Chicago, and from thence to New York.

Steve was puzzled by his mother's show of temper. He preferred his boyfriend in tight jeans, even girls' jeans. While Steve found Kyle's crotch to be unnervingly feminine, his rear, so pleasingly plump, was well nigh perfect. In tight jeans, Kyle's buttocks looked so incredibly inviting.

Why then did Elvira insist on skirts and dresses? Steve didn't have the answer, but then he had never been able to comprehend why his mother was so eager for Kyle to become as much like a girl as possible. Steve guessed it was because she didn't like 'sissies'. She was always putting them down, and so it was possible she didn't want Kyle to be one.

"Maybe," Steve thought, "that's why she hopes that Kyle really is Demi, a transsexual. I hope she's wrong. I don't want him to be a girl. This weekend I'm going to get Kyle back. There will be no gangs to use as an excuse for dressing like a girl. He says he'll burn his bra the moment he's free of the Jets. Well, we'll see, won't we?"

"Mrs. Lancer," said Demi, her countenance downcast. "I packed two dresses. I'll change into one of them when we get to New York. Steve knows why I won't wear a dress in Des Moines. I've got an image to uphold."

"What image, young lady? As a slob? You really should get rid of that scarf. Have you no clothes sense? A blue and white scarf does not complement a pink jersey. And those jeans look like they have been sprayed onto you."

"Oh mom, leave Demi alone. She won't be wearing the scarf in New York. It's an Iowa thing."

"Well, I sincerely hope so. When we get to the hotel in New York, Demi, the first thing we're going to do is take a look at your outfits. I do want you to look your best tonight, and if necessary we'll buy you some clothes - at my expense - so that you can look like you actually belong in New York."

And to Steve, Elvira said, "This is an important night for the two of you, and I want your girlfriend to look ... awesome."

Steve blushed. Demi muttered something under her breath. She wished Elvira would stop putting ideas into Steve's head. But Elvira had a one-track mind, even though they were flying on an airplane: Not an hour went by without her hinting that Demi should doll herself up in order to seduce Steve.

Elvira was giving Demi a green light to have sex with her son. Indeed, she was virtually insisting on their coupling. But Elvira lacked finesse. The more she talked about sex, the more embarrassed the two teens became about it. Steve found himself having to whisper to Demi that, "I don't know what my mother is talking about. I have no intention of making a pass at you tonight. You have my word on it."

Demi hadn't sought this pledge. She had, in fact, been looking forward to necking with Steve. She had even decided, sort of, to allow him to steal another base, although she was determined to protect home plate. There was no way she was going to have intercourse with Steve or any other boy, for she didn't think Kyle could cope with being both a bisexual transsexual. Yet Demi knew that she didn't want any cloth to be in the way the next time she touched Steve 'there'.

Would she allow him to take off her bra and panties? Maybe. She wasn't yet sure how much she'd let Steve see. But she did know how much she'd let him do - and it would not include allowing him "to use her like a girl." Whatever Jo might fear or the school assume, Demi was no slut. Indeed, she reacted to Elvira's not-so-subtle efforts to put sex on the teens' weekend agenda by resolving to keep her legs crossed and her back to the wall to the entire time she was in New York.

Demi blamed Steve for his mother's sexual innuendos. By the time the three of them had reached LaGuardia airport in New York, Demi had become as frigid as a cold front in November. She even refused to hold Steve's hand as they waited for their baggage. On the way to their hotel near Times Square, both teens hugged the car doors. A moped could have driven through the gap they had left in the back seat.

At the hotel, Demi complained that Elvira had not kept her promise about room accommodations. She had been promised, she said, her own room. Not only did she not have her own room, she didn't even have own bed. The room she shared with Steve had just one bed - a queen-sized bed in the shape of a heart beneath a towering, curtained canopy.

While Demi was muttering about the 'trap' that Elvira had set, Steve was ranting about her 'bad taste.' The femininity of the room appalled him. Never before in his life had he ever spent more than minute in a room with so much brocaded silk, satin and lace, and with so many variants of pink, his least favorite color. Even the sheets were, to his disgust, made of pink satin. He'd asked his mother for flannel sheets, and as macho a décor as possible to get his boyfriend Kyle up for hot, raunchy, gay sex.

When he finally stopped venting, Steve had time to reflect, "It's going to be extra hard to get Kyle to lose Demi in this crappy room. Cripes, all that pink is such a turn-off that I'm going to have trouble getting hard myself!"

Both teens were upset. They could not have started this tryst farther apart in spirit. And the situation only worsened when Elvira barged into their room without knocking in order to inspect "Demi's trousseau." As Demi laid her clothes out on the dress, she heard moans from Steve and sighs from Elvira. Nothing in her suitcase was 'masculine' enough for Steve, nor 'pretty' enough for his mother. The two dresses, Elvira said, were a dreary blue unworthy of a fashion-conscious city like New York.

"Demi, we're now in the Big Apple. We can't have you dress as though you're going apple-picking in Iowa. My, my, we do have our work cut out for us."

Steve spoke up: "Mom, I agree. Demi brought the wrong clothes. She should have packed some clothes for Kyle, because he's the one I want to attend the game with me tonight."

He then spoke directly to his boyfriend: "I realize, Kyle, that you didn't have any choice when you were in Des Moines. You had to be Demi and you had to dress like a girl. But we're in New York now. So let's go and buy a denim shirt for you, as well as some Levi 501 jeans, some kick-ass boots, a black Stetson, and - if you insist on wearing underwear - a jock strap. What do you say, mom? I bet there's a western gear store near here. New York's got everything."

"Steve, you really don't understand Demi, do you? Demi, it's time to tell my son the unvarnished truth. As you know, you've told quite a few whoppers to people that you definitely don't want repeated to anyone, least of all to your mother. Isn't that right, child? It's time for you to tell Steve that you love being a girl, and it's definitely time for Steve to realize that he not only can love girls, but that he actually is in love with one at this very moment. So, Demi make all of us proud. Make your own mother proud. Tell Steve that you were profoundly unhappy as a boy, and that you're ecstatic being a girl."

The threats were obvious enough to Demi. Unless she denied all desire for Kyle's return, Mrs. Lancer would expose her most damaging lies to her mother, the school, and Jo's grandmother. To be sure, Demi wasn't sure how much fallout there would be if Steve's mother tried to 'nuke' her, as she was beginning to forget which lies she'd told, and to whom.

But there was one lie that haunted her, a lie she did not want revealed to her mother - and that was the story she'd told about being beaten by Barb on account of her cross-dressing.

It was the one lie that made Demi ashamed. It was the one lie that would make Barb ashamed of her child. It was the one lie that would make Barb James ashamed to see her liberal friends. It was the one lie that might bring about the worst shame of all - the loss of the moped forever. It was the one lie that could only be covered up with a dress.

It was a lie with many progeny. As Demi watched it give birth to yet another whopper - this time a lie about her sexual identity - she reflected that the new lie at least had the virtue of protecting her virtue. Steve was less likely to jump Demi's bones than Kyle's, and Demi knew that Kyle was still too weak, despite the steroids he'd been gobbling, to fend off an overly amorous Steve. All things considered, the best defense for Kyle was another lie about Demi.

"It's tr...true," Demi haltingly started. "I would rather be Demi than Kyle. I like wearing girls' clothes. I'm not wearing them because of the gangs, whatever they might claim. I've even been looking forward to ... wearing dresses in New York. It's been bugging me that Iowa's so full of slobs that I can't wear them to school."

She looked at Elvira for approval, and mostly got it. From Steve, she got a look of total bewilderment. Elvira wanted her to say more: "Demi dear, don't be shy. Now's not the time to be shy. I want you to tell my son what sex you truly are, as well as something about your plans for your body in future."

"I'm ... a ... girl," Demi said quietly, so quietly that Steve had to strain to hear her. "So I want to have a girl's body."

Elvira was pleased, but her lips were mouthing the word "more," and so Demi took the final plunge: "I want a total sex change," she said. Elvira beamed. Demi had finally given her the cue she'd been waiting for since they first alighted the airplane.

Elvira whipped out a pink envelope. "It's a card, Demi. Do open it. I'm sure you and Steve are dying to know what it says." Demi ripped into it: A greeting card, its cover sported a photograph of a shirtless, muscular and barefooted youth in faded blue jeans being sprinkled with 'pixie dust' by a cartoon fairy with flapping gossamer wings and a sheer, linen tunic-like dress that revealed every curve of her body. One word arced, multi-hued, like a rainbow around the boy's head - "Poof!"

Inside could be seen the legend, "Congratulations On Your Sex Change," surrounding a doctored photograph of the same boy, beautifully made-up and coiffed, with a voluptuous female body scantily clad by the same fairy tunic. The fairy still hovered above the youth's head, but was clearly shocked at having been transformed into a limp-wristed, male dandy in a white ruffled shirt, red Mary Jane shoes, and a plum-colored velvet suit, with knee britches and white tights, with white ribbons at the knee.

Demi was a bit shocked by the insensitivity of the card. Didn't Mrs. Lancer know that she had a gay son? Did she think him a 'poof'? But far more shocking was the message Elvira had penned: "Steve and I want you to accept these two checks as tokens of our affection for you. They're to pay for the operations to give you a woman's body. Steve and I can't wait to see the new, improved Demi."

Most shocking of all were the sums on the two checks. Demi was amazed to see that her new body would cost her more than a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. As she knew there was no point in asking for the bike instead of for the promised breast implants and vagina, she didn't quite know what to say. Nor did Steve, who had no idea before now that his mother intended to spend a small fortune on remaking Demi.

Elvira was the first to speak after the opening of the card: "Steve, you didn't get an opportunity to sign the card, and I know you want to. Here, you can sign it now. You're definitely as thrilled as I am that our family has been able to find the money to ensure that your girlfriend will become a real girl in a matter of months. Isn't that wonderful?"

Steve looked over to Demi for a cue. He couldn't read her face. It was blank. He couldn't tell whether she was speechless with joy or stunned into silence. As he didn't want to ruin the moment for his mother and Demi, he lightly kissed his girlfriend on the lips, bade her "congratulations, I guess," and then signed the card. He had tears in his eyes.

Demi could not decipher the meaning of the tears. She could not tell whether they bespoke joy or sorrow. Whichever, she felt estranged from Steve. He had always been Kyle's main defender, the one person determined to keep the boy in Demi alive. With his signature, Steve had embraced Demi and betrayed Kyle.

There was so much money involved that Demi assumed that the two Lancers must have discussed and agreed upon her future. Later that day Steve heatedly denied having any advance knowledge of either the card or the checks, but Demi found his denials unconvincing. He must have known!

Kyle was furious over his friend's betrayal, and Steve immediately realized that something had changed in their relationship, possibly forever. In Demi, mixed emotions raged. The possibility of a sex change had definitely aroused her, and to Kyle's horror, the two checks - especially the larger one for reconstructing his sex organs - were causing his penis to strain against the gaff's confinement.

"Jeez, I'm getting turned on by the thought of having my dick cut off! What's happening to me?" Kyle wailed inside, the question reverberating like an echo deep inside the well of his being.

Kyle's hand shook, but it did not drop the checks. He was terrified of being lost forever. Demi was almost as frightened by the choices that Elvira had handed her. She felt like a fetus being pulled by a doctor's forceps through the birth canal. Was she really willing to enter the world crying like a newborn baby? Maybe.

"No, definitely no," objected Kyle to himself. "It's all been a gag. I'm supposed to return to normal, any day now. I don't want to be Demi forever!"

"And why not?" a voice cooed from deep inside. "Demi's beautiful. Everyone loves Demi. Even Steve prefers Demi."

"Demi, are you going to thank us?" Elvira loudly asked. "I bet Steve wouldn't mind being told with a kiss and a hug how much you love his present."

Steve didn't look like he was seeking a kiss, but Demi took the plunge. Or her tongue did. She amazed herself by soul-kissing Steve right in front of his mother. So passionate was her kiss that Steve quite lost himself in it.

As their mouths locked and their bodies embraced, Elvira took their picture. She had a photo for virtually every moment of their trip so far, including one of Demi's shocked look when she opened her card. But this was the photo that had the most lasting effect on Barb when she received it in the mail from Elvira with the caption, "Demi thanks Steve for his present of a sex change."

When Demi reluctantly admitted that the photo had indeed been taken almost immediately after she'd received her gift, Barb concluded yet again that Demi's actions spoke louder than Kyle's words. He claimed to be "revolted by the idea of a sex change," but Demi appeared to be enraptured by the very same "idea," as Steve confirmed when Barb quizzed him about the photograph and kiss. Demi and Kyle also gave Barb mixed signals when she'd asked whether they should keep Elvira's checks. While Kyle urged his mother to tear them up, Demi prevailed on Barb to deposit the checks "for safekeeping."

It had taken some persuasion from Demi, for Barb had not wanted to become "beholden" to a woman she detested. But Demi had argued that Mrs. Lancer's vileness was all the more reason to keep her money. In time, Steve's mom might even forget that she'd given Demi the money, or might not care whether it bought a Harley-Davidson instead of a sex change.

"Or it could pay off the mortgage," Demi hastened to add when she saw from her mother's exasperated look that her "trial balloon" hadn't flown. Indeed, it had crashed and burned, like a Harley hitting the great gender divide.

Whatever uses the money might have in Demi's imagination, it had only one legitimate use, so far as her mother was concerned - to make her daughter whole. Barb had banked the money because she realized that she could never afford to pay for Demi's sex change out of the wages of a legal secretary.

Elvira's money had a powerful purchase on Barb's imagination: Without it, Demi could be no more than a boy in fake breasts. Barb had, as a result, always assumed that Kyle would eventually reassert himself, with Demi becoming a minor player in his life. Though Barb was now determined to keep her daughter around as much as possible, she believed that her child would want to be male most of the time, in accord with his body.

Thanks to Elvira's money, that body could change in a matter of months. Demi had become a full-time viability. Is that what Barb wanted - for her son to disappear entirely? The answer at a conscious level was definitely 'no', as Barb repeated to herself, "The best possible outcome is for Demi and Kyle to have joint custody of my child."

Yet her subconscious told another story: Demi seized hold of Barb's dreams and fantasies from the moment they deposited Elvira's checks. After a couple of weeks of vivid, memorable dreams about her daughter Demi, Barb awoke one morning with the sudden realization that she couldn't remember the last time that her son had appeared in her dreams. Indeed, he had disappeared even from her dream womb. In that morning's reverie, the doctor had said, "The ultrasound shows that you're going to have a girl. She's in perfect shape. What do you plan on calling her?"

"Demi," she heard herself say just as she awakened. Barb had been talking in her sleep.

So Elvira's checks mattered a lot to Barb, as did Demi's reported joy at receiving them. But Demi hadn't taken them very seriously as long as she was in New York. For one thing, she expected the checks to bounce higher than a basketball, certainly higher than the breast implants that they would never buy.

"Mrs. Lancer's just trying to impress Steve," she'd concluded. "No one is going to spend that many eggs on a kid, who's not even her own. I bet she doesn't even have her money in that bank." Demi was wrong, of course, but her skepticism was understandable, for she had no idea of the costs Elvira Lancer was willing to bear to keep her son from following in the "tragic footsteps of his father."

Elvira would have been willing to pay for three boys to have sex changes had she been guaranteed that these would help to return her son to the path of the straight and narrow. As it was, she was prepared to splurge on the sexual transformation of the one boy she knew her son loved most.

Elvira hoped that her son would gradually learn to love women as the love of his life turned into one. At first she had felt twinges of guilt about manipulating Kyle, but these had disappeared the moment she'd heard that Kyle was still dressing as Demi despite having earned his moped.

On the plane Elvira had said to herself, "In New York, Steve and Demi will finally become aware of their true natures - that she is a transsexual and that he loves Demi because of, and not in spite of her intrinsic femininity. If all goes to plan, they'll still be dating when it's time for Demi to give up her newfound virginity. Once Steve has plucked a girl's cherry, he'll lose all interest in all other 'fruits.' He'll then be the perfect son, just as I knew he was destined to be."

As there wasn't time for Demi to change her sex before she went to bed with Steve that evening, Elvira hoped to make 'the girl' look more feminine through the right combination of body adornments. To get Steve out of the way, so that she and Demi could go shopping, Elvira dropped him off at a Times Square cinema to see a first-run movie called "Aliens Get the Munchies on Independence Day."

Demi had been as eager as Steve to see the movie because it was rumored to have a "totally awesome" climax in which an incoming meteor fortuitously destroyed the alien mother ship before it could finish transforming the people of Los Angeles into narcissi, the primary food of the aliens' flower-loving, vegan gods. Neither teen knew what happened after the meteor demolished the alien spacecraft, and the suspense was killing them. They had to know whether the Earth survived, or whether, as rumored, it had to be repopulated from another planet by people with tiny bodies and big heads - like Bart Simpson.

