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Choices, Chapter 18 A wedding choice Will Maggie do right by Kirk? Will Kirk become Ellen? Will Blair stop crossdressing? Will Laird and Maggie stay together? Does Laird even have a choice? These questions, among others, compelled me, fabulist Dawn DeWinter, to consult the occult. Once before, Madame Zeta, a fortune teller in New York City, helped me to look into the future. Then I wanted to know whether Kyle, an Iowa teen who would do "Anything for a Moped," ended up - through happenstance or predestination - changing his gender to female, and his name to Demi. With the help of a crystal ball, Madame Zeta told me enough about Demi's future for me, and more important, my readers, to feel assured that she was going to have a long and vigorous life. So once again I took the Path Train to New York City in order to look for Madame Zeta at the Brazilian Tea Room in central Manhattan. I hoped she would be able to foresee far into the future of Kirk, Blair and their parents. Once again, I found her peacefully snoozing on a pool table. After I had refreshed her with a splash of water and a tumbler of brandy, I discovered that Madame Zeta's rates have gone up significantly since I last consulted her. She blames higher inflation and taxes, as well as the need to build a big nest-egg before she's put out of business in December 2012. Naturally, I ask, "What's going to happen then?" (It's always good to have advance knowledge of the future - for example, that a volcano is going to erupt in Greenwich Village. If I knew when that was going to happen, I'd have time to seek refuge in Iceland or Hawaii.) "I guess you've not been reading the tabloids, Dawn girl. Don't you know that the Mayans predicted that the world will end at the Winter Solstice in the year 2012?" "What the fcuk!" I exclaim, or words to that effect. "Are you telling me that I've got only two more years to live? I'm not ready to die. I can't and I won't die a virgin!" "Calm yourself, Dawn. Don't stain your panties." "Who the hell are the Mayans?" I ask myself. "I know they are Indians of some sort, but if the Mayans could really foresee the future, then why didn't they immediately use their war elephants in days of yore to push the British back into the sea when the Brits came looking for chutney and tea?" Madame Zeta then explains that she asked her crystal ball to predict what will happen to New York when the clock hands reaches 21 December 2012, Eastern Standard Time (that, one hour ahead of Ottumwa, Iowa). At first, the crystal ball comes up with plenty of excuses for its fuzziness (blaming Zeta for excessive drinking and abrasive cleaning agents), but gradually a picture comes into focus. It is of a very tall dude terrorizing New York City. According to Madame Zeta, no one could mistake the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl as he lumbers down 7th Avenue. True, he appears this time in the guise of a fifty-foot-tall, cockney- speaking gecko lizard, his modesty protected by suit trousers and a feather boa; even so, Madame Zeta would recognize Quetzalcoatl anywhere because she has a memory for faces. When it reaches its destination inside Madison Square Garden the Aztec god thunders out to the standing-room-only crowd at a hockey game: "Don't pay no mind to de Mayans. Dose 'ayseeds never figured 'ow to predict de future correc'ly. And don't put your faith neider in dem Nostramusses, Cayseeds, Shite Twelvers, Messianists, and 'vangelists who also claim to prophesy de future. It can't be done by no one but an Aztec god or his priest. Got it, ever'body? 'Ave a nice day." The giant lizard then ambles across town and into the Hudson River. As its head disappears beneath the foamy sludge, the crystal ball shuts down completely. It will take Madame Zeta several months to convince the ball to make even minor predictions (such as whether a fully loaded pizza will give her heartburn). After that pronouncement, Madame Zeta tried to save her fortune-telling business by finding an Aztec priest to consult, but the ones she found loitering around Times Square turned out to be frauds. One of them even tried to persuade her that the Aztecs told the future via Three Card Monte. Finding Aztec priests impossible to find, even in Manhattan, Madame Zeta went next to the Public Library on 42nd Street. There she read that the Aztecs told the future through ball games between communities. This knowledge didn't help much because she couldn't figure out whether a Yankee victory or a Mets loss was the better predictor of stock market prices or the winner of the Kentucky Derby. Not knowing whether the return of Quetzalcoatl two years hence will effectively destroy her livelihood, Madame Zeta coolly informs me that I have to pay top dollar for any and all predictions: After all, Dawn, you soon may not be able to get any insight into the futures of Blair and Ellen without having to go down to Mexico, where you'll risk ending up becoming a human sacrifice. You don't want to have your living heart yanked out of your still steaming body, do you? No I don't want that. So I buy what little information I can at Madame's current, extortionate prices. The crystal ball deigns to tell me about a single day in the future of the Finlayson family: January 2, 1921, Blair's wedding day approximately ten years thence. The ball assures me that advance knowledge of this one