The Magic Wand

My little sister had the magic wand. And we wanted it. Why, I don’t know. It’s something lost in time, or something lost in the logic of a five year old. It was three against one – Jonny, Ryan and myself were chasing my three-year-old sister around the house in hopes of trying to capture this wooden, sparkly, unabashedly girly toy she had stolen from us (in hindsight, it was probably hers to begin with.) She ran up the stairs, her chubby toddler legs moving like turbines until she made it into my parents’ bedroom, locking the door. She had it. What were we boys to do? I had a plan.

I was a pugnacious little kid, overall well behaved but prone to being bossy and taking over playtime with my own visions of the worlds we should be creating. Whether it was Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, I decided who would be what characters and, most importantly, who I would be. Once I threw a tantrum after friends had colored the wrong colors in my Animaniacs coloring book.

I had met Jonny in preschool, our parents became friends and it wasn’t long before the two of us and his little brother Ryan were inseparable. Being a year younger, Ryan inevitably was the runt of our group. Once when we were playing with action figures and Ryan was annoying us, I decided the only thing to do, of course, was to bite his nose. He screamed and ran to his bewildered dad, nose swollen with bite marks around it. My mom was just as confused, trying to explain to me that’s not how we handle our problems. Why not?

With the door locked and the magic wand in my sister’s impenetrable fortress, this dire time called for innovative thinking. Jonny and Ryan were about to give up, but I was just starting. We needed disguises. I had it! Cleaning women. Of course, perfect. We would claim we were cleaning women needing to get into the room, then once my sister opens the door we snatch the wand and get…whatever it was happened when you got the wand. We didn’t have a cleaning woman and I’m not sure how this formed as an idea, but I put on my best vaguely European accent, telling my sister we needed to get in to clean. She wasn’t buying it. It was time to get serious.

We went into my sister’s room down the hall. In order to truly be cleaning women, we needed to dress like them. Jonny was skeptical. Ryan was four and would do anything I told him.  I began pulling clothes out of my sister’s closet. I found a nice denim skirt for myself that I put on over my sweat pants. I gave Ryan a similar corduroy skirt.  Jonny stood by the door, telling us we should just forget about it. This had suddenly become something more than getting a toy from my sibling for me. I was now entranced, going into a world that for the few brief years I had been in this world I was told wasn’t mine. I stood in front of the pink plastic Barbie Doll makeup mirror, pulling out the girls’ makeup from its drawers. I wonder if they still make such overtly beauty-driven toys for young girls today. My guess is they do.

I put on all the makeup that was there. Smudged all over my face, bright red blush, eyeliner, and bright pink lipstick smeared across my mouth. I was beginning to apply the flower-like color to Ryan’s lips when I heard steps, heavy booted steps coming up the stairs.

From a very young age, my father worried I was gay. As soon as I was old enough to decide what toys I wanted to play with I always went for action figures and character based toys rather than trucks or blocks. I loved wearing hats, my favorite a pink fedora that especially bothered my dad. My mom likes to tell the story of once when we were in a department store, a woman commented on what a pretty girl she had after seeing me in the hat.  After politely correcting her, my mother said my father was worried I was gay. “A pink hat I wouldn’t worry about. Pink underwear though…”

With my pink fedora, I would dance in front of the old ladies at the video store, telling anyone who would listen I wanted to be “an entertainer like Mickey Mouse.” When boys began playing sports, kicking the soccer ball, playing tee ball, I had no interest. More than that, I wanted out of it entirely. Once, on a sunny spring afternoon around this time my dad took me out to play soccer. I did all I could to sulk and make it clear this was boring to me. Frustrated, my dad sat me down on the edge of our small wooden deck and said, “You’re a wimp.” I remember vividly the sun around the blades of grass, not knowing what to say. In the car, the next day, he apologized saying he didn’t mean it, but the moment stuck.

My heart began to race as I scrambled to put the lipstick away, hearing my father come up the stairs. It was too late. What came next is like a tornado, a grown, confused and angry man surrounded by three young boys, two in dresses, even Jonny at this point had a little makeup on. He grabbed a wet towel and immediately began scrubbing it off of us, yelling at us to take the girls clothes off. This was the last straw over a few years of young feminine things piling on top of his only son.

My dad was raised the second oldest of four boys and two girls, in a rough part of upstate New York that was once a resort town but alcohol, drugs and strip clubs had turned into a darker part of a county. He was raised on sports, working with his hands, cars and owning mean dogs named Max. He and my uncles had their fair share of DWIs and car accidents growing up. It’s safe to say the words “gender roles” were not frequently discussed then, let alone the idea of bending them.

After scrubbing the makeup off us and putting my sister’s clothes back, he sent the other two boys downstairs. He held me by my tiny shoulders and shook me, yelling that this was not what boys did. This wasn’t right. He listed the things that boys should do as my sister came out of our parents bedroom, scared and confused as to what was going on in her room, still holding the magic wooden wand. He didn’t hit me or beat me up, but the shaking I felt was jarring, I could feel my brain bouncing around inside. He took me downstairs and pulled out of a closet my green puffy coat. I remember exactly how the logo inside the jacket had a picture of a flying duck, I guess the coat was filled with duck feathers. I remember wanting to be the duck flying away. I’ve since read that ducks don’t actually fly.

Outside, I barely said anything as Jonny, Ryan and I kicked a soccer ball back and forth in the cold, late autumn air, the grass crunchy under our dinosaur sneakers. For a kid who was so vocal, I couldn’t say anything. I tried my best to kick the ball this time.

As I grew up, I shied away from sports, instead joining drama club and getting into punk music. I collected action figures up through high school. Jonny and Ryan got into baseball and we barely acknowledged each other after middle school. I think there was a palpable relief from my dad when I started dating girls, and I identify as straight now. I took my fair share of gender studies classes and read feminist and queer theory in college and it helped me better understand what had been going through my head as a kid and to some extent what still was. For Halloween I’ve been Courtney Love, Hillary Clinton, and this past year I was the female version of myself. It was a costume I had wanted to do for years. I was excited, nervous even, buying the wig and trying on my friends’ dresses and jewelry. I was not as attractive as I anticipated, and I realize now my body type is not exactly the most feminine. I remember that night being so anticlimactic. As I went out, no one even paid me a second glance, among all the wild costumes in the city. In a sense, it was the antithesis of that fall day when I was five, searching for the magic wand.