It definitely was going to be a super movie, and so Demi was furious and uncommunicative for a full half-hour after being told by Mrs. Lancer that the movie was "suitable for boys only as it was too violent for a girl to watch."

Steve, at first miffed at being left to his own devices, spent an extraordinary two-and-a-half-hours at the theater. Though he kept to himself, he could not help but notice that there were a lot of gays in New York. In fact, there were so many that he vowed to return to the Big Apple as soon as he'd "grown up."

Elvira would have been devastated to learn how much her shopping trip with Demi had backfired. As they bought one expensive item after another to make Demi look more feminine, Steve was for the price of a movie ticket getting constant reminders of how much he loved to look at the masculine. True, the ticket was incredibly overpriced by Des Moines standards, but it was still a lot cheaper than the Vagi-Gaff that Steve's mother insisted on buying for Demi.

They had found the Vagi-Gaff at "Transformations," a second-story walk-up on Seventh Avenue in Greenwich Village. Elvira had located it in the Yellow Pages as a shop catering to "New York's Cross-Dressing, Transsexual, and Transgendered Community." She hoped to find there some help in making Demi look more feminine regardless of what she was wearing - even nothing at all.

Demi had no inkling they were going to a shop for T* girls until they had actually passed through its door. Possibly Elvira would have told her had Demi actually asked instead of sulked, but probably not, judging from the way that Elvira was carefully blocking Demi's escape route to the door. Elvira wasn't sure how Demi would react to finding herself surrounded by "her own kind" for the first time in her life, but she wanted to ensure that she didn't flee the store.

Demi took a while to realize that most of the 'women' in the store were as male as Kyle. In fact, she hadn't noticed the women at first, because two teenaged males had caught her attention instead. She was surprised to see them. Most teenaged boys would rather die than be seen shopping in a women's wear store, even if they were buying something for their mother or girlfriend. So she watched them closely enough to see that they were measuring everything against their own body - whether it was a pair of panties, a bra, or a slip. Could two boys be openly defying the American dress code? Yep, to Demi's gaping amazement one of the boys carried a dress with him into a changing room.

She was awaiting his return when Elvira nudged her: "Demi, I do declare you've become quite the daydreamer. Young lady, it's impolite not to acknowledge a saleslady when she addresses you."

"Saleslady? Yes, there she is right in front of me. Jeez, she's got to be about almost seven feet tall. She must play pro basketball. Or she could."

"Demi, my name is Roberta, and like you, I'm not a genetic girl. However, I've had both of the operations that you've got planned, honey, and I promise you that you'll never regret your decision to get yourself a clitoris and vagina. I do envy you, honey, as my only regret is that I didn't have the right body to get the most fun out of my teenage years."

"Huh?" Demi thought. "She knows I'm not a girl? She knows about the operation? How? Jeez, that boy is back from the change room, and he's actually wearing a dress in front of everyone! Look at the way he's admiring himself in the mirrors - just like a girl!"

"Demi, do listen to Roberta. She wants to know your size for the Vagi-Gaff."

"Don't worry, Elvira. I'm used to dealing with first-timers," Marilyn whispered. "They're all like Demi. They're so excited at finally being among friends that they become literally speechless. See the way Demi is staring at that boy trying on his dress. I'm sure she's wishing that she could be twirling her own blue dress in front of all those mirrors. I bet she's never primped in front of a store mirror. Much too shy, I imagine."

To Demi, Roberta said more loudly and plainly, "Honey, you're such a tiny little thing I can't imagine you'll need anything larger than a 'small'. Now, you be a dear and go over to the change room and strip off everything from your belly button on downward, and when you're nice and naked, give me a holler and I'll come over and give you a fitting."

"Huh? Naked?" That word got Demi's attention, and for the first time she forgot about the boy in the dress and started listening very closely to the giant in the dress. "Roberta, was that her name? Does she really expect me to go into a room and take off all my clothes? What gives?"

"Don't just stand there, Demi. You can't be fitted for a new gaff if you don't strip off whatever you're wearing right now. I'm sure Roberta has seen a boy in panties before, haven't you?"

"Well, we all are boys in panties, aren't we?" Roberta laughed.

"I hope you're not including me in that 'all'," Elvira said testily. "I assure you that I look exactly as Mother Nature intended."

"Alas, Mother isn't perfect," Roberta said under her breath. Out loud she said to Demi, "Now do run along, honey, and strip off your panties and gaff so that we can fit you with the Vagi-Gaff. I predict that you'll love it so much that you'll never take if off until your final operation. You know, honey, you've got quite a generous aunt in Elvira. There aren't too many women who'd buy their nephews a $200 gaff. She must love you a lot."

"Elvira, my aunt? Elvira love me? Wow, lady, do you have things wrong." That's what Kyle thought, but he was too polite to actually say it.

Curiosity seized Demi. A $200 gaff? What could it possibly look like? She had to see it on herself. Demi then surprised herself by stripping off her dress (with some help from Roberta with the zipper and hooks), her white nylon slip, her white nylon bra and panties, and her favorite gaff. As she undressed, an erection loomed, but she beat it back just before Roberta swept back into the changing room.

Roberta was holding something flesh-toned, something that looked ... a lot like a vagina! Demi then realized where the Vagi-Gaff got its name.

Roberta showed Demi how to tuck her genitals away. "See," she said, "You'll won't have to take the Vagi-Gaff off to relieve yourself, so long as you pee sitting down like a proper lady."

"Demi, honey, put your finger on your clitoris. Notice how it massages the base of your penis when you stroke it? You like that, don't you? You can touch yourself directly if you put your finger through the labia. Isn't it wonderful, Demi? You've finally got a vagina, but not as good, of course, as you're eventually going to have. The vagina goes clear through to your rear, so that - how can I put this delicately? - you can have sexual intercourse. One reason the Vagi-Gaff is the most expensive and the best artificial vagina available is the quality of its sheath. It will feel, Honey, just like the real thing to the boys you ... entertain. And you'll get some pleasure too."

Demi had put on the Vagi-Gaff as nonchalantly as she would have any other item of girl's underwear at this point in her evolution. But, as she looked at herself for the first time in the changing-room mirror, she became anything but indifferent. Her whole body tensed as she saw herself standing stark naked in front of the mirror (or so she appeared) and looking exactly like a girl! It was a disturbing, alluring vision.

Kyle scoffed: "This isn't real. It's the poor light in the change room. Or it's a trick done with mirrors. Jeez, I once looked like I weighed a hundred tons when I looked at myself in a funhouse mirror. It must be the mirror that makes me look so much like a girl. It's an optical delusion."

But Demi knew better. Once again, her actions spoke more eloquently than Kyle's words. Even as he claimed that there was no way that he could ever look both naked and feminine, Demi marveled at her new body. So self-absorbed that she forgot Roberta's presence, she turned around to see, as best she could, how her vagina looked from the rear. Then she touched her toes, looking backward through her legs, once again at her vagina in the mirror.

As she turned to get a good view of herself from the front, Demi's right hand searched out her 'clitoris,' and for the first time in her life, Demi began masturbating like a girl. She stopped when a chuckle reminded her she was not alone.

Demi could have died of embarrassment until Roberta reassured her, "Don't worry, honey, when I first saw myself in a vagina gaff - and it wasn't half as realistic-looking as yours - I too immediately wanted to play with myself. But you don't want to get your Vagi-Gaff sticky before you've even worn it home, so I recommend a bit of self-restraint."

"Honey, let me show you how to use makeup to make it impossible for any but the most knowing eye to tell where your original body stops and your new body starts."

The make-up worked such wonders that Demi refused to be seen by Elvira without first putting on her bra and panties. "I won't let Steve's mother see me naked," she explained. Roberta didn't even try to argue that Demi was hardly naked if her real nipples and genitals were covered in silicon, plastic and rubber, for she understood what Demi meant: Naked for her now meant standing before someone with either her breasts or female genitalia in full view. The boy's body underneath was, like her internal organs and her bones, the stuff of x-rays, and in theory not really nudity at all.

Kyle, of course, had his own, more traditional definition of nudity, but as long as Demi wore her Vagi-Gaff - that is, most of the time - she would consider herself naked until she had covered it. Even then, most of her panties contoured around and so displayed, rather than hid her female organs.

Certainly, that was the case of the nylon panties (and bra) she was wearing when Elvira took the snapshots that appeared to prove that Demi wasn't a boy who tucked; rather, she was a girl with a vagina. Demi ended up with her own copy of the photograph.

Kyle found it the most erotic picture of a girl he'd ever seen. However, Kyle didn't have much opportunity to masturbate over it. With Demi wearing the Vagi-Gaff to bed almost every night, she usually did the masturbating for the both of them. She tried to keep her hand movements and sexual fantasies as realistically feminine as possible.

Though the Vagi-Gaff was an instant hit with Demi, she refused at first to wear it out of the store. She was pretty sure that Steve wouldn't like it. Indeed, she expected him to hate it. Ever since that kiss to thank Steve for the two checks, she had realized that she wanted to be naked with him, and she figured that Steve would want his bedmate to look as much like a boy as possible. He might even insist on Demi's taking off her breast forms.

Steve was definitely not going to consider a vagina either normal or desirable in a boy. So Demi didn't want to wear the Vagi-Gaff while in New York, even though she already knew she'd be wearing it a lot in Des Moines.

It took hard cash to overcome Demi's resistance. Elvira had learned from her on the plane that Jo desperately needed money to get back in her grandmother's good books, and so she offered Demi seventy-five dollars if she'd wear the Vagi-Gaff every minute she was in New York.

It was too good an offer to refuse, as Demi decided that Jo's happiness was more important to her than a romp with Steve. Yes, he'd be frustrated to discover the Vagi-Gaff - if she let his hands explore that far. He'd probably not want to have sexual intercourse with Demi if she were wearing the Vagi-Gaff, which was fine with Kyle.

Though Kyle had enjoyed 'fooling around' with Steve, he still didn't want to "go all the way," for he wanted to preserve his self-image as a "lover of women," even if his entire experience with women was 'lesbian sex' with Jo. Thus the decision was made: If Steve were going to get laid that weekend, he'd have to get over the fact that his boyfriend had a vagina.

And wore a dress. It too came from Transformations, as there was insufficient time to go to another store before Steve's movie let out. It proved exceptionally difficult to choose a dress, for Demi showed little enthusiasm for any of them, and Elvira had no idea how a New York teen should dress.

Yet it was important to Elvira for Demi to look 'hip,' as Steve might lose interest in his 'hick' girlfriend if she looked out of place in sophisticated New York. To seduce Steve, Demi would have to look as "groovy as possible," Elvira decided.

Unsure of her own taste, and fearful of Demi's looking too "Ioway" at the game, Elvira asked Roberta to pick a stylish dress for Demi. Roberta replied, "Honey, in New York, style is very personal, but I think I know the right style for Demi. The Ozark look is all the rage in New York right now."

"That's what I'm wearing right now; it's called a Joplin dress, and we brought it in from one of the most fashionable stores in Hollywood. Don't you just love the blue denim, the deep plunge at the neck, and the pearl buttons in two parallel rows up from my hem to my décolletage? And I do love the way this dress shows off my legs."

"Denim, huh?" Demi came to life when she realized there was a possibility that Elvira might buy her a legless pair of blue jeans. Steve might even like her in a dress that almost looked like coveralls. But Demi didn't like the pearl buttons or the neckline that would have Demi showing cleavage for the first time.

Demi wasn't sure she was ready to have guys staring at her breasts, especially as she wasn't sure she had mastered (in one lesson) the art of hiding the seams where they met her chest. Demi also considered the dress to be much too short: Roberta was showing off as much leg as an ostrich.

While intrigued by the Ozark look, Elvira wanted a choice, and so Roberta pulled out an "Ellie May" dress, which she also declared to be another "high fashion import from Hollywood." Made from red and white gingham, it had spaghetti straps, white lace trim at v-neck, a white lettuce hem, and an empire waist that accentuated the bust line, without exposing it. It was modest, yet immodest.

Elvira decided that the Ellie May dress was the big city look she was seeking for Demi, and she insisted on seeing it modeled. So Demi found herself taking a dress into the fitting room - just like the boys she'd just been watching. She felt very awkward about it, for she realized that her true sex was as obvious to everyone in a store for the transgendered as was that of the two boys who'd been trying on dresses. Demi felt like a sissy.

As dresses went, Demi considered the gingham dress "all right, I guess." She'd have preferred the denim, especially as it had an extra inch on the leg. The Ellie May dress was a true mini, not much longer than a cheerleader's skirt. Any girl wearing it would have to move very carefully indeed, if she didn't want to give a "free show" to the men around her.

Elvira loved the dress. It had the sophisticated, cosmopolitan feel she was looking for, and she liked the fact that there would be next to nothing in the way of fabric to impede Steve's ascent of the mound of Venus.

To go with the dress, Roberta proposed - and Elvira chose - red leather thigh boots (with a three-inch heel) and a "sassy necklace." How was it sassy? Because that's what the alternating red, blue and silver letters spelled out. The outfit bought, Elvira and Demi bade Roberta a fond farewell. Her own last words were, "Send me a post card, Demi honey, when you get back to Iowa. I'll be dying to hear how your big night with Steve came out."

Demi's purchases they took back to the hotel before meeting Steve who was waiting in front of the movie theater. He was in a surprisingly good mood - but surprising if one didn't realize how many boys and men he'd caught giving him the eye as he waited for Demi and his mother. A couple of boys close to his own age had even flashed him big smiles; he knew they would have stopped to talk if they hadn't been with their mothers or friends.

The only two boys in Des Moines who'd ever looked him that way were Brad and Vicky, and she didn't really count. Steve didn't know what to make of Brad. If the high school quarterback really wanted to sex it up with Steve, why didn't he just ask? Didn't Brad realize that it was as difficult for boys as it was for girls to ask the school's star athlete for a date? He'd have to take the initiative.

Demi was a hard one to figure. She must like him, because she'd twice stripped down to her underwear to pet with him. And she'd blush furiously whenever he caught her sneaking a peak at him. She'd also told Steve that he had "the most excellent body" of any boy at Hoover High. So Demi was definitely sexually attracted to Steve, despite Kyle's denials.

She'd also said that she wanted Steve to be her "friend for life." Yet he wasn't sure whether that meant as Demi's platonic, gay friend or as her lover. Steve was also unsure of his own feelings: He knew that Kyle was "the love of his life," but Demi? She might be only a one-night stand, for Steve wasn't sure that he actually wanted to have intercourse with "a girl."

Des Moines seemed such a complicated place in comparison to New York City, for Steve had in ten minutes received more looks of unabashed approval and lust than he'd received in an Iowa year. It was no wonder that he was in such a good mood when he saw Demi and his mother, that he didn't object - or not too loudly - when Elvira insisted on their going to the Disney store.

Elvira had learned, to her horror, that Demi had not redone Kyle's room in a more feminine style. To Steve's horror, his mother now bought a complete bed set - sheets, pillowcases, bedspread and bed skirt - featuring Pocahontas and some of the cuddlier creatures of the forest, and Demi actually seemed pleased to get it, as well as a Pocahontas rag doll to go on top of the pillows. She even kissed Steve's mother in gratitude.

When Steve asked Demi why she wanted "that sissy kid stuff," he actually liked her answer, or at least part of it. Though he wasn't keen on her explanation that she'd grown up pretending to be Pocahontas, he did think it worth a kiss on her lips when she said, "I mainly wanted the Pocahontas bed clothes to remind myself of my ride through Hoover High. That was the day I stood up to the gangs and showed them that I was a ..."

She paused. She was struggling to find the right last words.

"Real man," said Steve, supplying them.

"Yeh, something like that." replied Demi, who hadn't known what to say. "Real man" didn't sound right. But what was then? She giggled as the words "one hell of a tough broad" came to mind. She refused to explain the giggle to Steve, nor any of the others that came along for the rest of the day as she came up with new endings to her sentence, all of which assumed that it had been a female who had been declaring independence from the gangs.

To make amends for his "sissy" comment, Steve bought Demi a doll, this time of Mulan. His mother provided the money for it, but both teens appreciated the symbolism of Steve's giving a doll to Demi. Elvira beamed with happiness. She rewarded them both with a visit to a huge video arcade, where she paid for them to play a virtual reality game, her only condition being that Demi play a female character.

Both Steve and Demi thought it hilarious that Drac the Impaler was getting beaten up so badly in their first virtual bout by Space Kitty, who was only half his size, that he finally had to pull out his gun and shoot her 'dead' in order to win.

Too clever to be shot a second time, Space Kitty seduced Drac in the second game (who would have thought that a video arcade for kids would have such a salacious game?) and shot him with his own gun, while his trousers were down, again to uproarious laughter.