particular day will tell me and my readers all that it is safe to know about the future. In an apparent attempt to justify its price hike, the crystal ball suggests that to ask for information about a second day would have me repeat the sin of Adam and Eve by attempting to pig out on fruit from the tree of knowledge. Besides, it adds, a TG writer can't afford the whole truth. Nor do his readers necessarily desire it. At first, the crystal ball is as fuzzy as a dream sequence in an old movie. But gradually, like the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, a scene comes into focus. It seems to be a hospital room, with a woman who resembles Kirk on the bed, with Maggie and Laird beside her. So it must be their daughter! Through eavesdropping, I learn that Kirk has indeed become Ellen. Maggie, however, has never sought to change Kirk's name legally. It was simpler, ultimately safer, she held, to pay Josh to change Kirk's vital and school records to "Ellen Margaret, female". Computers say that the boy never existed, which is all that matters in the Computer Age. But it took more than computers to make Ellen into a woman so real that only her gynecologist knows the birth truth. It took the help of her brother Blair, her father Laird, her friends and mentors, and above all, it took Maggie's help. In the end, Maggie has proved herself a far better mother than anyone would have predicted in 2010. Needless to say, she has never been able to undo all the damage she did to Blair's trust on the night of the Big Pill Party, yet he loves her as much as he does any woman. Through the wondrous crystal technology, my spirit drifts to a second scene, this time in the quaintly timbered "Mozart Room" of the Trapp Family Lodge on the outskirts of Stowe, a ski resort in Vermont. A calendar informs me that it is the first Saturday in January, 2021. The setting reminds me of the movie White Christmas, except that Vermont actually has snow, fresh snow, with not a yellow streak in sight. A sign at the entrance to the Mozart Room announces a double wedding. I am surprised, yet pleased, to see that Blair is about to wed his childhood sweetheart, Cody Akins. Yes, the same Cody Akins, Kirk's buddy who taught Blair how to love a real male, emotionally and sexually, instead of sighing over a teen pin-up. As a lark, Cody has actually invited Justin Bieber to the wedding, but Bieber, who has never heard of either bride or groom, declined the invitation. I don't need the crystal ball to explain why Blair and Cody have chosen the Trapp Family Lodge for the ceremony - Blair simply adores The Sound of Music, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about the Von Trapps' courtship, marriage and flight from the Nazis. Blair doesn't know which role he likes best - that of Maria, played by Julie Andrews, who got the best songs to sing - or of daughter Liesl, the sixteen-year-old girl who got to kiss and nestle with Rolf, the scrumptious telegram boy. The Trapp Family Lodge makes abundant sense, if one wants the most romantic spot for Blair in the entire state of Vermont. But why Vermont? It may seem an odd choice, since it is far from the family hearth in the Pacific Northwest and from the jobs that Blair and Cody have found in West Hollywood, California where they wait on tables whenever they are between acting jobs - which is most of the time. But the breaks are now beginning to go their way: Cody has recently found a meal ticket in a series of TV commercials about the necessity for countries to learn their credit score before the World Bank, China and the IMF stop taking their calls; and Blair has a starring role in a movie (it will begin filming in February), in which he plays an immature, fourteen-year-old boy, who, maddened by the failure of "Global Warming" to warm up a normal winter in Minneapolis to tolerable, heats things up by burning down his school, one room at a time. It's Blair's angelic smile (he still looks the total na?f at age 21) that wins him the role of the cold-blooded killer - like Patty McCormack in Bad Seed or Macauley Culkin in The Good Son. But back to the question of Vermont. Why there? Because it was one of the first states to legalize same-sex marriage and because it has the best ski hills in New England - a vital consideration to Blair's sister, Ellen Margaret Finlayson. (Technically, Blair is not having a same-sex marriage, the crystal ball haughtily explains, because Maggie has forgotten to change his sex back to male. So far, whenever anyone has noticed the "F" beside Blair's name, they have, assuming yet another computer foul-up, corrected it themselves to an "M".) Not only is Ellen Margaret going to attend Blair's wedding, she is going to share it, for the second half of the double ceremony will see Ellen marry Oliver Kennedy Lowell III, a lawyer and yachtsman (already planning an America's Cup challenge) from Bar Harbor, Maine. It's Ollie who suggested the January 2nd date, because he likes the idea of starting 2021 off with a bang - actually, a pop, of champagne corks. Since I know far less about Ollie than I did about Cody, I persuade the crystal ball to linger a while on his face, form and finances. I can see that Ollie's physiognomy betrays the consequences of several generations of inbreeding amongst the descendants of the Puritanical founders of Boston, Massachusetts, especially after they, having fallen in love with equine show