Free Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt Page B

journal:
Met Wyatt for the first time. He is very feminine. He is wearing his hair long, and had a blue flowery barrette in it….Wyatt displayed no anxiety or worries about wanting to be a girl. His eyes sparked with interest when I said my usual about knowing lots of boys who feel this way, but his main anxiety is not about that.
    Wyatt’s main concern is his overwhelming automatic desire to choke himself….He does not feel able to stop himself from doing so, most of the time. He wanted to know did I know other kids who felt THIS? I talked a little about OCD, and he understood that: “Oh!” he said. “Like Tourette’s Syndrome!” Right.

CHAPTER 10
Girls w ith Magical Powers
    V irginia Holmes counseled Kelly to go slow with Wyatt, to not necessarily give in every time Wyatt pushed her to allow him to be more like a girl. Holmes still thought Wyatt might be gay, not transgender, so until that could be determined, she thought it best to keep his feminine behaviors a bit more in check, at least in public, so Kelly insisted Wyatt continue to wear “boy” clothes to school.
    When Wayne came home from work one night, Wyatt and Jonas were playing in the backyard with friends. They were sword fighting, and Wyatt was wearing a pink blouse and pants.
    Wayne confronted Kelly, something he rarely did.
    “Dr. Holmes said to go slow.”
    “She said to go slow with him in school,” Kelly answered.
    She was peeved. She knew Wayne was just using Dr. Holmes as an excuse for his own discomfort. Wayne was trying to adjust to the changes, but he was afraid the more feminine Wyatt was allowed to act, the harder it would be for him to go back to being a boy.
    Wyatt compensated for the split life he was leading by escaping through a show called
Winx Club,
an Italian animated television series on Fox that highlighted a fantasy world of girls with magical powers. Their love interests are called “the Specialists” and their enemies are three witches who call themselves “the Trix”: Icy, Darcy, and Stormy. The witches, like most evil characters, get the lion’s share of the drama, and they look the part with long hair, tall boots, and hourglass figures. The witches are powerful: capable of manipulating matter, specifically ice, darkness, and wind.
    In his pink marble notebook for 2004 and 2005, Wyatt drew page after page of the Trix, the witches. The notebook begins with drawings of valentines, sunshine, and stars, and ends with sketches of a woman frowning and crying and a boy sticking his tongue out. Wyatt was first attracted to the characters because they were both feminine and powerful. Stormy, also known as the Storm Queen, has a cinched-in waist, purple eye makeup, and dramatic hair—a storm cloud of frizz and curls with long white bangs shaped like lightning bolts that frame her face. She is wild, even uncontrollable, and is capable of creating tornadoes, unleashing wind blasts, and stunning her enemies with shocks of electricity. As the youngest of the Trix sisters, however, Stormy is weaker than the other witches, but what she lacks in strength she makes up for in confidence and aggression. She’s proud and quick to anger, and if someone crosses her, she will get her revenge, no matter how long it takes. Proud, outspoken, aggressive, and immature: That was Wyatt all over. Increasingly he was pushing limits, and sometimes even seemed to test his father. If they were in a department store, Wyatt would go straight to the girls’ dresses, the ones he called “sassy” with their bold colors and glitter.
    “Daddy, can I have this one?”
    Wayne tried not to overreact. He didn’t want to hurt Wyatt, but his job was to keep things neutral, which was what Kelly had suggested he do if he couldn’t be more supportive.
    “Maybe for Christmas, Wy-Pie, maybe for Christmas.”
    Usually Wayne didn’t talk to Kelly about these incidents. But once, when they were discussing the possibility of Wyatt someday wearing a dress to school,