The two teens had never been closer, the 'inevitable' between Demi and Steve ever more likely. And they remained in an excellent mood during an evening meal of burgers, fries, Mountain Dew, and chocolate cake which room service brought to them, while Elvira fasted in her own room. Steve's mood, however, soured when he learned that Demi was going to the game in a gingham dress.

It was not that he disapproved of the dress. It looked really stylish, on some other girl. But he'd definitely hoped to go to the game with Kyle, and failing that, with the Demi who dressed as much like a boy as possible. Steve wanted her in jeans, sneakers, and a unisex top. Instead, she wore a dress, a sassy necklace, and the sort of boots that Jane Fonda or Nancy Sinatra would have worn in the early days of Hollywood - you know, back in the days when people watched films outdoors and popcorn came with real butter.

"Why do you let my mother treat you like a Barbie doll?" Steve complained when Demi explained, somewhat disingenuously, that she had to wear the dress to the game because "your mom spent so money on it, and she wants me to look sharp tonight."

Ironically, Steve became less hostile to the dress when he noticed that it didn't always cover Demi's panties. Rather than tell her that she was occasionally showing off her underwear, he decided "to enjoy the view." Besides, he figured he'd be able to persuade Demi to give up dresses entirely if he told her after the game that her gingham mini-dress had done little to preserve either her dignity or her modesty.

Even Elvira was impressed by Madison Square Garden. The two teens approached with wide-eyed, slack-jawed awe. Devotees of the basketball cult, they knew they were about to enter the holy of holies. Inside, their awe became even more intense: Demi later admitted that she almost wet her panties with excitement when the usher escorted the three of them to a second row seat from where she could see, just feet away, both the Knicks and the Celtics. Steve never admitted that he had an erection most of the evening, even when Demi quizzed him about his standing so rarely to give an ovation.

The noise in Madison Square Garden was delightfully deafening. "These New Yorkers sure know how to party," Demi exclaimed to Steve. He was intent on holding her hand, but rarely got a chance to do it, as Demi leapt from her seat in excitement whenever the Knicks sank a basket. She was so engrossed in the game that she didn't notice that her gingham mini-dress quite often didn't move with her own alacrity.

In fact, it frequently ended up clinging to her waist, exposing her lace-trimmed, beribboned, pink satin panties to the seventeen thousand males assembled in the Garden. Did all seventeen thousand see Demi's panties? No, of course not. No more than twenty percent of the males - tops - at the game actually noticed her panties; and only three of them were crude enough to tell her they approved of "her taste in lingerie."

However, there were several million males who got to see Demi's panties on television, as a cable network boosted its ratings by focusing its camera on the 'dancing doll' in the second row, not once, not twice, but five times. Thanks to freeze-frame technology, there were thousands of American adolescents who believed they had for the first time seen a girl's 'snatch' - obscured by her panties, admittedly, but still visible to the discerning teenage eye.

To her intense embarrassment, the most 'joyful' images of Demi had found a home on the Internet even before the end of the post-game show. Thanks to the miracle of mass media, the 'she-must-have-gone-to-New-York-to-get-a-sex-change" photos reached Hoover High well before Demi did (as she was, with Barb's permission, playing hooky on the Monday so that she could spend two full days in New York).

Though Vice Principal Cudmore tore them up whenever he found them gracing a student locker or bulletin board, Demi's 'pink-panty photos" stayed up long enough for most of Hoover High to see. Overall, they harmed her reputation, especially with the teachers and girls of the school, who thought her shameless.

Indeed, there was only one group on campus with which her stock soared - and that was the Jets. Convinced that she'd somehow turned herself into a 'genuine girl' when they weren't looking, they voted her an associate membership in the Jets.

While she didn't yet have the privileges and duties - mostly duties - of a full member, Demi's first appearance on live television brought her a step closer to being the gang's bitch. The Jets also made it clear that they would never again take 'no' as an answer if, as Markko put it, "we should ask you to wear a dress or skirt when we authorize you to hang out with us after school."

Were Demi fifteen or sixteen, she'd already have qualified for full gang membership. However, a third of the Jets still thought her too young "to mess with." Yet even they were beginning to see Demi in a different, more lurid light after she'd repeatedly flashed her panties on national television.

At the game itself, neither Steve nor Elvira were among those who were watching the 'Jill-in-the-box with the pink panties." Indeed, Steve had largely tuned her out, in part because Demi wouldn't sit still and let him hold her hand, and in part because the sight of his father playing basketball was "awesome to the max."

It was the first time he'd attended one of his father's games since the divorce. His eyes were on his father, even when he trailed the play. Even staring as much as he did, Steve missed a lot of his father's moves, because tears kept welling up in his eyes, clouding his vision.

As for Elvira, she had her eyes dead set on her son. She watched every emotion as it flickered on his face or shone in his eyes. She didn't like what she saw: Steve's admiration and love for his father.

"How can Steve look at Mike that way?" Elvira wondered. "Sure, it's his father, the big shot basketball player. But how can any boy admire a queer, a man who cheated on his wife with ... another man? Why isn't Steve ashamed to have such a man for a father?"

A little later in the game, Elvira pondered: "I hope I haven't made a mistake letting Steve see his father. I've managed to keep them apart for more than a year now. And now I've had to agree to Steve's spending most of Sunday with Mike. Have I made a big mistake?"

Possibly she had. Yet she decided that the gamble was worth taking, since an NBA game had been the only lure powerful enough to entice Demi into spending an entire weekend with her son, including two nights in the same bed.

What would the two teens experience there? Elvira was beginning to wonder, for the auguries were inauspicious: Neither Steve nor Demi was paying much attention to the other at the game. Manifestly, they both loved basketball; but did they also love each other? To her own surprise, Elvira was less sure of the answer than she had been in Des Moines. Perhaps she'd picked the wrong town in New York State for her son's honeymoon with Demi.

Even more unnerving was Steve's rant when he couldn't see his father in the Knicks' locker room after their winning game. Sure, his name was on the approved list, as was Kyle's. And had Kyle attended the game dressed as a boy, they would have had no problem getting into the locker room and hanging out with the half-dressed Knicks - a dream that Kyle and Steve had long cherished.

But Kyle was dressed as Demi, and there was no way that the security guards were going to let a teenaged girl into the Knicks' inner sanctum. As Elvira wouldn't hear of Steve's leaving Demi behind while he "went off gallivanting with the Knicks," Steve whined: "Why don't I ever get to do what I want to do? Demi, why can't you be Kyle? I had a lot more fun with Kyle. Only a boob would wear boobs to a b-game."

Steve glared at Demi. Demi glared back. She was just as upset as Steve that they didn't get into the dressing room. But why did he blame her? He should blame his mother for forcing her to wear a dress!

Their date was not going well. As it was dangerous to return directly to the hotel (there being too much risk that Steve would end up sleeping on two chairs in Elvira's room), Elvira played for time. She wanted to give both kids time to simmer down, and for Steve to remember that he'd come to New York with sex as well as basketball on his mind.

So Elvira herded them into a half-empty café mid-way between the Garden and their hotel. Once they'd found a private corner, and she'd maneuvered Steve and Demi onto a shared bench, she asked them whether they'd like to sample some of the exotic coffees on the menu.

"I'm not allowed to drink coffee, Mrs. Lancer," Demi hesitantly replied. "My mom says I'm not allowed to do drugs as long as I'm living at home."

"You've never had coffee?" Elvira asked with genuine astonishment.

Demi nodded.

"Why on earth, dear, does your mother think coffee is a drug?"

"Because it has loads of caffeine and that's a drug. My mom says caffeine is a lot like cocaine and speed."

"What about Coke and Pepsi? They've got caffeine. I bet you drink them."

"Nope. I only drink the caffeine-free, sugarless stuff. Sugar's a drug too, you know."

"Well, I never! Your mother does have some strange notions. Well, I have no desire for you to defy your mother's wishes, and so we'll order you a decaffeinated coffee. That's coffee without the caffeine. Is that okay?"

With a smile on her face, Demi agreed. She'd never had a decaf coffee either, and she was eager to find out what a coffee tasted like. She hoped it would be better than the cigaret that Rob had persuaded her to smoke about six months ago. It had made her barf. She sure hoped coffee didn't affect her the same way.

"We need a coffee to loosen these kids up, or they'll still be virgins in the morning," Elvira had told herself, before she ordered a Colombian coffee for herself and two Irish coffees for Steve and Demi. The waiter had given her a supercilious look when she placed the order, but since he was a New Yorker who minded his own business, he duly returned with three coffees - one with caffeine, and two with a shot of Irish whiskey.

Steve and Demi eagerly slurped up the whipped cream, and then started guzzling the coffee. Steve pronounced the coffee the best he'd ever had, while Demi marveled that a drink that looked like watery mud could warm her body in so many different ways.

Elvira, the gracious host, quickly ordered Demi a second coffee, this time from Mexico (including the shot of Kahlua), but switched Steve to a high-caffeine, alcohol-free blend of East African coffees on the pretext that she didn't have enough money for them all to drink Irish coffee at New York City prices, and that Demi was, as their guest, entitled to nothing but the best her first time out sampling coffee.

As Elvira sipped and the youngsters guzzled their coffees, they talked ever more excitedly and loudly about the game they'd just seen and the drinks they were imbibing. Demi was fascinated that coffee came from so many different places - from Latin America, Africa, and Arabia - but what impressed her most, once she heard that coffee beans generally grew at high altitude in the tropics, was that Ireland was able to grow them as well.

"It must be awesomely difficult to grow the beans for an Irish coffee," she said. "I've heard that it's such a cold, rainy place that even its potatoes once rotted and turned green. Jeez, they can't even keep the rot out of their beer. I saw some Irish beer on St. Patrick's Day and it was a yucky green color."

Neither Lancer contradicted her. What was the point? Demi wasn't really listening any longer.

So impressed was Demi with the courage and tenacity of Ireland's coffee growers that she demanded and received a second Irish coffee so that she could toast the pluck and guts of the Irish in growing brown coffee beans on the Emerald Isle.

By the time, Demi had finished her long-winded toast to the Irish, complete with a slurred voice, false sentiment, and a fake brogue, Elvira sincerely regretted having bought her more than one coffee. Since Demi had downed her three coffees like Gatorade after a workout, no one - least of all Demi - was aware she was getting drunk, until she was stinking, incoherently drunk.

The evening was not working out quite as Elvira hoped. True, the first coffee had helped Steve and Demi to relax once again with each other. Indeed, before they had guzzled its last drop, Steve had an arm around Demi's shoulder and a hand on her leg playing with the inside hem of her mini-dress.

During their second coffee, Steve deliberately embarrassed his mother by soul-kissing Demi, who enthusiastically responded, even though she was no longer able to deliberate about much of anything. The second coffee had also given Steve a chance to verify that Demi was wearing satin panties. His fingertips had found something unexpected, which they were eager to explore during the third round of coffees.

But Steve had to back away from her instead, for fear of accidentally having his eye poked out by Demi as she thrashed about, one moment demonstrating the "awesome dunk" of Mike Lancer's that had tied the game at half-time, the next moment (while still seated) an Irish jig, and the next moment, how hard Juan Valdez would have to push to get a balky burro to climb a Colombian mountain.

"Children, I think it's well past your bedtime," Elvira announced, just after she had failed to stop Demi from licking up the last drop of her spiked coffee. As Demi's legs were failing her, Steve had to help her to stand up and to stagger to the exit. Meanwhile, Elvira was leaving a 'generous' tip to blind the café's staff to Demi's indisposition.

Mother and son finally got Demi to her bed. As Elvira didn't want Steve to see the Vagi-Gaff until he was sexually aroused and game for anything, she told her son, "It's not proper for you to undress Demi for bed. Why don't you go into the bathroom and get ready for your big night. Be sure to use the mouthwash and it's always advisable for a boy your age to apply an underarm deodorant before he embraces a lady."

Steve hurried off to hide the effect of his mother's words. It was exciting to think that his mother was actually encouraging him to have sex with a boy. He had always wondered whether she truly accepted his homosexuality. As he thought of his mother's preparing Kyle for bed, he wondered no longer: "My mom's really cool. She actually wants Kyle and me to get it on."

It was Demi, not Kyle, whom Elvira was preparing for bed. And Demi wasn't proving very cooperative. She was far more interested in jabbering about the glories of Ireland and its coffee than she was in getting undressed. To be sure, she was willing enough to roll over on command, one way, then the other, so that Elvira could strip her of her dress.

Yet she was much too limp to raise her arms over her head, which made it a challenge to remove her slip and bra. Her panties she kept on, as she instinctively grabbed them whenever Elvira tugged on them. As the room was chilly, Demi actually kissed Elvira to thank her for the welcome warmth from the red negligee so sheer that it highlighted rather than hid her breasts.

Seductively dressed, invitingly waiting atop the pink satin sheets of the heart-shaped bed, Demi was as ready as she'd ever be for a night of sexual passion with her first, and so far, only boyfriend. Elvira gave Steve a green light: "She's waiting for you, sweetheart. Demi told me that she wants this to be your night - whatever you want is all right with her."

As Steve kissed his mother goodnight, she whispered in his ear, "Don't forget - Demi wants you to be as manly as possible. You're the only one who needs a condom tonight, understood?" Her last words as she left the room shared by Steve and Demi were these - "Demi is such a sexy girl. She's the kind of girl who makes boys glad that there are two, very different sexes. Vive la différence!"

After removing the condoms from his wallet, and carefully setting them down on the night table, Steve quickly stripped down to his boxers. He lay down on the satin sheets beside Demi. Aroused by the warmth of her body, he kissed her chastely on her lips.

The fog cleared long enough for Demi to realize that someone was kissing her. Generously, she tried to return the kiss...

The next morning when Demi awoke she was naked and lying spread-eagled on her stomach. She was also alone. There was no sign of Steve. As her head was pounding and she was deliriously thirsty, Demi stumbled to the washroom, where she verified that she was still wearing her breast forms and Vagi-Gaff .

Had Steve seen her in them? Had he even slept with her? She couldn't remember whether she had seen him since the café. He wasn't the one, she recalled, who'd undressed her. It had been some woman. A chambermaid? Elvira? Demi wasn't sure, but she was certain that Steve hadn't been the one to remove her clothes.

Had the woman removed all Demi's clothes? No, Demi didn't think that had happened. She could swear she had gone to bed in the red negligee that now lay in a heap on the floor beside her bed. What had happened? Had someone taken it off her? Had Steve stripped off her panties when she wasn't looking?

Had she and Steve had sex? Had she - and Demi trembled at the thought -- lost her virginity to him the night before? Is that why she had awakened on her stomach? Is that why she was now so wobbly on her feet?

She shuddered at the possibility that she had, by not heeding her mother's warnings about drugs, become so high on coffee that she'd put up no defense when Steve came cherry picking.

And where was Steve anyhow? Was he all right? She hoped that he was safe and sound. But was he? He wasn't the type to "love 'em and leave 'em," was he? Where the heck was Steve?

There were so many questions, and so few answers. Demi only knew one thing for certain: She was swearing off coffee.

Chapter Nineteen: "Anything for a Pink Harley-Davidson?"

"It's a disgrace. An absolute disgrace. A hussy like you does not belong in a respectable hotel."

Fatima, the chambermaid for the fourteenth floor, was muttering under her breath, but loudly enough for Demi to overhear as she headed down the hotel corridor to Elvira's room.

Demi panicked: Did the maid somehow know about Kyle? Was she scorning Demi for not dressing like a boy? No, that wasn't it, for the maid also said something about "girls who lacked Christian modesty."

Fatima, the maid, was an Afghan fundamentalist who strongly disapproved of pre-marital sex. She had been shocked to see Demi and Steve check into the honeymoon room, as their youthful appearance and names on the register made it highly unlikely that they were married. In Fatima's eyes, Demi was little better than a whore for spending the night in a boy's bed, especially in the sheer red negligee that Fatima had discovered the previous evening as she turned down the teens' bed.

When Demi gave her the finger, Fatima openly cursed her: "You're a Jezebel and there is no place in heaven for an unrepentant sinner like you. You're very proud of your breasts, I'm sure. They are very big and ripe. But they will rot off you. God will see to that. When you have breasts like a boy, then you will realize that the flesh is weak and that only the Lord Jesus is strong. Repent, repent, before it's too late!"

"Eat me," was all that Demi could think to say. She wasn't used to matching wits with a lay missionary.

Or to outwitting Steve Lancer's mother. Elvira seized the upper hand the moment Demi knocked on the door of her hotel room, and she kept it for more than twelve hours - that is, until the moment the white swan died.

It was a remarkable performance from Elvira, considering how shocked she was to find Demi standing alone at her door with Steve nowhere to be seen. Even though Elvira had no idea of Steve's whereabouts, she simply decided that he must have gone outside, as she assured Demi, for a smoke.