jumping, began to choose their wives for their riding skills rather than for their looks. (Ellen, for example, has developed a magnificent seat -- as well as derriere; she can guide her favorite gelding, "Alexander Kirk", over any fence while riding side saddle.) As a consequence of such marital choices, Ollie has a long, rectangular "horsy" face. Blair, whose tropes always seem to come from show business or the movies, told Ellen - after a "few too many" (which meant a couple of cocktails for Blair, still a drinking novice) - that Ollie reminds him of Fred Gwynne, a comedic actor known for his roles in The Munsters (as Herman) and My Cousin Vinny (as the stern Southern judge) - which is a bit unfair, considering that Ollie is barely twenty-six. Whenever anyone intimates that Ollie has a horsy look, Ellen always shoots back (correctly, says the crystal ball) that Ollie is also hung like a stallion. To Blair, from whom no secrets are hidden, she confides that Ollie can mount her for hours. Moreover, if Ellen is - in horse lovers' parlance - a "good seat," Ollie has "good hands". Blair is drunk enough on that occasion to say, "Maybe I should have volunteered for all those sex operations. Ollie sounds awesome." And many operations there have been - all of them made possible by Maggie's Wednesday sessions with Dr. Bene Sentirsi (who is sitting in the second row fingering the thong he lovingly removed from Maggie's loins after the Wedding Rehearsal). Maggie has been almost as anxious as Ellen to erase every tell-tale sign of Ellen's maleness in near record time. Maggie even took Ellen at fourteen to Sentirsi's private clinic at the Playa Larga resort on the Bay of Pigs for sexual-reassignment surgery (SRS), done illicitly by one of Cuba's most brilliant surgeons to supplement his official income, which paid him less in twelve-hours a day than a cab driver earned in eight in the resorts. (The Sentirsi clinic has long been tolerated because of its discrete service to wealthy foreign socialists and Cuban Communist elites, as well as its skills at smuggling and bribery.) Ellen has needed a lot of help from the world's surgeons, far more than the average candidate for SRS. Despite a fortune paid on plastic surgery, there is only so much that modern medicine can do for a boy originally as homely as Kirk. Indeed, it is a testament to money and medical science that Ellen hasn't ended up being an ugly woman. However, there are limits to how much one can reshape a Jay-Leno brow or Frankenstein-Monster chin. As a consequence, while her face still has too many hard edges to be called beautiful, it is a face with loads of character. A Democrat might say that Ellen looks a bit like a young Ethel Kennedy, the sports-loving widow of John F. Kennedy's murdered brother. A Republican might say that she looks like a young Barbara Bush, wife and mother of Presidents. Cinema-besotted Blair predicts that Ellen will, as she ages, evolve into a Grand Old Dame "like Judy Dench, Miss Marple or Helen Mirren". Possibly, but in the meantime her chiseled looks commend Ellen to Ollie almost as much as her excellence in elite sports and her remarkable zest for life, treating almost every day as a special gift - as though she has beaten a normally mortal disease. I have to ask the crystal ball, "Does Ollie know on their wedding day that Ellen once had male genitalia?" The ball treats the question with some contempt: "Of course! What choice did she have? With a drama queen like Blair in her family, that "secret" was bound eventually to get out, but it was Ellen herself who first broke the news to Ollie. She waited until she had proven herself to be the "woman of his dreams" by crewing his catamaran to victory in the Marblehead Regatta. In relating her saga, Ellen explained that Maggie had paid another comic book to have Kirk's birth, library, sports and school records replaced by hers at age thirteen. Since Kirk has never officially existed, and since Ellen's operations have never officially occurred, she assures a silent, pensive Ollie that no one will ever be able to dispute her right to the trophies she has already won, or will win in future, as a woman. Nor, she said, did anyone have the moral right to challenge them because, "I began taking female hormones before I had a wisp of body hair. I had scarcely entered puberty. We Scots are late bloomers." When Ellen finally finished her story, Ollie, trophy in one hand, a gin and tonic in the other, replied simply: "Why, this is good news. I've never liked condoms. I shall henceforth dispense with them." That night in their bedroom Ollie gave exuberant, repeated proof that little had changed for the man with the good hands, and the woman with the good seat. However, it would be the first time - but definitely not the last - that he performed oral sex on a woman. Until that evening Ollie feared that "she might smell down there," and, not wanting to lose "the world's ideal woman", kept his olfactory concerns to himself. (When I wonder why the Crystal Ball is careful to describe Ollie's plunge into oral sex with Ellen as his first time "he has done it with a woman," it sneers, "Don't be daft, Dawn, for I've already told you that Ollie attended a boys' boarding school in rural Connecticut for several years.") Inasmuch as Ollie has ten older siblings, there is no familial pressure to reproduce. Thus, for Ellen to bear a child of their own matters less to