Carlie has sissy predispositions, but overcomes difficulties with love, courage and increasing self-awareness. This chapter outlines his early life.

Carlie

I. Beginnings

Some would say it started the night my dad blew up the house, but I think it started one day in the grocery, or perhaps even earlier, on my fourth birthday. Yes, I think it was when I turned four. Dad gave me a baseball and bat, and mom gave me a baby doll. I could hardly swing the bat and was scared of being hit by the ball. So, my first sports experience was frustrating for both dad and me. Maybe if he’d given me a wiffle ball and bat things would have been different, but he didn’t.

You might think that mom giving me a baby doll was meant to feminize me. It wasn't, at least not in the sense of turning me into a girl, or even dressing me like one. She just thought that all children should look forward to caring for real babies. Mom spent a lot of time teaching me how to care for Nancy, as I called my dolly. I really liked playing with her and couldn't wait to care for a real baby. At four, the neighborhood boys didn’t tease me about playing with dolls, but neither were they interested. The girls, however, were glad to play with me. I enjoyed playing with them and loved their company more than that of boys. Dad thought I was a bit of a sissy, not liking baseball, loving dolls and playing with girls. Mom kept him under control, so he was not mean to me, just disappointed.

Mom also taught me how to fix things, as she was the handy one. Dad liked to think he did the repairs, but generally Mom, and later I, helped him, reminding him to turn off the water before working on the plumbing, remembering the sequence of parts for reassembling things, and so on. Unaided, there was a 50% chance that whatever he was working on would not only be worse off, but a complete wreck.

When mom took me to register for school, there was a clerical mix up, and I wound up in first grade instead of kindergarten. As I did well, mom saw no point in correcting the error. Still, I was small compared to my classmates. In fact, I would have been small even in kindergarten, because both mom and dad were small. Given my size and the fact that I didn't like sports, I was usually chosen last for teams, and came to hate sports even more. This didn't matter to most of the girls, so most of my friends continued to be girls.

Mom was killed in a traffic accident when I was seven. Dad and I lived alone from then on. He tried to “man me up,” by watching sports with me. I learned about baseball, football, basketball and hockey to please him, but privately thought it was silly for grown men to chase balls and fight over pucks. On his side, he accepted that most of my friends were girls and that my interests generally followed theirs.

Dad and I did all the work around the house. I did most of the shopping, cooking and washing once I was old enough. He did the yard and we both cleaned the house each weekend. We worked on repairs together. I'd learned from mom how to let him think he was doing them with my help when really there was little chance he could do them alone.

I was 14 when I met Sandra grocery shopping. She was picking out cantaloupes by smelling them, and I asked her how to pick sweet ones. She saw my full cart, and asked why I was grocery shopping on my own. I said I was the homemaker in our family. She asked how that happened. After a while I figured the conversation was centering too much on me, and told her how adorable her baby was, and that I was looking forward to having my own baby to care for when I got older. She was surprised and asked if I knew all that involved. I said I did and explained how mom had taught me to care for Nancy.

Sandra was a lawyer and her maternity leave was ending soon, so she was looking for a nanny. She didn’t want to put Lizabeth, her baby, in day care and expose her other kid's diseases. She asked if I’d like watching her. It was early summer, and I had no job, so I said it would be wonderful. She asked me to come over the next day and she would give me a trial to see how much I really knew about babies.

When Dad came home from the bank, I told him I'd lined up a job. He was happy until I said it was being a nanny. He asked if that wasn’t a girl’s job. I said it won’t be if I’m doing it, because I am a boy. I spent the next two days at Sandy’s apartment learning how to feed, change and generally care for Liz. After the first day I did it all on my own, with Sandy watching, offering suggestions and corrections. But mostly, she read and worked on the computer while I cared for Liz. She was impressed by the way I carried her with me, talking to her and giving her little kisses. When she was down for her naps I put on an apron and did the dishes or dusted. After the second day, she announced that I was her official nanny for the rest of the summer and gave me a little certificate she'd printed on the computer.

I loved Liz, and she came to love me. I enjoyed dressing her like a living doll and teaching her as mom had taught me. When she was old enough, I gave her Nancy. She asked her mother for another baby doll so Nancy could still be my dolly whenever we played. “Carlie” was one of her first words, and Sandy started calling me Carlie too. Sandy was surprised by my domestic skills, and made me proud of being a homemaker and nanny.

When summer ended I went back to school and Liz took her chances in day care. I continued to baby sit whenever Sandy needed me. Sandy and I grew close. She helped me with problems like a mom, so I was happy to be at her place.

Most of my school friends were girls. Judy was my best friend, but not a girlfriend in the romantic sense. When we talked the topics were skewed toward feminine interests, even her boyfriends. We both liked to brag on the babies we cared for, as if they were our own. Judy even told me when her monthlies were giving her cramps or putting her mood off. She also liked my fashion sense better than her mother's and would take me clothes shopping with her.

My only real male friend was Jason, who a lot of people assumed was gay. He never made a pass at me, so I assumed he was like me — not interested in the things most boys were obsessed with — including girls. We'd both gone through puberty, of course, and did the things boys do with themselves, but we weren't ready to hit on girls. I don't know about Jason, as he didn't spend as much time with girls as I did, but for me girls were more people with common interests than sex objects.

As a result of talking mostly with girls, I used a lot of their words and expressions. I also used their movements and body language. Dad tried to correct me for a while, telling me boys don't say “lovely,” “darling,” or “scrumptious” or stand the way I stood. I tried, but doing as he said meant holding my feelings in until I was ready to explode. Even ­tually, he gave up.

Things went along uneventfully until the spring of my senior year, near my seventeenth birthday. One Saturday morning dad and I went to the plumbing supply to get a new hot water heater. I'd just helped him carry it to the basement when the phone rang. Sandy urgently needed me to watch Liz. I told dad not to install the new water heater until I got home to help him, and I rushed out to meet Sandy.