"But Steve doesn't smoke," Demi objected.

"Perhaps he didn't before he came to New York," Elvira replied. "But you and he were virgins then. It's quite common for males to light up a cigaret after they have had sex. When you consider that he took your maidenhead last night, I'm sure he's standing in front of the hotel at this very moment puffing away on a big fat cigar."

"Yesterday I tipped the concierge to pass out cigars the moment he'd heard that Steve had plucked his first cherry. So I imagine that the concierge, the doorman, and several of the male guests are at this very moment singing your praises in between puffs on their cigars."

Though Demi had already suspected that she was no longer a virgin, she was genuinely shocked to hear Elvira speak so flippantly about her son's sex life. Could it really be true that the entire hotel knew that Demi had lost her cherry? Did that explain the hostility of the maid? Were dozens of men at this very moment listening to Steve boast about his sexual prowess? Was Demi's private life now a public spectacle? Demi demanded clarification: "Did Steve actually tell you that he ... well, you know, put his thing in me?"

"Well, not in so many words. But he did tell me before he went rushing out to make sure I gave you a pillow to sit on, as he said you'd probably have an awfully tender derriere."

Derriere? That didn't sound like Steve talking. But possibly Elvira was too lady-like to say "ass." As Demi couldn't believe that either Lancer would lie about such a thing, she had to accept that she'd probably been cornholed.

If so, Demi had let Kyle down badly, for he believed it the queerest act imaginable. Sure, there were lots of schoolyard insults for boys who put their tongue in the wrong place, but these boys had at least been sexually active as they did it - they hadn't simply lain still while someone had his way with them.

Yes, a cornholed boy had definitely been treated like a girl. As Kyle would never have agreed to spread his legs for any boy, Demi felt a bit guilty that she had apparently, as Elvira now informed her, actually begged Steve to "make her feel like a real woman."

"Jo and that maid are right," Demi thought. "I really am a slut." She must be one, for she had given herself to Steve so wantonly and casually that she couldn't even remember having done it.

"A decent girl wouldn't forget that she'd lost her virginity," Demi decided. "But did I behave like a girl last night? Was Steve making love to a girl or to a sissy boy?"

As though she could read Demi's thoughts, Elvira answered, "Steve told me quite a bit about last night. He even said he no longer has any doubt about your sexual identity. You're definitely a girl, and he's glad of it. So, Demi, as I already know all the juicy details, I just want to get your take on last night. What was it like, Demi, to make love to a boy for the first time?"

How about "forgettable"? That was definitely the word that occurred to Demi first. She wondered now why she'd worried for weeks about 'turning gay' if she were to have sex with Steve. What had she been worried about?

She now reflected, "If sex with a guy is no more meaningful than that, there's no danger of Kyle's ever going queer. As for me, I'm definitely a dyke. Jo's right - nothing beats sex between two women. At least, you can remember it the next morning."

Demi should have been furious with Steve for taking advantage of her; instead, she was thankful to him for his forgettable lovemaking, for it had simplified her life. She now knew that she could have sex with a boy without emotional complications. Indeed, she felt less guilt about actual intercourse with Steve than she did about their petting sessions. For a girl with a pounding headache, she felt curiously light-headed.

And why not? After all, the homophobia she had learned from her classmates and mother no longer weighed as heavily upon her spirit. She'd once thought that homosexuality was something that could be transmitted from one male to another by the slightest wayward touch. Indeed, she'd refused to be naked with Steve for fear that their sex organs might touch. She feared that his 'gay force' might then pass to her - as the life force passed between the index fingers of Adam and God in the Sistine Chapel.

Yet Steve hadn't just touched her; he'd actually explored her inner recesses. And was Demi, in consequence, now desperate to become a gay male? Hardly! And because she no longer feared 'conversion' to the cult of Priapus, Demi was actually looking forward to another night of meaningless, forgettable sex with Steve. This time she'd teach him some tricks she had picked up from Jo, so that there'd be something to remember the next morning. As for satisfying Mrs. Lancer's curiosity, Demi told her what she apparently needed to hear: Yes, Steve had treated her like a girl the entire time. Yes, the Vagi-Gaff had featured in their lovemaking. And no, they hadn't done anything to compromise Steve's own masculinity. Demi didn't know whether she was lying or telling the truth. But did it matter? Mrs. Lancer seemed happy enough with her story.

Indeed, Elvira bubbled with delight after confirming, then reconfirming, that her son had treated Demi "as a woman" when they had made love. She was so pleased, in fact, that she immediately paid Demi the seventy-five dollars promised for wearing the Vagi-Gaff while in New York.

"I'll pay you now, so I don't forget. I want you to know that Elvira Lancer always keeps her word. And so must you. I'm counting on you, Demi, to earn your money honestly. The vagina is never to come off while you're in this city. Understood?"

Demi nodded. She didn't need to be bribed to wear the Vagi-Gaff. In fact, after she had gotten over the initial discomfort, it had become a fun thing to wear. Partly, she found it sexually exciting. Any boy, she thought, would enjoy being a girl at least once in his life, so long as he could do it out of town, with confidence that no one would be able to divine his true identity. Thanks to Elvira's generosity, Demi was having that experience, for the Vagi-Gaff made it easier for her to forget that she had ever been a boy. It obscured Kyle entirely.

Mainly, however, Demi found the Vagi-Gaff relaxing. It made her less afraid of being "read" as a male, and therefore less fearful of wearing skirts and dresses in public. Indeed, she never would have agreed to wear a mini dress to the game had it not been for her security gaff. And she would have felt humiliated, rather than merely embarrassed, to be told by three creeps afterwards that they liked the look of her panties had she not been wearing her Vagi-Gaff protective sheath.

Despite her affection for her new gaff, Demi wished she didn't have to wear it to bed with Steve. She even wondered if it were the reason their sex had been so unmemorable. Would she have found the sex more pleasurable, she wondered, if she had been completely free to enjoy it. Had Steve taken both her cherries? Possibly there was one left to pluck. Had she actually had vaginal intercourse?

She didn't know the answers. What she did know was that she needed the money to help Jo get out of the doghouse. Still, nothing in this world came without a price tag, and Demi realized that Mrs. Lancer had bought a chunk of her freedom, a piece of her identity. For seventy-five dollars, Demi was agreeing to hide her maleness from Steve.

Was the deal a fair exchange? Demi thought so. That meant that she intended to honor it, for Demi was, like Kyle, a lot more scrupulous about the deals she made than the stories she told.

And possibly this deal wasn't costing her much at all, for Steve had apparently enjoyed their first night of sex even though - or was it 'because'? - she'd never taken off her Vagi-Gaff.

Suddenly, the telephone shattered the silence. It was Mike Lancer calling. As she talked to her ex-husband, Mrs. Lancer lost her good humor. Anger seized and contorted her limbs. She was furious to learn that Steve had run off to his father without informing her first. How dare the boy! She spluttered with impotent rage when Mike told her that Steve wanted to spend the entire day with his dad.

She became livid when Mike next said, "I'll bring him to the ballet concert you've got planned for them. Steve says he'd rather have his teeth pulled than have to see a bunch of girls dressed in tutus hopping about pretending to be swans, but I told him it wouldn't kill him to get a bit of culture. He then asked me if I'd ever heard the phrase 'he died from boredom,' but I reassured him, Elvira, that no one his age had yet died of boredom. Granted, that statistic may be due to the fact that most mothers don't try to force a boy his age to go to a sissy ballet."

The blood began to return to her head, indeed surged into it, when Mike continued the call by telling her to put a cot in Steve's hotel room so that he wouldn't be "forced to sleep with Demi." According to Mike, his son wanted his own bed and should have it, even if his mother had to pay a surcharge.

Elvira was incensed that her ex-husband would dare to interfere with her sleeping arrangements for Steve and Demi. Didn't he realize that it was none of his business where Steve slept? Or for that matter, with whom he slept?

The court had given her sole custody of their child, hadn't it? Elvira swore to herself that she'd freeze Mike out of Steve's life entirely if he didn't back off. There was no question of Steve's sleeping alone when a girl, even a demi-girl, was ready and willing to lie with him.

Finally, her face swelled up like a tomato about to explode from over-ripeness when her ex basically ordered her to meet him at the ballet during the intermission.

"How can I do that?" she'd sneered. "You won't have a ticket. How will you possibly be able to see me?"

"Oh, I'll get a ticket. Don't worry about that. I've got contacts. I'll get it. And I insist on talking to you before you do any more damage to Steve and Kyle. Steve has already told me more than enough for me to wonder whether his mother has gone stark raving mad, and I ..."

"Well, I never!" Elvira exclaimed as she slammed down the receiver. "The nerve of the man! Tonight we'll see who's the boss tonight." Briefly she thought of throwing a scene at the ballet and having him arrested for "assault," but then decided that Steve might lose interest in sex with Demi if he started worrying about his father's being forced to have sex with Rocky or Bruno in the city lock-up. No, an arrest was probably a bad idea. However, Elvira would find some way to make it clear to Mike that he'd lose his son for good if he continued to interfere with her efforts to salvage Steve for the world of women.

"He'd better not meddle with my plans for Demi either!" Elvira quietly muttered to herself "I'll not have him put strange notions in her head. My son must - and soon will - have a real girlfriend who will never again need a gaff."

Elvira was convinced she was still on "top of things." Even so, the phone call had unnerved her. Steve, she had to recognize, was fighting her plans to turn him into a heterosexual. To her it was incredible - he'd actually decided to hang out with his 'faggot' father than spend the day touring New York with a pretty girl.

That 'girl' was Elvira's sole companion for the day. Deprived of the opportunity to work that day on Steve's 'heterosexuality," Elvira decided to dedicate her day to dominating Demi. Steve might have temporarily slipped from her grasp, but Demi was - to the girl's obvious dismay - going to be tightly in her grip for the next twelve hours.

Elvira would use the day to impress on Demi that she was a transsexual who wanted a complete sex change as soon as the doctors and the government would permit it. As Demi was a minor, it would take a lot of doctors' signatures to convince a hospital to do the requisite surgery, and so Elvira arranged for a visit to Dr. Sven Johansson, an eminent New York psychiatrist, to be part of Demi's Sunday in New York. Elvira's high school sweetheart, he was still so smitten with her that he actually agreed to see Demi on a Sunday, and he'd been planning for months to attend a Star Trek convention in Yonkers that day dressed as Lieutenant Uhura.

Demi naturally wanted to be with Steve. She didn't come to New York to 'hang' with someone's mother! When Elvira told her - this time correctly - that Steve insisted on being alone with his father until the concert, Demi sulkily replied, "In that case, I just want to watch TV in my room. I brought some money with me, and I'll use that to buy a movie, and maybe to order room service. Is that all right with you? I promise not to leave the hotel. So you can do whatever you want to do in New York."

Not leave the hotel? It was not a promise that Demi intended to keep. She was anxious to prowl the famous avenues of midtown Manhattan, but not in the company of Mrs. Lancer, who was bound to be a drag. As soon as her friend's mother was out of sight, Demi hoped to hit the sidewalks of New York. Already her mouth was watering at the thought of eating a giant pretzel oozing with mustard. That would be so excellent!

As Elvira was impatient to begin Demi's day of feminization and beautification, she decided not to waste any time persuading the girl that she had no choice but to tag along behind the adult charged with her care. Hence she decided to buy the girl's compliance: "Demi, I don't have the energy to argue with you today. I promise you that you'll have a great day. I'll treat you like my own daughter. You're going to be spoiled rotten."

"But just in case I no longer know what young girls like to do these days, and you don't have a good time, how about my giving you fifty dollars for being my companion today? You'll get it at the ballet if you've been an obedient and dutiful girl all day. You won't get the money if you talk back to me, even once, but if you behave yourself and respect your elders, you'll have another fifty dollars to give to your friend Joanne. That should get her out of debt and out of trouble. So what do you say?"

She extended a limp hand. "Is it a deal?"

Demi bargained. "The money's for Jo. What about something for me? If I'm real nice, could you buy me a CD Walkman? You know - a sports model that I could wear when I ride my moped."

"Aren't you the greedy little girl! I tell you what. If you convince me today that you are absolutely thrilled with being a girl, that you can't wait to have the plastic surgery to make you even more beautiful, and that you can no longer fathom why you ever wanted to be a boy - if you convince me, in other words, that you're desperate to be Demi for the rest of your life, then I'll give you the money and the Walkman. A deal?"

"Sure, it's a deal." It was a surprisingly easy one to make, for it changed very little. Demi knew that Mrs. Lancer "would go ballistic" if she didn't act like a girl all day. She'd made that clear since their first conversation at the airport. Thus, Demi was actually giving up very little to get the money and the Walkman."

As Demi figured it, "I've been asking for 'breasts just like Joannie's' for weeks now, and I haven't got 'em yet! All that black magic has added up to a big goose egg - thank God. Mrs. Lancer may sometimes act like a witch, but she's not one, not really, and so she can't put a spell on me. If she wants me to beg for a frigging vagina every hour on the hour, I'll do it. Why not? What difference can it make? Words don't matter. No one can force me to have a sex change. It's a free country, and it's been that way ever since we kicked some Nazi butt. So if Mrs. Lancer needs me to lie, I'll be a nice little girl and do it."

"Demi, just so I know that you understand the spirit of this deal, I'd like us to seal it by both curtseying to each other."

Demi paused, and then broke into a big smile. "Sure thing, Mrs. Lancer." Though it took her several tries to get it right, Demi soon proved she could spread her blue dress and curtsey like an Iowa debutante. Her day of feminization and beautification had formally gotten underway.

To ensure Demi wouldn't forget their deal, their first stop was an electronics store where Elvira found a 'bargain' - a sports model Walkman for half of what she would have paid for it in Des Moines. Demi loved using it, but had to give it up to Elvira when they arrived at their second stop of the day, since Elvira said, "It's not really yours, Demi. Not yet. Indeed, I'll be giving it to Steve's cousin as a birthday present unless you convince me today that you really do want to complete your transition to full femininity. You do want a real girl's body as soon as possible, isn't that right, Demi?"

Demi eyed the Walkman as she dutifully confirmed, "Yes, Mrs. Lancer, I wish I had real hooters and ... a hole between my legs."

"Not a hole, silly Demi, a vagina! And a lady says 'breasts' or 'bosom," never anything crass like 'hooters'."

"Yeh, a vagina ... and bosom."

They had now arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see its collection of antiquities. The choice of museums had been Demi's; for almost any art museum would have served Elvira's purpose that day. But Demi had been keen on seeing "a real live Egyptian mummy" ever since she had seen the "kick-ass movie".

When she finally found herself face to face with one of the bandaged dead, Demi defied its curse: "I dare you to come after me. I'm not afraid of you. The name is Demi. I'm waiting for you in Des Moines with a box of matches and sharp scissors if you've got the guts to show your ugly mug in Iowa. Guts? That's really funny. You've got no guts, do you?"

And then, Demi had a belly laugh at the mummy's expense. Elvira was unimpressed by Demi's bravado: "You're such a tomboy at times," she said. "A lady does not use words like 'guts.' Nor does she threaten anyone, including the dead, with being burned alive. Now that you've told the mummy off, I think it's time for you to learn something about Greek and Roman statuary."

It was only the nudes that Elvira wanted Demi to see. To Demi's mortification, Elvira insisted that she closely inspect every inch of each of the youthful figures they came across, and then to imagine, out loud, what it would be like to make love to the males and to have the body of the females. As Demi began to describe the most sexually appealing features of her tenth Apollo, she suddenly realized that she preferred her men to be muscular - just like Steve.

After she blurted out that a statute of Ganymede reminded her of Steve, Elvira hugged her excitedly. From then on, Elvira had Demi address each of the male statues as "Steve" before describing in loving detail which part of his maleness she wished most to explore.

Just as Demi became comfortable with publicly discussing the sexual appeal of the classical male, Elvira had her switch her attention to the statues of Venus, Aphrodite, Leda and Diana. Now, Demi had to decide which of the female bodies she most coveted for herself. Elvira actually handed her a sketchpad, and had Demi draw the curves that most appealed to her eye and spirit.

This part of their visit to the Met counted as one of the high points of Demi's trip to New York. All the while they talked about the female statuary, Demi marveled at her good fortune. "Imagine," she thought. "I'm actually being ordered to look at naked women." She so loved looking at them that she didn't think twice about playing Elvira's game - that is, to discuss each body in terms of her upcoming sex change.

"Those are the breasts I most want for myself," Demi was expected to say out loud, even though at first she was really thinking, "Those are the breasts I'd most like to fondle." After a while, however, Demi got into the spirit of the game. She actually started asking herself which breast, which arm, which thigh, which leg she most coveted for her own body. With Elvira's help, she drew a composite figure that Elvira insisted she label as "Demi James at age 16."