Ollie than does a lifetime membership in the New York Yacht Club or the Boston Athenaeum. Besides, their globe-trotting lifestyle would be unfair to a child, he says, for the child would inevitably end up in a boarding school or living at grandmother's house. Ellen knows her man well enough to understand that, if she ever changes her mind about children, that Ollie won't balk at adoption, provided that the child has a good "pedigree" (i.e., athletes in the family tree). Why do Ellen and Ollie agree with her brother and Cody on Stowe for their nuptials? Well, the wedding couple both have often visited the resort, Ollie, because of its proximity to the New England coast, and Ellen (who recently graduated from Smith College in western Massachusetts) because it has the best ski hill in Vermont. Skiing is Ellen's greatest sports passion (outside the bedroom at least), and she already possesses Olympic bronze medals for the Women's Downhill and Giant Slalom. However, on her wedding day she is definitely going for the gold. Laird and Maggie both attend the affair to give away one of the brides: Laird, his daughter Ellen; Maggie, her son Blair. There was no way, Laird said, that he is going to "give away Blair to a man, with Blair dressed in a wedding gown." Thus, Maggie will do the honors. Both parents admit to feeling uncomfortable during the ceremony because of Blair's insistence that they honor the talent and heroism of the Von Trapp family by wearing traditional Austrian garb: Maggie in a dirndl, consisting of a white lace blouse with embroidered sleeves, a full- length red velvet dress (with a tight bodice), a long, embroidered-lace apron, as well as a necklace and earrings made from deer antlers; and Laird in a white cotton blouse and in Lederhosen, brown leather shorts (with a drop-front) held up by suspenders with a cross strap at his nipples. Laird is not pleased to learn five minutes before the ceremony that he will be the only man in the room wearing leather shorts. "It's just like Blair," he pouts, "to order 'short shorts' for me. My legs and thighs are completely exposed; even a strip of my butt is sticking out." He fears that every gay male in the room will be staring at his derriere. "Why couldn't the boy let me wear our clan's kilt, to be true to our Scots heritage?" he moans. Blair later explains: Dad, if you had worn a kilt, most of our friends will conclude, given the circumstances, that you are wearing a skirt - drag, in other words. We can't have them thinking that, because some will accuse you of trying to upstage your children, others of trying to mock our life and clothing choices, and the rest will assume that you too are TG - on the theory that an apple doesn't far from the tree. In the latter case, I assure you that you will not want to hear their bitchy remarks about your 'lack of fashion sense'. Dad, do you want them to say out loud that, 'You'd think that hag would realize she's much too old to wear skirts?' Better shorts than a "skirt." Even so, for the first time since his own adolescence Laird feels self-conscious about his knobby knees. The Crystal Ball, which claims to see and hear all, confirms that Laird is fortunate not to overhear what Lance Cartwright, an actor friend of Cody's, later says about the "geezer who imagines that anyone wants to see him in hot pants." As Dr. Bryce Frederick Mercury-Wilde and the two grooms wait patiently at the front of the Mozart Room for the first of the brides to "process" down the center aisle - "Whoa, there, "I say to the Crystal Ball. "You really want us to believe that Dr. Mercury-Wilde of St. Wicca infamy will preside over the ceremony?" "Why yes, whom (the Ball is proud of its grammar) do you expect to preside? He is, after all, the only religious minister that Blair and Ellen have ever knowingly met, and you must admit that he did play an important, albeit brief, role in both their lives." "Ah yes, but especially in Ellen's. I remember now: Mercury-Wilde was the first person ever to say that Kirk, though dressed in boys wear, seemed more intrinsically feminine than Blair did, even wearing a dress." "Yes," I replied. "The preacher gave Kirk the hope that precedes change." "You don't need to stress the words 'hope and change'," groans the Crystal Ball. Your feeble attempt at an Obama-ism is further proof that your wordplay is more pedestrian than Olympian. Indeed, one might reasonably say that just as Kirk's encounter with Dr. Mercury-Wilde unintentionally watered the seeds of hope from which Ellen sprouted, that you may have also, quite unintentionally, proven to yourself (as well as to your readers) through this writing exercise that you too have a choice - in this instance, the choice of a more fitting career than that of a fictional writer of a fiction that purports to be non- fiction. Have I made myself clear?" Well, I never. I am the Ball's intellectual superior! I'm the one ultimately paying for the ammonia cleaner it needs in order to shine! By what right does a hunk of cheap plastic have to insult me? "And you," I snarl to the Crystal Ball, "might choose to shut up!" It is the wrong thing to say. The Crystal Ball clams up. It says not another word. Madame Zeta chides me, "Dawn, dear. Don't you think it a tiny bit unwise to tell a seer of the future not to tell you anything more about it? Unfortunately, we'll have to turn to a back-up." She then turns the belly button of "Harvey," a six-foot-tall, stuffed rabbit sitting a foot from the table. I haven't noticed it till now, but giving it close attention, I realize that it must have been a masterpiece of taxidermy until it began to molt. A 1950s' television screen is located just below the rabbit's navel. "What's wrong with this?" I ask, pointing to Harvey's groin. "Won't television give us better reception than a scratched, clouded and flattened Crystal Ball? (I am trying to get the Ball's goat. I know it is still listening). "I'm afraid not. As you see, the television set is an antique, and thus is not hooked up for cable. I'm afraid we'll have to use the rabbit ears as an antenna." I hear the crystal ball groan, but it remains dark, giving nothing away. It's through the help of the many flickering "ghosts" on the 1950s' television screen that I can complete the tale of Laird and his family. If anything turns out not to be strictly accurate when the year 2021 rolls around, it's probably my fault, not the ghosts', because I wasn't always listening as closely as I should, inasmuch as I was constantly having to adjust the horizontal and vertical to get any sort of picture at all. Now where were we? Ah, yes, with Dr. Mercury-Wilde presiding over the joint wedding. You may be wondering why the grooms have agreed to such an exotic choice. Well, it appears that Cody no longer has a choice, having a decade earlier chosen to persuade Blair to be more forceful, and less passive, in his interpersonal relations. Blair carefully listened, and over time their roles have switched. As a result, Blair has been in control of their wedding plans. As for Ollie, he is delighted to have Dr. Mercury-Wilde officiate, for he has known the erstwhile preacher for six years as a de-motivational speaker at Government seminars, a role that the preacher adopted soon after a bankrupt St. Wicca's became a gay dance and show bar. It turns out that Mercury-Wilde has a knack for explaining to regulatory agencies that, since they live nihilistically and existentially in an entropic universe without God, that, "Their attempts at regulation are a futile effort to bring about a higher good. He recommends to regulators that they seek the inner peace that comes through full, friendly cooperation with the business world." While the exact message doesn't mean a lot to Ollie, spender of old money rather than seeker of new, he applauds anyone whose essential message to the world is, "Why can't we all get along?" Thus, he warmly "thirds" the hiring of Mercury-Wilde for the wedding ceremony. And now the erstwhile preacher, garbed in a flowery silk kimono, waits with the tuxedoed grooms as Blair, followed by Maggie, fairly skips down the central aisle in spiked heels, bare legs (waxed to a sheen) and a careful reproduction of the red satin gown, with a sensual shimmer, peasant neckline and puff sleeves, worn by Bette Davis, playing a memorably bitchy Southern belle, to the Olympus Ball in an Oscar-winning movie from 1938 called Jezebel. In antebellum New Orleans, the red dress makes Bette's character, Julie, resemble a prostitute; and it still has the power to appall Stowe, Vermont: "I gather Blair wants us to know that he's not a virgin - as though any of us thought he might be," mutters a society matron in an aside. There are contrary murmurs: "Ah, Blair is always so considerate; he's allowing Ellen to star alone in white." "And well he should. After all, Ellen is the only woman getting married today. I don't know why Blair feels the need to wear a dress at all?" "You must be a guest of Ollie's or you'd realize that Blair has been wearing skirts longer than Ellen." "Do you mean that Blair crossdresses most of the time?" "No, generally he dresses like the flamboyant male actor that he is. But whenever he wants to get Cody really randy, Blair dresses in his most suggestive women's finery." "Yes, I heard that Cody actually begged Blair to wear a wedding dress, and that it was Maggie who insisted that he not wear white, so as not to compete with Ellen." "I don't understand - "Why does Cody want Blair to get married in a dress?" "Cody certainly didn't impose anything on Blair. It's a mutual decision. I gather Blair was posing as a girl the first time they ever had sex - that was eons ago when they were both mere children." "I see: the sex is best when Blair plays the wench." "From what I've heard, silky lingerie turns Cody wild. And Blair does look totally believable and beautiful as a woman. Such small, delicate hands. And Mick and Bianca Jagger lips. I've never seen a man with a smaller Adam's Apple." "The blond, shoulder-length hair - is it actually his?" There are several murmurs about Blair's "do", but no consensus emerges on whether he has grown his hair long "for the occasion" or simply bought a wig. On the other hand, everyone "just knows" that Blair is still "male enough" to require lots of padding to mimic a woman's curves. One individual of indeterminate gender who seems to be "in the know," claims that Blair's breast attachments are of "such high quality" that "they warm up to his body temperature and feel real to the touch. Imagine that." "Imagine that! Is it true that Blair owns a fake vagina?" "He certainly does, yet I doubt he's wearing it now. Still, from what I've heard, he'll definitely need it for the honeymoon. Where Cody is concerned, the more orifices the better." The ladies' uninformed speculations are