She also had to sign it as she was the "artist". Elvira, claiming it showed genuine artistry, paid to have it framed at a nearby shop. She paid enough to ensure prompt service, even from a New Yorker, and Demi for the rest of their day together lugged around a drawing of herself as the ideal female. It had to make an impression on her as she stole the occasional glance at it that afternoon and morning, and later as it graced her bedroom wall.

After a morning spent fantasizing about herself as the ideal woman making love to the perfect man, Demi had lunch at a club for professional women affiliated with the Quilting Society of Iowa, the most prestigious women's organization in the entire Midwest willing to admit Elvira as a member.

While Demi found it flattering to have so many "women in suits" feign interest in her future, she did find it genuinely "weird" that so many of them were anxious to impress on her the importance of putting career ahead of men and babies. Indeed, she found it almost as odd to think of herself as a single, childless career woman as she had earlier to fantasize about herself as Leda having sex with a trumpeter swan. Even so, lunch had its desired effect - Demi had spent yet another hour being told her future as a woman.

Immediately after lunch, they kept Demi's appointment with Dr. Johansson. When Elvira saw that he still looked like a Viking, she temporarily lost focus. Afterwards, she told Demi that she was simply trying to give her pointers on how to seduce a man, but it sure seemed at the time that she had forgotten that she and Sven had company.

Indeed, she only seemed to remember Demi's presence after she'd already been French-kissing the doctor for a good ten minutes, and had encouraged the doctor to hike her skirt high to reveal her garter belt and the bottom of her matching black lace panties.

Demi was being as quiet and as unobtrusive as possible, for she was getting off on being a voyeur, but Elvira finally noticed her, or perhaps heard her labored breathing, and so cooled the doctor's ardor by reminding him that there was a child watching. She also gave him her hotel room number for later.

Dr. Johansson had no apologies for his behavior. Indeed, he told Demi that apartments were so small in his homeland that children often saw their parents having sex. "Indeed," he said, "to make maximum use of space, many children sleep in comfortable boxes that are pulled out at night from under their parents' bed."

"Naturally, they see and hear everything, which is as it should be. Americans tend to infantilize their children. They treat them like simpletons long after they have become wise in the ways of the world. I hold that children are simply short adults and should be treated as such from the moment they are old enough to make their own decisions."

"What age is that?" Demi asked.

"Why, at their seventh birthday, of course. I am a firm believer that a child of seven knows better than any adult what is best for her. And when a girl is as old and mature as you, then adults have absolutely no right to second-guess any of her decisions."

"Wow! I wish my mother agreed with you."

"She will soon enough. My ideas - those of child liberation - are sweeping the world, young Demi. Already the courts have ruled that an eleven-year-old can sue his parents to force them to give him up for adoption. It's just a matter of time before those same courts recognize that a girl your age shouldn't have to ask either her parents or a doctor for permission to have a sex change. That should be her decision, and hers alone."

"In a just society, the government would pay for the sexual reassignment of anyone over the age of six who asks for it. I also believe that we'll never get rid of sexism until we recognize that every citizen should be encouraged to change sexes - to find out how the other half lives - at least once before she or he has finished high school."

The whole idea boggled Demi's mind. "Do you think I should change my sex?" she asked.

"Of course, you should. You were a boy for fourteen years. That's a long time. Why not be a girl for the next fourteen years? It's important not to get into a rut. However, what I think you should do is of no consequence, for the whole meaning of child liberation is that it's up to you, the child, to make the decision. You and no one else. I have three questions to ask you, and it's crucial that you answer them as forthrightly as you can. Agreed?"

"Sure," Demi nodded.

"First, are you happier as a girl than you were as a boy? Second, do you want your body to be as much like a girl's as possible? Third, how anxious are you to have your sex change right now? Can you wait for a few months?"

Demi looked toward Elvira Lancer to see how she should answer. Elvira was nodding her head so vigorously that Demi knew the money and the Walkman were on the line. So she affirmed that she was far happier as a girl, and that she was eager to have a sex change operation as soon as possible. "It's too bad it can't be done this weekend," Demi said to win a huge grin of approval from Elvira.

"Demi, your answers don't surprise me. It's obvious that you're a transsexual. However, I have to give you a gender-identity test to confirm my diagnosis. As I've found that most of the questions on these tests are a sheer waste of time, I've boiled the test down to three questions. Once I have your answers to them, I'll know for certain whether or not you're a transsexual. Are you ready for the questions?"

Demi nodded, but the test worried her. If she failed it, she probably wouldn't get her Walkman and Jo's money. She was so tense that she had to ask Dr. Johansson to repeat his questions. As he did, Demi relaxed entirely. This was a test she could not fail, for it asked her the best desert in which to get a suntan, the most beautiful gem, and the most essential part of a car - all questions from Dr. Loupi's test!

She rattled off the answers, but to her dismay got only two out of three correct. While that was good enough for Dr. Johansson to confirm that she was a transsexual, Demi was miffed that he'd marked one question differently from Dr. Loupi. She had been cheated out of her perfect score. It wasn't fair.

Dr. Johansson, unaware that she was upset, congratulated Demi on knowing her own mind, and with a flourish filled out the form in quadruplicate authorizing sexual reassignment surgery for Demi "at the first opportunity." He said he'd send three of the forms to Demi's mother, who'd be one step closer, the doctor said, to having official sanction for Demi's operation. He asked if anyone else had recommended an immediate sex change for her, and Demi answered that her high school psychologist had written several people on her behalf.

"Great," replied Dr. Johansson. "Just find two more doctors to vouch for you, and your mother will be able to give you a new, feminine body as a present for your fifteenth birthday."

He then said he had to rush off to catch the last hour of a 'convention.' There was time left only for one last embrace with Elvira that became so hot and heavy that Elvira from then on showed up occasionally in Demi's erotic dreams - always as a lesbian, and usually as a dominatrix.

Their next stop was a bridal shop, where Elvira hoped to persuade the management of the wisdom of allowing a fourteen-year-old to try on a $12,000 dress. To Demi's relief, the store refused to let her teenage sweat and grime soil any of its creations in linen and lace. Even so, she had to endure a tedious discussion of her future wedding, and to grit her teeth as she thanked Elvira for being "generous" enough to pay for her to receive the store's catalogs twice a year until her twenty-first birthday.

Much to her surprise, Demi did study the catalogs when they arrived. Though she claimed she was interested solely in the models, she soon developed strong opinions on which dress she would want to wear to her wedding, assuming that she were actually a female and heterosexual. However, truth be told, once or twice she fantasized about walking down a Gothic church aisle in a long, flowing gown to embrace a tuxedoed Jo in front of the altar.

Though Demi did not get to wear a wedding dress while in New York, she certainly had lots of opportunity to try on clothes, for Elvira was determined to buy her "something to dazzle Steve." They went to Floweringvale's Department Store where Demi received, with minimal reluctance, a manicure and pedicure, as well as a professional opinion on the shades of makeup and eyeshade that would make an apple-cheeked blond from Iowa look "simply ravishing" to all the men she met.

To her own surprise, Demi was nonchalant about two other "firsts" at Floweringvale's: her first visit (in the company of Elvira) to a ladies' powder room and changing room. In both, her fears about being "found out" quickly gave way to the pleasure of being able to watch females in various stages of undress.

After watching several young women strip to their bras and panties, Demi knew from the pressures in her Vagi-Gaff that she "was definitely a lesbian." The women who saw her hungry eyes were also convinced they had just disrobed in front of a lesbian. Though one or two of the women at Bloomingdale's were flattered to be thought attractive by such a stripling of a girl, there were three others who vowed to shop thereafter in the New Jersey suburbs in order to avoid "the moral degenerates of New York City."

Demi, unaware that she was giving the Big Apple a bad reputation, had great fun trying on the most expensive dresses that the store had to offer. As she experimented, Demi discovered that some styles flattered her more than others. Indeed, she came to the startling conclusion that she looked sexier in two of the dresses than she ever had in jeans - either hers or Kyle's.

As Elvira would pay for just one of them, she finally settled on a red dress, with a black floral pattern, and a high empire waist above which black velvet snuggled her breasts. Convinced that the dress was "way cool," Demi surprised Elvira Lancer with a kiss on the lips. Elvira was so pleased she rewarded Demi with a new black leather purse and matching shoes with three-inch heels - the spikiest that the girl had worn yet.

Elvira, leaving no card unplayed, next summoned the occult to assist her in feminizing Demi. Interceding on Demi's behalf with the underworld was Madam Zeta, proprietor, waitress, and seer at "The Brazilian Tearoom" near Carnegie Hall.

As business was slow, Madam Zeta had time for a Tarot reading for Demi, who refused to give out any information other than her name, age, and hometown. Demi wanted Madam Zeta to think her a girl, and to know nothing at all about Kyle, for in that way Demi would be able to tell whether the fortuneteller was a fraud.

Demi's reasoned, "If she can't figure out I'm really a boy, then I'll know that she's making everything else up."

Zeta was eyeing Demi carefully, looking for some insight into her nature and character. Apparently she found it, for Zeta suddenly announced that the Tarot reading "will now commence." Once Demi and Zeta were seated across from each other at a small table, Zeta picked out a card to signify Demi. Since she was a blond-haired youth, Zeta picked out the page of wands.

It was a disconcerting way to start, for the cards already seemed to be hinting at Demi's ambiguous gender. Demi was only partially mollified by being told that any girl her age would have a page as a signifier, for the cards seemed to be confirming that the gender of a fourteen-year-old was every bit as malleable as Dr. Loupi and Elvira Lancer claimed.

Demi then shuffled the Tarot deck, concentrating on her 'question' as she did. She was told to keep the question to herself, for Zeta said, "I see doubt in your mind. You will put more trust in the cards if you keep your question a secret, even from the mother of your friend."

"How does Madam Zeta know that Mrs. Lancer's not related to me? Jeez, I guess we must have let that slip. Now what question should I ask?"

The question was obvious, even if Demi had trouble reducing it to a few words: "Who am I? Am I a boy or am I a girl? Am I Kyle or am I Demi? Are my fake breasts and vagina going to be real one day?'

Did the cards have an answer? And which question would they answer? The actual reading began with Zeta laying out ten more cards, six of them in the form of a Celtic cross, and four more in a line beside it. The first card to be turned over pleased Zeta immensely, though Demi frankly thought it an insult: labeled "The Fool" it showed a gaily-dressed youth about to walk blithely off a mountain precipice, with his left hand holding a white rose, "like a sissy," thought Demi.

Zeta explained that, "The Fool should be understood as someone pure of soul and unsullied by the world. He is, like Demi, a youth setting off in search of true wisdom. He will not fall off the cliff if he chooses the path of truth and righteousness. But he is about to make the most important decision in his life. I now know that your question is not a trivial one. Indeed, it is vital to your future."

Demi, slack-jawed, nodded agreement. Yes, she did not want to fall into an abyss.

The next card, Zeta explained, identified the 'opposing forces' - those that would get in the way of Demi's making the right choice. "Ah," Zeta sighed. "Exactly what I expected: the Hierophant. Some also call it Jupiter or the Pope. He represents organized religion and the conventions of society. Your need to conform and your yearning for social approval will be the barriers to your finding the right path - the one in which you find true wisdom, especially about yourself."

Demi understood what the card was saying - namely, that she shouldn't let the kids in her class tell her what to do, or who to be. She was keen on finding out what the third card would say about her childhood, for she was getting hooked on Tarot. "Temperance" - that's what the card said.

Demi thought, "What a dumb card to show up! Of course, I practiced temperance when I was a little kid. No one was going to give me a beer when I was five. Jeez, that was a waste of a card."

However, Zeta had another take on the card: She pointed out that the winged angel depicted by the card was neither male nor female. "It represents," she said, "the union of spirit and matter, and of the male and female principle. I can see, Demi, that you were a bit of a tomboy when you were younger. That may explain why I sense in you, even now, a combination of the male and female that is praiseworthy in a girl your age. Too often, teenagers are intent on putting the opposite sex down."

"My suspicion that you were a tomboy as a child is confirmed, Demi, by the fourth card, the one that represents the recent past. It's called The Chariot, and you're the charioteer trying to keep the two sphinxes that are pulling it from going off in two directions, thereby tearing you and the chariot in two. The card is a very good one, Demi, for it suggests you will achieve greatness so long as you have the willpower to pursue your destiny. I conclude that there must be a vehicle of some sort - the modern day equivalent of a chariot - that has played a role in bringing you to this point in your life - to the moment when you must choose the one course of action that will make you whole."

"Wow!" exclaimed Demi. "Those cards know everything. That's my moped. It's sort of a motorbike, and it definitely has had me pulling in two directions. How did the cards know about my moped?"

"Demi, the cards know all. Now let us look at the current influences on you and your question. "The Wheel of Fortune - just what I expected. It reminds us that you are about to make an immense change in your life. Moreover, something recently happened - possibly it was that moped you just talked about - to change your luck for the better. This card tells you, Demi, that all things must change, and so must you. It also says: Complete the transition, which incredible good fortune has brought your way."

Elvira spoke for the first time: "Don't you see, Demi? The more you change, the happier you'll be."

"Please, Elvira, I'm the one who interprets the cards. Let us now see what the near future holds for Demi."

It was death! The "Death" card - the one card that Demi most feared in the Tarot deck had showed up. Demi started to snivel. She didn't want to die!

Zeta patted her hand: "There, there, Demi. Don't carry on so. This card doesn't say you're going to die. Rather it represents the death of the old self, and the birth of a new, better person. It is a card of transformation and renewal. It tells us, Demi, that you are going to complete your change. You will become a new, superior person."

"This next card is what you fear most, Demi. Before I turn it over, I want you to realize that you will only be happy if you overcome this fear. It prevents you from remaking yourself as a happier, more successful person."

Demi now believed in the cards. She leaned forward to see the next card, which was, to Zeta's astonishment, yet another card of the major arcana, one of the twenty-two face cards of the seventy-eight card deck. "Demi, you're getting so many strong cards," Zeta now said. "And none of them have been reversed."

"That means, Demi, that whatever the cards tell us, they could not be saying it more loudly. And they're telling us something that is far from surprising. "The Tower" card shows, as you see, someone - that would be your old self - falling out of a tall, thin building that has just been struck by lighting."

"Or a surgeon's scalpel," thought Demi. The decapitated phallus on the card definitely summed up her worst fear - namely that someone was going to cut off Kyle's privates.

Zeta interrupted Demi's thoughts to say that the card revealed, understandably, that Demi feared the transition between her old and new self. "There is no question that the change you are about to make will be painful in the short run, Demi, but it's definitely in your best interests. So say the cards thus far."

Thus far. There was still hope that the cards would change their mind and Demi's fate. Maybe Kyle would be able to catch a 'Hail Mary' pass after the two minute warning and stay in the football game.

"Is there one card that can overrule all the other cards?" Demi asked.

"Yes, it's the tenth and last card," Zeta replied.

So Demi barely noticed as Zeta told her that the "Judgment" card meant that her family and friends would be soon encouraging her to make her transition, or that "The Lovers" card indicated that Demi apparently hoped she could, by changing herself, win the love of the most important person in her life.

"Is that my mother?" Demi asked.

"No, dear, the card refers to someone your own age - to someone you want to love you until you die of old age."

Finally, Zeta turned over the last card - the one that would confirm or undercut the reading that Demi had heard so far, the reading that seemed to be writing Kyle's obituary. Zeta could not hide her astonishment. Not only was it another major arcana, there also could not be a stronger answer to Demi's question. It was the "World" card.

Demi looked at the card as a mongoose would a cobra, for the card showed a buxom, naked woman wreathed in leaves, a magic wand in each hand. It was the counterpart of "The Fool." A card connoting total triumph, completion, and cosmic bliss, it confirmed that Demi would overcome her fears, complete her transition, and finish up a much happier and wiser person than she had been, as Zeta put it, before she began "her journey on the moped."

The reading stunned Demi. She was speechless. For her the last card had an indisputable meaning for it, like the "The Fool," had just one figure on it. But where "The Fool" card depicted a youthful male about to set out blithely on a hazardous journey, "The World" showed a naked, buxom female as the journey's end.

Madam Zeta could say whatever she wanted about the occult meaning of the cards, but to Demi their literal meaning could not have been more obvious: They said that Kyle would become Demi forever - or at least long enough to acquire the body of an adult female. To a fourteen-year-old boy, that was the same as forever.

The reading also floored Elvira. True, she had quietly asked Zeta to "tell Demi to welcome change" when she had paid the fortune-teller her fee, as demanded in advance (as Zeta could never predict which clients were going to stiff her). Yet Elvira had never expected the cards to insist on Demi's completing her sex change. She now was wondering whether there was something to this fortune-telling business.

Beckoning Elvira to one side, Zeta whispered, "That was an honest reading. There weren't any tricks with the cards. I've rarely seen the cards be so definite in their advice. I didn't want to say it out loud just in case it would upset the child. But the message of the cards is unmistakable: She should have the sex change she's been thinking about. Demi should definitely become a boy."

Elvira almost laughed in Madam Zeta's face. However, she was delighted to tell Demi, once they were outside on the sidewalk, that, "Zeta just told me that she didn't want to upset you by saying that the cards literally advise you to 'have the sex change' you've been thinking about. But why would that advice upset you? It must be a great relief for you to know for sure, Demi, that you should have the operation as soon as possible."

Kyle was glum: Everything pointed to his being a transsexual. Not only had he passed two psychological tests, one of them with a perfect score, but also the Tarot cards had practically ordered him to become a female. Everyone, it seemed, wanted him to at least dress like a girl, and lots of people wanted him to acquire a girl's body as well.

"There's Mrs. Lancer, Dr. Johansson, Dr. Loupi, Madam Zeta, the black shirts, the Jets, and Jo - they all wish I had a vagina. Even Steve now wants me to buy one."

Was there anyone who definitely wanted Kyle to remain a boy - other than Kyle himself? He couldn't think of anyone. Even his own mother preferred him in skirts.

For a few moments he felt trapped. But his mood brightened as he realized that he lived in America, a free country, and that no one could force him to have breast implants or to cut off his dick.

"I'm master of my own destiny. Or at least its mistress," he giggled to himself.

Why then was he walking down Fifth Avenue in a blue dress? Because he wanted to, that's why. And he was ready to punch out anyone who'd deny him the right to dress like a girl, or to be a girl for that matter - not that he actually wanted to be a girl. But if he did, nothing and nobody would stop him from getting the operations he needed. Nothing and nobody!

Kyle's thoughts had run away from him. He didn't want to be a girl. No sirree! But Dr. Johansson was right: Every red-blooded American boy had the god-given right to become a girl - if he so desired.

He also had the right to look pretty. Or rather, Demi had that right, and Elvira was intent on her exercising it at the last stop of their "girls' day out," a hairstylist. Ever since Elvira had put the salon appointment on their busy schedule, Demi had been fretting about "a permanent" - something she definitely didn't want, but was afraid that she'd have to accept in order to get her Walkman. When she learned that Elvira simply wanted the stylist to reshape Demi's hair into something "more suitable for a night at the ballet," Demi relaxed - for the first time in days - and simply melted into the practiced, reassuring hands of her male stylist. Anything he wanted to do was fine with her, just so long as it was "impermanent" and reversible. I turned out that he loved the German 'maedchen" look, and Demi ended up with her hair braided into two giant "meatballs".

It wasn't the sort of thing a girl wore in Iowa unless her name was Heidi or Gretchen, but Demi and Elvira both agreed that her new hairstyle made Demi look like she'd been living in New York City all her life, or at least it would in combination with her new dress, purse, and shoes.

As they left the salon, Elvira announced, "Demi dearest, I'm sorry to say that we've run out of time. There were so many more things I wanted to buy you; but we're now have to rush to get to the concert on time. You've been such a sweetheart today - the ideal daughter. I don't want you to wait a single minute longer for your Walkman. Here it is, and here's the money I promised you for your girlfriend Jo. She's lucky to have a friend like you."

Then she surprised Demi by leaning forward to kiss her forward. Her eyes were damp and a teardrop was trickling down her cheek, muddying her makeup. Elvira's emotion was infectious: Demi also teared up as she returned the kiss.

Demi decided she liked Mrs. Lancer - which wasn't all that surprising since she was the mother of Steve, a super friend. For an entire day Mrs. Lancer had pampered and flattered her. Repeatedly she had complimented Demi on her beauty or pointed to boys who were watching her every move.

"Don't you see," Elvira said, "They find you sexy. You like the attention, don't you? I feel sorry for teenaged boys. They're always being ignored. But a pretty teenaged girl is the center of the universe. Ah, Demi, I wish I were your age again."

Elvira commented on more than Demi's body and sex appeal. She even praised her mind. True, it was a backhanded sort of compliment, but Demi appreciated it nonetheless: "Demi, I do realize that you have misgivings about your transition to womanhood, but I know that you're doing the right thing, because you're very intelligent, so intelligent that you couldn't possibly have been put on this earth merely to be a cloddish boy. Anyone as smart as you must be a transsexual."

Demi felt important in the presence of Mrs. Lancer. Having to pretend that she was one day going to have a sex-change operation was a small price to pay for such lavish attention and praise. Hence, she was sad to see their shopping trip end. When Elvira offered her hand, Demi clasped it, and as they stood waiting by the curb as Elvira hailed a cab, they looked like mother and daughter.

Over a steak dinner in Elvira's hotel room, Elvira elicited a kiss from Demi when she said, "Demi dearest, after a rocky start, this has turned into a wonderful day. Steve's insistence on hanging out with his father gave us a chance to get to know each other so much better. And the better I know you, the better I like you. Demi, you are a truly exceptional girl."

Elvira lent forward expectantly and Demi, blushing furiously, kissed her cheek. Elvira continued: "I'm starting to love you, Demi, the way an aunt loves her niece. I've always wanted a niece, as well as a daughter. Will you do me the great honor of agreeing to be my niece? Will you call me Auntie Elvie?"

Auntie Elvie? Demi would have had difficulty being so familiar with the formidable Mrs. Lancer, but Kyle found it almost unthinkable. Her "niece"? He thought not. So Kyle figured it was time to speak up, and to remind Steve's mother that he was, despite surface appearances, still very much a boy; and a boy couldn't be anyone's "niece," could he?

As he had the fifty dollars safely pocketed and the Walkman stowed away in his room, Kyle thought it timely to remind Mrs. Lancer of Demi's true nature: a cross-dressing boy who was going to give up girls' clothes forever as soon as the Jets grew tired of their game or he was able to find, with Jo's help, a new school where no one had ever heard of Demi.

So Kyle diffidently said, "Mrs. Lancer, I'd feel awkward calling you by your first name. Jeez, you're Steve's mother! I wish I could be your niece, but I can't be because I'm a boy. How's about my being your nephew, Mrs. Lancer?"

"I don't need a nephew, Demi. I already have two dirty little urchins who claim that title. I need a niece, and in you I have one - if you'd just call me Auntie Elvie and let me pamper and help you through life. Oh Demi, I have so many plans for you! You wouldn't believe how many times I've planned your "sweet sixteen" party. The presents you'll get! I know you like motorcycles and so I've already looked into buying you a Harley Davidson for your sixteenth birthday."

A Harley? Kyle could scarcely believe his ears. He could barely think, so loud was the engine revving in his head.

"I've even identified a garage that does custom work. I'll get them to repaint the Harley in a more feminine color - I would think you'd want a vibrant shade of pink - and to accessorize it with a vanity mirror, special pouches for your make-up and sanitary napkins, and whatever else a hip, modern girl needs to make her bike roadworthy."

"Mrs. Lancer, a motorcycle is much too expensive. I couldn't let you buy me one." ("Especially if it's pink," he thought)

"Don't be silly. It's the least I could do for my niece on her sixteenth birthday. Demi dearest, I want only the best for you, including your college. I've already contacted Smith, Wellesley and Mount Holyoke on your behalf - three of the best women's colleges in the country - and I've told each of them that I'm willing to make a very sizeable donation to whichever college is wise enough to admit my niece. How does that sound?"

A boy at a girls' school? The idea was either terrible or wonderful. It all depended on whether the boy could be himself or not. Kyle had seen a television show about guys who attended girls' colleges. Outnumbered seven to one, they never lacked for dates. They were the satisfied rooster in a barnyard full of frustrated hens.

Kyle was willing to be one of those roosters - if Jo agreed to it. He wasn't sure how she'd react if he suggested they attend a girls' school together. She might be jealous. Heck, he might be jealous of Jo if they went to one.

Did he really want to surround Jo with so many potential lesbians? And wasn't Demi also a lesbian? What if she resurfaced and started misbehaving at college? Jo would have a fit if her girlfriend started acting like a bitch in heat.

So many emotions were flickering across Kyle's face that Elvira couldn't capture any of them long enough to read his thoughts. Even so, she was relieved that Demi hadn't actually rejected the idea of a New England women's college. When the time came to separate Demi and Steve so that he could start dating a "girl able to give him a baby," Elvira would be free of all guilt, for she'd be packing Demi off to one of the best educations possible.

By attending an elite college like Wellesley, Demi would meet some of America's most eligible bachelors at mixers, and one of them she'd marry. But she wouldn't become a homemaker. Nor would she become a mother, even of adopted children.

No, she'd be a DINK - part of a high-powered couple with "a double income and no kids" - and therefore able to afford a spacious apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side to which she'd regularly invite her cherished Auntie Elvie. In the future that Elvira had planned for Demi, the girl would grow into a doting aunt to Steve's daughters, who'd of course never be told about their aunt's odd start in life.

It was a beguiling future that Elvira had in mind for Demi. Indeed, Elvira envied it. She therefore could not understand why Demi had any hesitation about embracing her destiny as beloved daughter, niece, wife, and aunt. "Everything will work out perfectly," Elvira thought, "if Demi will simply stop being so stubborn. Frankly, her mulishness is quite unbecoming in a girl."

Kyle had thought up another deal: "Mrs. Lancer," he began, but then seeing her stricken look, he switched to "Auntie Elvie." Her face shone with happiness, so he plunged onward: "I really like you a lot. You've been very kind to me. And I'd love to be your nephew. I've just got to become a boy again. Don't you understand that?"

Even though Auntie Elvie was frowning, Kyle thought the time right to make his pitch: "How about my being your nephew in Iowa and your niece elsewhere? For example, if you wanted to take me to a basketball game in Chicago or maybe to Disney World, I'd be your perfect niece. We'd go shopping and you could buy me some really sexy outfits."

"Let me understand this, Demi. You want to travel with me as my niece?"

Kyle nodded enthusiastically.

"And you're promising to be the perfect niece? So if I thought your upper lip was getting too much peach fuzz to look attractive on a girl, you'd agree to electrolysis to remove it?"

Kyle had no idea what "lectrosis" was, but was, like any boy his age, eager to start shaving. So was he willing to use a lectrosis to remain clean-shaven? Sure, why not? "Auntie Elvie, I promise to faithfully lectrosis whenever we're on a trip together. Whatever you want, just so that you agree that I can dress in boys' clothes when I'm in Iowa. And you'll call me Kyle. Is it a deal, Auntie Elvie?"

"Auntie Elvie" mulled over her options. She decided that she liked the deal, with a twist: "Demi, my dear niece, anything you want, I want. That's why I've done so much to facilitate your transition to womanhood. And so, I promise to call you 'Kyle' and pretend you're a boy if I ever see you dressed as one."

"I've always believed in fostering a child's imagination, and it's a shame when children lose their zest for play-acting. So, I'll call you Kyle, or Michael Jordan, or Tiger Woods, or whatever other role you've chosen for yourself that day. You'll have to make sure that you're in costume, however, if you expect me to call you by a make-believe name. If you're wearing your own clothes, I'll certainly be calling you Demi, especially when we're in Des Moines."

"So if I'm dressed like a boy, you'll call me Kyle and treat me like your nephew?"

"Of course, Demi dearest. How many times do I have to say it - if you're dressing up like a boy, I'll have no problem calling you Kyle, just as I will be delighted to call you Pocahontas any time I see you in a deerskin dress. Is that okay with you? Is that what you want?"

Kyle hadn't liked the way she worded the deal. It wasn't quite what he had in mind, but it was good enough, and so he extended his hand to shake on it.

"Not so fast, young lady. I want to make sure that we both agree on what our deal entails when you're on the road with me. For example, right now we're in New York, and you're saying that you'll be the perfect niece so long as we're here. Right?"

"Right" Kyle agreed, though he had no idea where the conversation was now heading, for he'd been acting like a girl all day. What more could Auntie Elvie want?

"Demi, sweetie, tonight you're having another date with your kissing cousin. As you two have already become sexually intimate, then you'll be definitely having sex again tonight - probably all night long. Teenagers have so much energy! This time you'll enjoy the sex a lot more, because you won't be worrying about losing your virginity, and Steve will have a better idea of what turns on a woman."

Demi blushed and looked away.

"Demi, I want you to promise that you'll never forget that you're a girl when you're holding hands with Steve at the ballet or embracing him later in bed. Also, you're to promise that you'll never forget you're a lady. Any niece of mine will always act like a proper lady. That means she will not let her beau kiss her below her waist, and she will refuse to have sex 'doggy-style'."

"God insists," Elvira continued, "that a man and a woman look into each other's eyes, in to each other's souls, as they have sex. The church and good taste also forbid a lady to permit a man to treat her like a catamite, in other words, like a male prostitute. A lady would rather die than commit such an unclean act. Is that understood?"

Demi, somewhat bewildered, nodded.

"Demi dearest, I've seen you tell quite a few whoppers. You've not always been the most truthful of children. So I need some assurance that this is a promise you'll keep - namely, that you will never forget that you're both a lady and a girl whenever we're on a trip together or, if we're in Des Moines, you're not pretending to be a boy. There is only one way I can get that assurance - you must give me your most solemn oath. Tell me how you do that."

After a brief, whispered explanation, Demi and Auntie Elvie placed their right hand on their heart, swore on their mother's grave to keep their word, then spit in each other's right hand, and finally sealed their deal by mingling their spit with a handshake.

Demi had promised her Auntie Elvie that she'd never forget that she was a girl for a single moment while she was in New York. She'd also promised always to have sex "like a lady." Were these promises she could keep? And if she did, would she one day be roaring around the campus of an elite women's college on a bright pink Harley?

Is that the future Steve envisaged for Kyle?

As Demi excitedly dressed for the ballet, she temporarily forgot who she really was, and what Steve really was. Had she paused to reflect, she would have realized that her strategy for the evening - to look and to smell as feminine as possible - wasn't the best one for endearing herself to a gay boy who liked his "men" as masculine as possible.

And she should also have thought twice, if sex were truly on her mind, about becoming his "first cousin." After all, it was staid, puritanical Iowa that had bred Steve, and not one of those remote, incestuous, and libidinous islands off the coast of New York and southern New England.

Yet it probably didn't matter how Demi dressed for her ballet date with Steve, because he could think of only one thing as he dressed for the concert - "Do I have the guts to tell Kyle what I did to him? And if I do tell him, will he still be my friend?"

Chapter Twenty: "Will Steve Die a Virgin?"

"Demi, you look ... like a girl."
"Well, I should hope so. It sure took me long enough to get dressed up as one."
"No, I mean you look so much like a girl that you don't look at all like Kyle. No matter what you were wearing, you always reminded me of Kyle. But now you don't, not really. Maybe it's the way you did your make-up or your hair. Maybe it's that dress. It's new, right? Anyway, you sure look like a girl."
"That's okay, isn't it, Steve? I wanted to dress up for you tonight, you know, considering what happened last night."
"What do you mean 'happened last night'? Is that why you're wearing that velvet dress? Is that the reason you drowned yourself in perfume? You're punishing me for last night, right?"
"Punishing you? Why would I want to punish you?"

"Demi, how much do you remember about last night?"

"Not much at all," she admitted. "I woke up this morning, and you were gone. I had to spend the entire day alone with your mother," she said half-accusingly. It couldn't be more than half, since she'd enjoyed her time with Auntie Elvie.

"I'm sorry about leaving you with my mother, but I just had to see my dad. I had to talk to him about ... last night."

"Why? What do you mean? What happened last night?"

"We can't talk about it here, Demi - not with all these people around."

"Why not?"

"Because we don't want them to know about Kyle, do we?" That's what Steve said, for he knew it would silence Demi for the moment. His confession would have to wait until they were alone. A crowded lobby at Lincoln Center was not the place to talk about date rape.

That's what Steve believed had happened last night. That's what he was loath to discuss with Demi. His father had spent several hours that morning trying to convince Steve that he hadn't molested Demi, but Steve was inconsolable. Indeed, he'd even asked his father whether he should turn himself into the police.

"Of course not," his father had replied. "You barely touched her. Come on, Steve, did you do anything to her after she'd passed out that you hadn't already done with her permission when you were petting?"

"Past history doesn't matter, dad," Steve had replied testily. "That's what we learned at school. Officer Dunlop told us kids that it's a crime to take advantage of a girl or boy who's too drunk or high to give true consent." If Steve sounded like a lawyer, it was because he was already composing in his own mind the district attorney's closing argument in the case of The State of Iowa versus Mike Lancer's Rotten Kid.

Repeatedly Mike had attempted to convince Steve that he had not "raped" Demi. Granted, his fingers had strayed where they should not have gone, but Mile insisted, "no one's going to convict you of rape, Steve. Christ, you never even took your own underpants off, and Demi always had on her fake boobs and vagina. Steve, be realistic - you would have seen more of her real body if she'd been wearing a bikini swimsuit."