driving me crazy. I walk over to the television set, grab and shake its rabbit ears, while demanding to know how much of the gossip is true. "For starters, why is Blair wearing a red dress and has he grown his hair down past his shoulders for the wedding?" The television ghosts temporarily disappear. The picture briefly looks unusually clear: "How should I know?" says the TV set. "What do you think I am? A crystal ball?" Evidently that is all I am going to learn about Blair's motivation and performance on his wedding day. Fortunately, I don't need the television's help to recognize his processional music: It's a recording of "Something Good" from The Sound of Music: Perhaps I had a wicked childhood Perhaps I had a miserable youth But somewhere in my wicked miserable past There must have been a moment of truth For here you are standing there loving me Whether or not you should So somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good Nothing comes from nothing Nothing ever could So somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good. As they reach the front, Blair takes Cody's hands and together they continue the song a cappella, (with Blair taking Maria's part, and Cody, that of Captain Von Trapp): CODY: For here you are standing there loving me Whether or not you should BLAIR: So somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good BLAIR AND CODY: Nothing comes from nothing Nothing ever could BLAIR: So somewhere in my youth CODY: Or childhood BLAIR: I must have done something BLAIR AND CODY: Something good... As hoped, their audience rises in standing ovation, and remains standing while Ellen and Laird, arm-in-arm, slowly proceed down the broad aisle. Ellen is wearing high-heeled platform pumps in Diamond white silk (with peep toes, each adorned by a Swarovski crystal) and the same modestly flamboyant, floor-length, white gown (with full sleeves) made of Shantung silk that Julie Andrews wore to marry Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Its cathedral train and long, flowing veil are kept aloft by two seven-year-old girls dressed as page boys. Ellen has copious tears in her eyes as Big Al, her best friend from childhood, in a soaring baritone belts outs, "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" from The Sound of Music: Climb every mountain Search high and low Follow every byway Every path you know Climb every mountain Ford every stream Follow every rainbow Till you find your dream A dream that will need All the love you can give Every day of your life For as long as you live Climb every mountain Ford every stream Follow every rainbow Till you find your dream (And reprise) There isn't a single dry eye in the Mozart Room. Even as tears stream down his cheeks, Laird's face shines with pride in his daughter. Once again tongues quietly wag: "Isn't her dress divine? It's just like the one that Julie Andrew wore in the musical. She's marrying her own Captain Von Trapp. How romantic!" "Well, in my humble opinion, the dress is old-fashioned and frumpy - the sort of thing an ex-nun like Maria would wear. Ellen should have worn something more au courant, something strapless - to show off her magnificent breasts - like Jennifer Garner wore in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past." "Don't tell me you liked that movie! Ellen would look even better in Kate Hudson's wedding dress in You, Me and Dupree." "Another dog of a movie! In it, Kate Hudson was getting married in Hawaii; Ellen would freeze to death if she wore that dress in January, in Vermont. " And so it went - most of the comments concerned, as they normally do at wedding, the bride's gown. There were, of course, some remarks, all positive, on the bride's beauty, usually along the lines of "Ellen simply radiates poise and beauty. She's never looked lovelier." Only Babs, Ollie's ex-fianc?e, is tacky enough to say the obvious - that Blair is still a more beautiful female than Ellen - when he wants to be. And yet, as Babs' mother immediately ripostes: Blair still acts the part of a frivolous, adolescent girl. It's a role that will wear thin as he ages. Ellen, on the other hand, is the very essence of a mature, adult woman, which I find remarkable for one so young. Babs darling, there is much you could learn from Ellen about what it takes to become a complete woman, capable of capturing and keeping a real man like Ollie. It is unknown what Babs or her mother will have to say if either of them subsequently learns about Ellen's sex at birth. However, this is clearly a closely-held secret in 2021. The second bridal party also includes the Maid of Honor for both: It's Angela Torres, Ellen's first roommate at the Punani Academy. The elder by two years, Ellen has grown into a "big sister" to Angela. Consequently, when Angela's mother, having achieved her goal of thoroughly alienating her ex-husband from his erstwhile son, decided against spending additional money on "the wretched child," Ellen persuaded Maggie to pay for Angela's last year at the Punani Academy and for the girl's gender-confirmation surgery at age eighteen (done locally, legally, and in Dr. Sentirsi's case, non-lustfully). Maggie has thus ended up with two daughters, plus Blair, who often plays the part of one. After the wedding, according to the knows-a-lot television set, Angela will be the only one of Maggie's "children" still living at home (in Ellen's old room, where she has been