Yet Steve knew what he'd done - he'd stripped off Demi's negligee and panties after she'd fallen asleep. He'd told himself that he wouldn't do anything more than look at her in the nude. He'd been desperate to see her naked ever since she'd showered in his house. No, it wasn't Demi he wanted to see stark naked. It was Kyle.

But it was definitely Demi who lay naked in his bed. It had been dark in the room, its only light coming from the street lamps, and Steve wasn't thinking too clearly after his spiked coffee. So when he saw the Vagi-Gaff, he'd mistaken it for the real thing! After all, his mother had offered to buy Demi a vagina. In his befuddled, agitated state, he concluded that the deal had already gone down, and that Demi had gotten her new genitals sometime that afternoon.

At first appalled that Kyle had agreed to his own castration, Steve had become steadily more curious as he had stared at Demi's groin. Eventually, curiosity had overcome his better judgment, and he had gingerly inserted a finger into Demi's "vagina". He had become excited, and briefly he'd contemplated "vaginal" intercourse. Fortunately for Demi, and fortunately for Steve, just as he was poised to betray their friendship, he suddenly came to his senses.

Possibly, it was his strong moral upbringing, the countless hours spent in church that cooled his ardor. More likely, it was the price tag still attached to the Vagi-Gaff. As his questing fingers came across it, Steve realized that Demi's vagina was a fake. He broke into a paroxysm of laughter, which soon turned to sobbing heaves.

No longer interested in sex, he'd retreated to a chair in the corner, and there he'd sat, sniffling or crying, for more than three hours. The situation seemed tragic, and he held himself to blame: Having failed at protecting Kyle, he'd almost raped his best friend, the boy he claimed to love. Had Steve actually broken the law? He didn't know and wasn't sure it mattered. After all, rape had been in his heart. He was unworthy to be Kyle's lover.

With that conclusion, he'd run out into the night, and after an hour of wandering amongst New York's walking wounded, he had sought the sanctuary of his father's brownstone in Chelsea. There he'd arrived at 5:30 in the morning. It had taken his father more than half an hour to get a coherent sentence out of him.

Understandably, Mike Lancer was upset, but not at his son. His son had, admittedly, behaved badly. He should never have undressed Demi or invaded her privacy. But there had been mitigating circumstances, all of which Mike blamed on his ex-wife.

In his opinion, Elvira had been pimping for her son, and had set up a crime scene by getting two underage children drunk and then telling one of them, her own son, that he had carte blanche to whatever he wanted with a "girlfriend" Elvira knew to be on the verge of passing out.

It was time for Mike to have a showdown with his ex-wife. Ever since she had caught him in bed with a tight end for the New York Giants, she'd called the shots: For fear of losing his career, he'd given her an uncontested divorce and sole custody of their son. Two weeks a year with Steve - that's all she'd deigned to give him since the divorce.

It had been a tough decision for Mike to make - after all, he was Steve's father! - and he'd regretted it every day, especially as he'd long known that his son was gay. He'd recognized his son as a chip off the old block ever since Steve had visited the Knicks' dressing room for the first time at age eight.

Mike would never forget his panic when Steve went missing. There were, as usual, strangers in the dressing room, and Mike had feared the worst. However, the team trainer soon alleviated one fear while raising another: "Your son? I just saw him. He's in the showers with three or four of the players."

It was true: Steve had stripped off all his clothes and was wandering around the shower room staring intently at the players' genitalia and buttocks, which were, conveniently, at his eye level. Three of the players, all African American, reacted good-humoredly to Steve's visit, as they joked that Steve was just showing the natural curiosity of a white boy in the presence of "ebony magnificence," but the fourth, an Eastern European, told Mike to keep his son away from the dressing room: "The kid needs counseling. He should see a priest," Jako said, "He had an erection the entire time he was in the showers. You'd better take steps now or he'll never give you a grandchild."

Mike hadn't taken any steps then, nor when Steve had started using his allowance at age ten to buy teen magazines, whose shirtless male centerfolds he'd begun taping to his bedroom wall. Mike had even remained silent a year later when one of his own gay porn magazines disappeared, and he'd found it, after two hours of frantically searching the house (starting with Elvira's lingerie drawer) hidden in Steve's duffel bag. So as neither to alert nor to alarm his son, Mike hadn't taken the magazine away.

Nor did he say anything as the rest of his stash of porn "mysteriously" disappeared. Indeed, Mike began buying with his son's education in mind, so that a gay sex manual, a box of condoms, five copies of a glossy magazine for gay teens, a book on gay rights, and a book about the "dos" and "don'ts" of dating for gay teens all found their way into Steve's duffel bag.

Oddly, they never discussed Steve's sexuality, not even after Elvira had caught Mike fondling the beanstalk of a New York Giant. True, Steve had "come out" to his mother the first time he'd heard her denounce his father as "a queer" after their divorce, but he and his father never discussed the one thing they most had in common - their sexual attraction to muscular males - until Steve had arrived in tears, his defenses entirely down, at his father's brownstone.

To Steve's relief, his father had been alone (as he usually was, given his abiding fear of scandal), and finally ready to talk about being a gay man who had raised a gay son. As Steve reported on his mother's unceasing efforts to interest him in girls, even a demi-girl like Kyle, Mike's guilt began to ease enough to talk about his own sexual past and his son's sexual future.

When Steve told him that he still looked almost every day "at the stuff about gay teens you left for me to find," Mike broke down and sobbed. His body shook as Steve hugged him, and, his voice broken with emotion, said, "Thank you, dad, you've always been there for me - even when you're two thousand miles away. Because of you, I've never been ashamed to be gay. I just want to grow up as big and as strong as you."

That morning Mike resolved to fight for his gay son and his best friend Kyle. He'd cut their puppet strings, so that Elvira would no longer be able to manipulate either boy. He'd not back down, even if Elvira threatened a media campaign to reveal his homosexuality, and thus shorten his days in the NBA. Hell, he let his ex-wife slam dunk his career, if she'd promise to end her full-court press against their son's sexual identity and sense of self-worth.

That afternoon Mike tracked down the waiters, taxi drivers and hotel staff who could corroborate Steve's statement that his mother had deliberately gotten an unsuspecting fourteen-year-old drunk. While no one could verify that Steve's mother had urged him to break the law by having intercourse with a "girl" without her consent, a couple of the maids said they were eager to tell a court that Mrs. Lancer had booked two teens into a room for honeymooners and then plied them with liquor.

Even Fatima took Demi's side (or at least stopped calling her "a whore") when she learned that the girl was such an innocent that she'd hadn't even known she was boozing at the café. As Mike assembled the case with the help of his lawyer in the late afternoon, it became obvious to Mike that Elvira was guilty of corrupting a minor, two minors in fact.

He didn't want to see Elvira in jail. Not only was she his son's mother, but he also held himself partially to blame for her recent excesses. She hadn't been noticeably homophobic when they'd first met. Otherwise, he would never have cared or dared to marry her.

If she now seemed infernally afraid of her son's homosexuality, "then it has something to do with me," Mike felt. "If I hadn't cheated on her with a man, she mightn't be so hostile to gay people. She might even be ready to accept that Kyle doesn't have to become Demi in order to make love to Steve."

No, Mike had no desire to involve the law; but he'd threaten to unleash its full fury if Elvira didn't see the wisdom of allowing their son and Kyle to follow their own stars. From all that he'd heard about Kyle, the boy was probably happy being a girl. Even so, Mike felt that Demi had a right to develop at her own pace. She shouldn't be pushed into changing her sex permanently simply to suit the temporary needs of her boyfriend's mother. All this, and more, Mike intended to tell Elvira at the ballet while the two teens were distracted by a story of a swan-loving prince. Elvira was far from keen about spending the first act of the ballet talking to her ex-husband about Steve and Demi, for she'd read in The Des Moines Arts Review and Shoppers' Bargain Guide that the Bolshoi Ballet of St. Petersburg (formerly the Tampa Bay Modern Dance Collective) had devised "a revolutionary new version of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake," which they were presenting to "refined audiences in America and abroad." How refined? Well, it seemed that the only American cities sophisticated enough to appreciate the St. Petersburg company were Orlando, Miami, Pensacola, Tallahassee, and New York.

How did New York get onto this list? Well, it may have been by accident: An impresario may have confused the company with the better-known Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow, Russia. However, he bridled at any suggestion that he'd ever made a mistake.

"You say that nobody has ever heard of these dancers from Florida?" Rudi Comokoch had rhetorically asked in inquiring reporter. "Precisely. And why has no one heard of them? Because they've not played in New York! Everyone is an unknown until he, or they, have performed in the Big Apple. The world is divided into two parts," he lectured, "the vast horde of pathetic nobodies who've never been booked into a major New York hall, and the fabulous somebodies like the Bolshoi Ballet of St. Petersburg who've had this honor."

To ensure that the Bolshoi Ballet filled a hall at Lincoln Center, Rudi took advantage of New York's premier position in the world of media hype to spread word of its "revolutionary" new version of Swan Lake. As word spread, and interest mounted, he finally convinced the company's part-time choreographer to realize Rudi's dream Swan Lake: an all-female version. True, a one-sex ballet was not genuinely revolutionary: The men of the Ballet Trocadero de Monte Carlo had been doing Swan Lake for decades, and the male swans of a British ballet company had recently been the toast of Broadway.

Even so, no one, so far as Rudi knew, had presented an all-female version of Swan Lake to a New York audience. And if anyone had, he was sure they hadn't come up with his idea for the swan costumes. Rather than wear tutus, the girls were going to be garbed entirely in feathers, which would be glued to their bodies in small enough clumps to leave little to the imagination.

As the dancers had performed nude several times in Florida (according to their arrest records), they would have been willing to dance without feathers, but Rudi insisted on the proprieties. Besides, the company was so small that two of its male dancers would have to masquerade as females, and they would need the feathers as well as some bad lighting towards the rear of the stage.

Elvira had bought tickets to the Bolshoi when she read about its presenting an all-female version. She figured that a stage full of beautiful women would get Steve thinking about sex with Demi, while giving Demi a feminine ideal to strive for. With luck, she'd come away from the performance with dreams of becoming a ballerina.

Never entirely trusting to luck, Elvira had in fact already arranged for a ballet school in Des Moines to offer Demi "a year of free lessons as a sales promotion" as soon as they returned from New York. Elvira considered their expense "trivial" if they further feminized Demi. And wouldn't they? Would Kyle be willing to show his face again in Des Moines after Demi had performed on television in a pink leotard, matching tights and ballet shoes, and a white tutu? Elvira thought it unlikely. Elvira always protested her innocence when she was later accused of knowingly taking her son to a burlesque show: "I had no idea, none whatsoever, that the girls would be wearing almost nothing. And how was I to know that they were going to glue their feathers on with the same weak-bond stuff that goes onto the back of Post-it Notes? No one would have predicted that all the swans would molt!"

How could she have known? How indeed? She always thought it totally unfair that Mike amended his "bill of indictment" after the performance to include the stark naked swans - especially the two male swans who accidentally got stuck together - when he accused Elvira of corrupting two minors.

The swan striptease did not figure in Mike's first assault on Elvira's self-righteousness. Instead, he besieged her with sworn statements, Steve's among them, about her misbehavior the preceding day. Mike also said that Steve suspected her of blackmailing Kyle into dressing and behaving more femininely.

To spare her feelings, Mike didn't tell her that Steve also suspected her of practising voodoo to turn Kyle into a cross-dressing zombie. Any mother, Mike reasoned, would be upset to learn that her son had painstakingly searched their house for the magic potion or doll that she had used to transform Kyle into Demi.

Mike stuck to the provable, while intimating that he was going to quiz Demi at the intermission. "I'm sure the courts will find very interesting what she has to say about your dealings with her over the past few weeks. Have you been threatening her? Bribing her? It doesn't matter which tactic you've been using, Elvira, for I'm sure that the judge will frown on your efforts to pressure a mere child into becoming a transsexual."

"I'm not pressuring Demi into anything," Elvira spluttered. "She's happy that Kyle is gone, never to return, for she's anxious to complete her transition to girlhood. I'm just trying to help her," Elvira whined.

She then caved, for she dared not have Demi talk to the authorities. There was no telling what stories the girl, a known liar, might tell!

"What do you want from me?" she resignedly asked Mike.

"Not much, considering how many laws you've broken."

"First, I want you to promise to leave Demi alone from now on. If it's her destiny to become a woman, she'll thank you one day for the money you set aside for her operation. In the meantime, leave her alone! She's not your child, and she's never going to be your daughter. Hands off of Demi! Understood?"

When Elvira nodded, Mike demanded that she sign a petition asking the Iowa courts to award him joint custody of Steve. She resisted briefly, but signed when he warned her that her only alternative was to lose Steve entirely. Once the courts knew about the seduction scenes she'd set up - not just at the hotel but also in a darkened home in Des Moines - they were likely to strip her of parental rights. That at least was the opinion of Mike and his lawyer, and Elvira reluctantly agreed to share her son: Steve would spend his school holidays and summer with his father, and the rest of the year (when Mike would be constantly traveling with his team) with his mother.

There were two last conditions: Elvira was finally to accept that her son was irredeemably gay and to permit him to date boys who refused to wear dresses.

"If I ever hear," menaced Mike, "that you've tried to impose another girl or demi-girl on Steve, I swear I'll turn you into the police, Elvira. I'll give them everything I've got on your attempts to corrupt Steve and Demi. You're finally to accept that you raised a gay son. Got it?"

Once again Elvira saw no choice but to agree - a gay son was preferable to no son at all.

And the last condition? It was an apology. Mike told Elvira, "You're going to have to apologize to your son for the harm you've done to him. Because of you, he thinks he's a rapist. Do you understand that, Elvira? Last night you made your son the unhappiest kid in this city. He'll probably never forget the trauma you put him through, and he'll certainly never forgive you unless ... unless you tell him you messed up big time, and beg for his forgiveness."

She was still mulling over this last condition when the audience, Steve and Demi leading the way, burst into the lobby for intermission. Surprisingly, considering that Swan Lake was a tragic love story, the room resounded with giggles and guffaws as the audience discussed and re-enacted the spills and thrills of the first act.

Only Steve seemed disconsolate. Indeed, he sourly asked if they could go. "There's not a guy in the whole freaking show," he complained, as he shot a withering look at his mother.

"But dear," Elvira replied. "Tchaikovsky's music is so beautiful. If you don't like the dancers, just lean back in your chair, close your eyes, and listen, really listen."

"Who could listen? I could barely hear the music," Steve complained. "Everyone was laughing. I thought you told me this was a really sad story." He eyed her suspiciously, as though he'd caught her in yet another falsehood.

"Laughing? How can that be?" Elvira asked. She and Mike had been so engrossed in their conversation that neither had heard the gales of laughter rocking the theater.

Mike, who had been eavesdropping on conversations in the lobby, explained: "Elvira, it seems that this is a comic spoof of Swan Lake. The people beside me were having fits of laughter as they talked about four swans dancing wing-in-wing together. I gather it's a famous duet. Anyway, the swans played it for maximum laughs, for one of them pretended to trip and they all went over like bowling pins. The woman beside me said it was the most inspired comedy she'd seen in New York since Mayor Guiliani last performed in drag." Steve was unimpressed. He'd much rather have seen a sports event. Even Elvira could tell that he was, this night, in a dark and stormy mood. Demi, by contrast, was bubbling with joy. This was her first ballet, and to her surprise she loved it.

"But who wouldn't?" Demi thought. "There are so many beautiful girls. They move so ... so elegantly, and they've got almost nothing on!" (And would soon have even less.)

While most of the audience had focused on the company's miscues, Demi had been fantasizing about making love to the dancers. In her mind's eye, she was a swan making love, as she danced, to the most beautiful ballerina of them all, the princess who'd been turned into a white swan by an evil sorcerer. Even when Demi suddenly realized that her fantasy required that she be a ballerina, she clung to it. Love and romance were definitely worth a tutu.

As Demi gushed over the White Swan, Elvira got an inspiration. Or maybe she had planned the purchase all along. In any case, she persuaded the two teens (with some difficulty in the case of Steve) to accompany her to a stand in the lobby where the Bolshoi Ballet was hawking its wares in order to pay for its return bus fare to Florida.

Steve's eye immediately locked on a large poster of two men in an affectionate pas de deux. Their bare chests rippling with muscles, they were wearing sheer dance tights and dance belts that exposed rather than hid their virility.

The poster advertised the company's most innovative ballet (at least, until they reached New York) - "Romeo and Julius," their take on the Shakespearean classic done to the music of Ad Hominem, the rapper. Steve was staring so intently at the poster that he didn't realize his mother had bought it for him - not until the staff rolled it up and handed it to him.

Elvira nodded when Steve looked her way. He almost smiled. For the first time that day, Steve's anger toward his mother abated. While it would take more than a poster for him to forgive her, it was, he recognized, a step in the right direction.

What about Demi? Was there nothing for her? She would have settled for a poster of "Brytnya Spyrzia", the "White Swan" in that night's performance. Instead, she got something much more exciting, certainly more fetishistic: Brytnya's used ballet shoes. If purchased as an ensemble, her leotards and tights would cost just fifteen dollars extra. Pink and frayed, like the shoes, they revealed the history of Brytnya's frantic practising, her seat and knees being especially worn thanks to her many trips and falls. So Demi found herself the new owner of a ballerina's used clothes.

Elvira's purchases were as suggestive as the Bolshoi's costumes. Yet they would have confused Mike had he been there to observe them. Steve's poster revealed that Elvira had declared a truce - maybe even a permanent end to hostilities - in her war on Steve's homosexuality. So why did she buy Demi a ballerina's outfit? Hadn't Elvira promised Mike that she'd stopped pushing Demi towards a final sex change?

Yes she had. And she took her promise seriously. Never again would she bribe or blackmail Demi. Nor would Elvira try to convince Demi to become her 'daughter'. Not for a moment had she forgotten that Demi had a mother already, and a pretty good one, as even Elvira had to admit.

Yet Elvira was unwilling to give up her newfound role as Auntie Elvie. She wanted to remain part of Demi's life, especially as gaps had just opened up in her own. Demi had promised Elvira that she'd dress as a girl whenever they vacationed together out of town, even if Kyle took Demi's place in Des Moines. As Elvira contemplated the loneliness of her first Christmas and school breaks without Steve, she clung to Demi. With luck, her "niece" would agree to accompany her to amusement parks in California and Florida when her son was visiting his father.

Elvira also expected to see a lot of Demi in Des Moines once the girl, having finally decided on her sex change, came to appreciate what a positive force her Auntie Elvie had been in her life. Even Demi's mother Barb would become a friend, a real friend, of Elvira's once she realized that it was Elvira's money that was making possible the transformation of her son, who seemed destined to sell motorcycles for a living, into Demi, a Smith graduate and society matron. At least, that was the plan, or rather Elvira's vision for Demi's future.

In pursuit of that vision, she was determined to shower presents on Demi. Elvira had been right: Demi did indeed covet the ballet outfit, just as she did the panties or night wear of all the girls she found sexually exciting.

And, in the privacy of her own room, Demi would wear Brytnya's leotard and tights almost every night for the next two weeks - that is, until Steve let slip to Jo that Demi had acquired another girl's tights, and Demi had sheepishly admitted to Jo that she'd worn them to bed.

Jo, no dummy, recognized she had competition in Florida. To squelch it, she got Demi to promise that she'd never again wear Brytnya's outfit in private until she had worn it in public. This pledge, plus Elvira's offer of free ballet lessons, had Demi seriously contemplating taking up the ballet, despite Kyle's admonitions to her that he'd "rather die than be seen by anyone frolicking about in a tutu."

Indeed, Kyle was unable to prevent her signing up for the winter session, starting in January. However, he did arrange their life in such a way that Demi was never able to show up for those lessons.

As one part of Demi definitely wanted to become a ballerina (or at least to hang out with ballerinas), Elvira's present had been welcome, even if an embarrassing one to receive in a crowded lobby in the presence of Steve. Demi even kissed Elvira - which was more than Steve was yet willing to do - and readily agreed to keep the outfit a secret from Mike, who might, according to Elvira, begrudge her its cost.

Not every secret did Demi keep. During the remainder of the intermission, she got quite gossipy about her life since September, as Mike wrote down her answer to one leading question after another. Elvira overheard just enough to realize that Demi would be a damning witness if Mike ever went to court to demand either full custody of Steve or the State's custody of his ex-wife, and she resolved to keep her promises about giving Steve the space to grow into a self-confident and proud gay man with the help of his gay father.

Yet the more that Steve threatened to slip away, the more important it became to Elvira to keep Demi close by. Elvira was, therefore, even indulgent about Demi's gossiping. It just proved how remarkably feminine the girl really was. Elvira thought to herself about "all those years in which Demi pretended to be a boy named Kyle." She had played the role of "all-American boy" so convincingly that Demi obviously had innate talent as an actress.

"Wouldn't it be great," Elvira mused, "if one day Demi played an ingénue on Broadway? If she takes dance lessons, she could even do that "tits and ass" number in Chorus Line!"

Elvira made a mental note to add acting lessons to Demi's winter schedule. "If she kisses a few boys - lusty heterosexual boys, not gay boys like Steve - at her acting school, then she may discover how much she likes men. Then there'll be no more foolish talk from her of being a lesbian."

Steve frostily intruded into her warm thoughts about Demi: "Mom, I wanna leave. Ballet sucks. Can't I go somewhere with Dad? Maybe he could take me to a movie." (Steve was wondering whether every New York's cinema was crammed to the rafters with gay males.)

Mike had overheard. Before Elvira could reply, he interjected, "Since you don't like ballet, this might be the perfect time and place for you to talk with your mother about last night. I want you to spend some time with your mother in the lobby. Maybe she can find you some eats. Meanwhile, I'll watch the second half with Demi so that you can have a heart-to-heart talk with your mother. I think you both need it."

And so it happened that it was Mike who had to cope with Demi's wild mood swings during the last act of Swan Lake. At first, it was the giggles as Demi responded to the swan striptease like a fourteen-year-old boy - in other words, like most of the males in the audience. So hysterically funny did Demi find the first three or four molts that Mike briefly feared she'd hyperventilate.

But then, suddenly, Demi became deadly quiet and serious as she realized that entrancing Brytnya was - thanks to close contact with her "Prince" - losing feathers in all the right places. The White Swan was fast becoming a plucked chick. As Demi gazed at only the second female, and the first adult, to appear before her naked, she understood why so many women loved going to the ballet - it was a lesbian's playground!

Soon lust gave way to passion. As Demi followed the White Swan's every move, she became aware, as so few teens ever did, of the ballet's poignancy. "It's about someone like me," she thought. "I'm just like the White Swan. Someone's bewitched me. Someone's changed me into a swan. Here I am looking for love, just like her. But my time is running short, just like hers."

Demi began to cry - so silently that only her tears and the occasional shudder in her shoulders gave her emotion away. She was hoping that the White Swan would escape her fate, and become once again a real woman who could live happily ever after with the Prince (who had wider hips and a fuller bosom than most of the cast).

Instead, the most haunting notes in the ballet repertoire impelled the White Swan to rejoin the swans and then to fly off, leaving behind an inconsolable "Prince". As "he" drowned himself in Swan Lake, Demi began to wail.

Almost everyone else was laughing hysterically, for the departing swans, mistiming their exit, had all ended up in a heap which looked - considering their loss of feathers - a lot like an orgy. As Demi became aware of the laughter, she got even more upset.

Between sobs, she challenged Mike: "How can they laugh? Don't they know that the White Swan will never be a girl again and that her one chance to have a boyfriend is gone forever?"

As Mike didn't really have an answer, he simply held Demi and let her weep on his shoulder over the tragic fate of the enchanted swan who simply wanted to be a girl again.

It was not only Demi and Mike who were discovering how emotional an experience Swan Lake can be. Steve and Elvira could hear its haunting chords through an open door as they sat in an alcove off the lobby and rehashed the events of the last twenty-four hours, and then for good measure, of the last fourteen years.

Steve did graciously accept her apology for interfering in his romance with "Demi", even though he resented his mother for not calling his boyfriend "Kyle". They even hugged a little when Elvira professed her desire to be in future "the best mother any homosexual ever had." And Elvira shed the desired tears when Steve accused her of turning him "into a rapist." Indeed, it was a wonder that she didn't cry out in terror, for Steve never clarified that he hadn't done much more than molest a Vagi-Gaff.

If words alone mattered, then the reconciliation went well. But words are not everything, especially when it comes to mother and child. And Elvira could tell from Steve's body language that he hadn't really forgiven her. Indeed, as they locked eyes just as the music of Swan Lake reached its last crescendo, Elvira realized, "I've never seen that look before. Something is gone."

Suddenly she realized what it was: "Das Kind war tod - the child was dead." She recalled the phrase from one of her favorite movies, one she cherished because it had so much resonance with her own life. The Burning Secret - that was its name - told the story of a woman, emotionally abandoned but desperate for love, who had taken her young son to an Austrian sanatorium for a cure.

The story line suggested he had a lung condition, but Elvira knew what his real problem was - rarely had she seen such a fey and delicate boy on the big screen. He was obviously gay. Could a sanatorium cure a boy of being sexually attracted to war veterans, as this child seemed to be? Elvira thought not.

Yet she loved the film because the mother was able to have a night of romance and passion, and her son had successfully fought the temptation to tell his "burning secret" - his knowledge of the affair - to his cuckold father. His mother's affair killed the child in him; but he emerged stronger from the crisis. His mother had made a man out of him.

Had her own son kept his burning secret? No, he'd told his father everything. He had acted like a child. So why then did his eyes tell her "the child was dead"? As she met his cold and efficient stare, Elvira suddenly realized that she'd been misinterpreting the movie. Only now did she comprehend that the giant step taken by the boy in the film toward becoming a man had taken him far away from his mother emotionally.

Elvira's fledgling had taken flight, and she'd never felt so completely alone. She was so disconsolate that she even stopped scheming - for the rest of the evening.

Demi and Steve were, therefore, stone cold sober when they faced each other alone in their hotel room. To Steve's relief, it now contained a cot ready for his use. There was an awkward silence, which Steve finally broke by suggesting that Demi try on the ballet costume - "to see if it fits you. I just know you're dying of curiosity."

The suggestion surprised Demi: "Steve usually wants me to look as much like a guy as possible. A pink leotard and tights? I would have thought that would be the last thing he'd like to see me wear."

And she was right. Steve had proposed that she put on the ballet costume for the same reason boys took cold showers: to cool his ardor. Aware of his own raging, adolescent hormones, Steve feared that he might "jump Kyle's bones" if Kyle looked at all boyish in their love nest. After his disgraceful behavior last night, Steve vowed to control himself. It would help him to resist temptation if Demi dressed in pink and pranced around the room "like a silly girl."

And so, after Demi had changed into her ballet costume (modestly in the bathroom), Steve encouraged her to stand in front of the full-length mirror and do her best "to dance like Brytnya."

At first, all went well from Steve's perspective, for Demi was losing all semblance of masculinity as she tossed up her arms and attempted to force her feet to assume the various ballet positions. Steve even thought to himself, "I can't believe I've been wasting my time trying to get Demi into the sack. I should be going after a real man - someone who's macho like my dad. Someone like Brad."

Had Brad's image lingered for long in Steve's imagination, Steve probably would have spent the night, as planned, on the cot masturbating. However, that image shattered the moment a heart-shaped side table and lamp did. Demi had been trying to stand on point, without the advantage of a wooden block, or training, or talent.

Just as she reached her maximum stretch, just as she was about to cry out, "Look at me!", she toppled over onto the table, whose legs crumpled as it broke her fall. As she lay amidst the wreckage, the table legs apparently stuck into her side, the lamp flickering on her belly, she looked seriously hurt.

As Steve kneeled to help her, electricity raced through the two teens as they touched. Steve might have been able to resist its impulse had his hands been resting on the more artificial, more feminine parts of Demi's body; but his right hand had found her biceps, and there the reminder that Demi had the muscles of a boy. Steve's affinity for the cot weakened, especially after Demi surprised him with a kiss.

Briefly their tongues tangoed, but then Steve brusquely pulled away. "I can't," he said. "We shouldn't. It wouldn't be right, not after what happened last night."

"After what happened last night?" Demi repeated. "After what we did last night, kissing is nothing." Then, blushing furiously, she added, "This time let's do it more slowly so that I remember it better."

"What are you talking about?" Steve demanded. "What do you think happened last night?"

"Well you know," said Demi sheepishly. She then formed a circle with a finger and her right thumb, which she penetrated several times with the index finger of her left hand.

"We didn't do that," Steve barked. "Who told you we had sex, 'cause we didn't. Not really. Not the way you're suggesting."

Confused, Demi replied, "Your mother told me. She said you did ... almost everything to me that a guy can do to a girl. She said that you took my virginity - by any definition."

"I can't believe she told you that, Demi. We didn't have sex, not really. She lied to you. My mother is always lying to people," he bitterly replied.

Was Demi relieved or disappointed to find out that she was, technically, still a virgin? She wasn't sure. But she was certainly curious about Steve's "not really". So she asked, "What did we do last night after we got back to the room? Did we neck or pet? What did we do? Who took off all my clothes?" She shamefacedly admitted, "I don't remember anything."

Haltingly Steve told her what happened. As he expected either to be slapped by Demi or slugged by Kyle, Steve deliberately ended his sorry tale with his face within easy reach. Stoically, he was ready for whatever punishment his best friend (if Kyle still wanted that designation) meted out.

But Demi was more impressed than angered by Steve's revelation. "You're such a gentleman," she blurted out. "You really are a sweetheart." She wondered if she would have behaved so chivalrously had their positions been reversed.

Since she had already lost her virginity in her mind, Demi was now anxious to lose it in the flesh. She also figured that Steve wouldn't feel as bad about "the night before" if she now proved to him that she had arrived in New York ready and willing to lose her virginity. Actually, she hadn't been, but a lot had changed in twenty-four hours.

So finally, at long last, Demi was anxious to get laid - provided that Steve treated her like a lady. She had made a promise to Auntie Elvie that she intended to keep: intercourse would be vaginal only, and Steve wouldn't be allowed to treat her "like a boy".

The seduction proved easy. All Demi had to say was, "I don't care about last night. All I care about is tonight." And all she had to do was to caress Steve between his legs for about four seconds. Testosterone-soaked adolescence then won out.

To their mutual surprise, their long-anticipated intercourse began with Demi wearing the pink ballet costume to bed. But it took less than five minutes for both teens to get naked (which in Demi's case meant stripping down to her breast forms and gaff).

Steve, still guilty over the "night before," at first deferred to Demi's every whim, which meant he had exploded twice inside her Vagi-Gaff before he started calling her Kyle and asking for her to let him love her "like the boy you really are."

As Steve's roaming hands made Demi hot, she feverishly reconsidered her promise to Elvira: "She lied to me, didn't she? That's what Steve said. So I can do anything I want with Steve. I'm a free woman."

And what did she want? Shockingly, she wanted to have Steve enter her body for real. The Vagi-Gaff wasn't good enough, for it gave only superficial pleasure. Briefly, she wished the plastic tube were real. "If only I had a real vagina," Demi thought, "I'd soon be in seventh heaven." But she wasn't in heaven, and this wasn't going to be fantasy sex. It was going to be earthy, sweaty, and carnal. With her own hands Demi guided Steve to the closest thing to a vagina that each boy has.

As their bodies locked together, Steve did his best to free Kyle from Demi's grasp. He talked up a storm. "It's you I love, Kyle - not Demi. It's Kyle, a boy, who's making love to me. Kyle, you're turned on because you're a boy having great sex with another boy. Kyle, we're two gay boys getting our rocks off. Come on, Kyle, tell me you're a boy. Tell me you're going to be a boy from now on. Tell me you like having me deep inside you, inside the real you, and that you'll be wanting boy-on-boy sex from now on."

The strangest thoughts were going through Kyle's head. Here was another boy "using him like a girl," yet he hadn't felt so much like a boy in three months.

Demi's defenses were down. The girl was in retreat. She didn't even resist Steve when he yanked on her breast forms to free Kyle from their constraint.

"Kyle, do you enjoy being a boy? Kyle, do you like having your boy's belly caressed by another boy?"

"Yes, yes," Kyle sighed.

Steve smiled. It was working out just as he'd planned. As he saw it, Jo had used sex to seduce Kyle into becoming Demi, and he was now using it to return Kyle to the world of men.

Out loud Steve said, "I just know you really want to be a boy, Kyle. You're as anxious as I am to see the last of Demi. After you've sexed it up with me, I promise you that you'll never allow anyone to call you Demi, ever again. From this moment forward, it will always be Kyle, Steve's macho boyfriend Kyle."

Steve then moved his hands upward towards Kyle's nipples to prove to him that he'd have more fun in bed, and in life, if he didn't cover them up with "fake tits."

"Kyle, it's sure good being a boy. Isn't it Kyle? How about it, Kyle?"

Kyle moaned in apparent agreement.

As Steve's hands finally found Kyle's chest, a look of panic came over Steve's face. At first, he couldn't find any words. But finally he blurted out, "Demi, you've got lumps. Demi, you've got breast cancer!"

A terrified Demi had never felt more like a girl.

To be continued in Chapter 21, where we will learn what the doctor told Demi.