ensconced since Ellen left for Smith College). Briefly I am worried for Angela's sake - "She's not going to end up a lonely old maid, is she?" Madame Zeta gives me a withering look: "Get a grip, Dawn, Angela's only twenty-years-old in January 2021. There is lots of time for her to find someone to love. Considering the way she looks in that strapless bridesmaid's dress (cocktail length, in buttercup yellow gauze, with rouched bodice and tatted lace hem) I can't imagine she has any trouble attracting beaus. One of them surely will, like Ollie, forgive an inability to have children." "Maybe she will be able to have them," I then remark; "who knows what marvels medicine may have achieved by 2030? Look at all the breakthroughs in genetic research: They could make it possible for Angela or Ellen to conceive a baby by her own husband's sperm, at least with the help of a Petri dish. And gosh, an artificial uterus should be snap for the doctors to make in the 2030's. Tell me, Telly, will Angela or Ellen ever give birth?" The television set, unamused by the nickname, briefly flickers in annoyance before bringing into focus (well, into focus by 1950's standards - there are still a lot of ghosts) the rest of the wedding ceremony. The second bridal party soon reaches the front of the Mozart Room where Ollie (as well as Blair, Cody and Maggie) await. Ellen briefly falters; and then, departing from script, turns to the audience to say, "Please, would all of you join me in applauding my mother Maggie? If it weren't for her, I would never have had this joyous moment. Mother, you have my eternal love and gratitude." The audience, already standing, stamps its feet in appreciation. Unversed in religion, the two couples borrow their brief wedding vows from an Internet site: We are assembled here to celebrate the joining of Ellen and Blair to Oliver and Cody, respectively, in the unity of marriage. There are no obligations on earth sweeter or more tender than those you are about to assume. There are no vows more solemn than those you are about to make. Who gives Ellen and Blair in marriage? Laird and Maggie answer - he for Ellen, she for Blair. Then the minister says to Ollie: Will you take this woman to be your wedded wife? Will you love her, comfort her, through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, honor her at all times and be faithful to her? Ollie answered "I will". Then Mercury-Wilde turns to Cody: Will you take this man to be your wedded wife? Will you love him, comfort him, through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, honor him at all times and be faithful to him?" Cody answered "I will". And next to Ellen: Will you take Oliver to be your wedded husband? Will you love him, comfort him, through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, honor him at all times and be faithful to him? Ellen answered "I will". And then to Blair: Will you take Cody to be your wedded husband? Will you love him, comfort him, through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, honor him at all times and be faithful to him? Blair answered "I will". And finally to all four: As you take these preliminary vows, Oliver and Ellen, Cody and Blair, I would have you remember: To love is to come together from the pathways of our past and then move forward, hand in hand, along the uncharted roads of our future, ready to risk, to dream, and to dare. If there is an exchanging of rings, kindly present them. Dr. Mercury-Wilde then says, first to Ollie, and then to Cody: Please place the ring on Ellen's finger and repeat after me: I, Oliver, take you, Ellen, to be my wife, to love and cherish from this day forward, and thereto pledge you my faith. With this ring, I thee wed. With similar words, Cody, Ellen and Blair also pledge their fidelity with rings. And finally the climax: Oliver and Ellen, Cody and Blair, inasmuch as you have consented together in the union of matrimony and have pledged your faith to each other in the presence of this company, I now pronounce you Husband and Wife. YOU MAY KISS YOUR BRIDE! Blair swoons, his lips unkissed, theatrically to the floor. While helping Cody to raise Blair to his feet, Mercury-Wilde steals a French kiss from an insentient Blair, which no one but I, Dawn - thanks to the rabbit ears - notices, as Mercury-Wilde adeptly keeps Blair's back to Cody and the audience. Blair, still woozy, is mightily confused: "Did Cody just kiss me? If so, why is he already coming back for seconds? And why does my hubby have foul breath today? I can't handle another kiss like that until he takes a breath mint." With the bride now standoffish, the groom doesn't know what to do next. The gay newlyweds look at each other blankly, while the hands of Mercury-Wilde discretely, yet sensuously, fondle the inner curves of their buttocks. Both the bride and groom, at first thankful for his "moral support", smile briefly and wanly in the ex-preacher's general direction. However, their eyes soon widen and their jaws clench as the minister's hands move ever more wantonly. Shantung fabric, stretched taut, effectively protects Blair's "privacy", but thin, loose-fitting, polyester/wool trousers let down Cody. After a quick, involuntary yelp, Cody "feels" that he has no choice but to sidle even farther away from his bride and their lecherous celebrant. At this point, Mercury-Wilde, realizing that he has gone too far, scuttles from the Mozart Room. He finally appreciates that this is not the right time to ask Blair and Cody (especially Cody) if they are interested in a honeymoon foursome with Bruno and him. He'll phone the newlyweds first thing tomorrow to make his proposition before they fly off to Salzburg, Austria to take "The Sound of Music" bus tour and to London to attend the revival of "Billy Elliot: The Musical", with Daniel Radcliffe (of Harry Potter fame) in the role of thirteen-year- old Billy. I am aghast! Not by the curious casting, but by Dr. Mercury-Wilde's machinations. They are shockingly devious for a Wall Street executive. "Will Blair and Cody say yes to his proposition?" I beg to know. "What do you think, dummy?" I could have done without the sarcasm. I was simply asking what every one of my readers is anxious to know. The Blair I knew at ten would be far too romantic to consent to a four-man honeymoon. Yet the past decade seems to have changed him. He's definitely more assertive. Is he also more adventurous or, after ten years of sex play with Cody, even a bit jaded? I can't say, and the television set doesn't say; but I do know this - it's not ideal to learn about one's sexuality at too young an age. Meanwhile, back in the Mozart Room, Blair and Cody, still standing almost a yard apart and unsure how to re-connect, shuffle their feet. So too do many in the audience. This is not the Hollywood production that the attendees anticipated from the normally "gay" gay couple. Thanks to Blair's vapors and the minister's presumption, Ellen and Ollie enjoy uncontested center stage. As they embrace in the limelight, they linger ... and ... linger ... on the kiss that seals their marital bliss. The audience erupts in applause, prompting Blair, his lips firmly closed, to bestow a dry kiss on his beloved. Cody, taking Blair into his arms, finally kisses his bride. "Gosh," sighs Blair, his lips letting down their guard, "that's the Cody I know. It's taken him only a couple of minutes to improve his breath and technique by a thousand percent. How does he do it?" This time, with his own back to the audience, Cody, now thoroughly aroused, presses his "joy stick" into Blair's hand. "Behave yourself, little brother," Ellen whispers. You two can wait for the honeymoon if Ollie and I can." She and Ollie then win another round of applause for the longest kiss yet - it is a ladylike kiss, like the one Ingrid Bergman bestows on Humphrey Bogart in the movie Casablanca. Blair withdraws his hand long enough to cue the release of the two dozen doves from the cages that he's secreted behind a velvet curtain at the front of the Mozart Room. Majestically, romantically, the doves soar to the ceiling of the salon - like prayers to Heaven for the wedded bliss of the two young couples. Or so it seems until the doves, freaking at the enclosed space, start flying frantically above the audience in ever-narrowing circles, panic loosening their bowels. Mid-air collisions soon cause them to plummet to the ground like pelicans dive-bombing for fish. "I don't know why they're doing this," Blair gasps, as he steps daintily around a stunned dove, to drag his husband (his tuxedo splattered) towards an exit; "They behaved much better when I saw the very same birds released at a gay wedding at Russian River last summer." "That was an outdoor wedding," Cody moans. Breathless from sudden exertion, Maggie, asks her husband as they run from the Mozart Room: "Laird ... which one ... do you think ... will be first ... to give me a granddaughter?" "Maybe ... maybe ... neither," Laird gasps: "Ellen and Blair ... may both choose ... to adopt a boy." He bends over to catch his breath. "We can't let the child's gender at birth ... be an obstacle, can we?" Maggie replies after they had reached "safety". No longer winded, she declares: "My choice is definitely a granddaughter, one way or another. On that I am unanimous." The television suddenly goes dead. When I complain, when I ask to know if the two couples will live happily ever after, Madame Zeta chides me: I promised you a happy ending, and you've got it. Now you know that Ellen and Blair will be happy on their wedding day some ten years hence. What more do you want from me? To predict whether they will have happy marriages? No one can predict that. The outcome of a marriage is subject to so many variables that a happy ending depends on having a lot of luck. Will Ellen and Blair continue to bask in Good Fortune? The answer lies far beyond the capabilities of my rabbit Harvey or my crystal ball, of Tarot cards or I-ching dice, of tea leaves and coffee grounds, or of a witch's cauldron or Delphic oracle, or even of goat entrails or chicken bones to reveal. I suggest that you either consult an Aztec priest, if you can find one in New York, or you can return on Tuesday for my weekly, group s?ance at which we use a Ouija Board. The Ouija may be able to tell you something more. Take advice from an Ouija Board? Not on your life! I've seen the trouble it made for Dr. Mercury-Wilde. Kirk punched him out, remember? I've got a glass jaw. If I get hit by someone, I may never get back up. "Be sure to take an advertising brochure," Madame Zeta calls out to me, as I head off to my unknown future. - THE END - To those who have read thus far: "May you be poor in misfortune, rich in blessings, slow to make enemies and quick to make friends. And may you know nothing but happiness from this day forward."