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Reese was a boy. He was more than that. He was a boy’s boy. The boy in “boys will be boys”. The boy in “boyish”. But he was different from the other boys. Not just because he was stronger or because he was scarier, but because he was born differently.
Lois and Hal never even had the chance to attempt to raise him as a girl. From the moment he was born he always wanted to play with his older brother’s toys. From the moment he could choose, he chose boys toys and boys clothes. From the moment he could speak, he would insist he was a boy just like his older brother. At first everyone thought it was cute, that he just looked up to his older sibling. But when he was 4, Lois and Hal started growing concerned. He would cry every time they tried to force him into a dress. So they took him to a psychologist, who told them they should start referring to Reese as a boy, for the sake of his mental well being.
Reese learnt soon after he started elementary school that the best way to get people to stop questioning him was by hurting them. Lois and Hal had been worried for his well being, afraid the other boys would overpower him. Their worries didn’t last long before they were called into school on the second day because Reese had a beat up a classmate in the playground. The principle thought they should be concerned at the development of their son, and they did pretend to be, but after the meeting they shared a moment of relief and pride that their second son would be able to take care of himself.
During gym class none of his classmates dared to ask why he got changed in the bathroom by himself. Everyone knew not to call him a girl or feminine as an insult, if they cared about their life. By the time he was 9 and they were discussing puberty blockers, Lois and Hal were more concerned that they’d created a destructive monster in Reese. By ten, they couldn’t imagine Reese as anything other than their son; their mischievous, grinning, dangerous son. Who they’d have to pull home from school by the ear after he got in trouble every week.
When the other boys in Reese’s class started getting smellier and hairier and hornier, they decided, with great dread of how puberty might escalate his antics, that it was time for Reese to start hormones. The little sister Francis had been promised was a long forgotten daydream. Malcolm and Dewey had only ever known Reese as their paradoxically mean but protective older brother. Dewey learnt from observing his older brother Reese in the bathroom that puberty involved smearing a cream his shoulders on every day. The puberty cream.
He asked dad at breakfast one day when he would start puberty. “When you’re older, dear.” He asked him when when he would get his puberty cream. Hal choked on his coffee, then tried to explain that Reese’s body needed a little extra help to make him a man, but that Dewey wouldn’t need that. Jealously, Dewey asked if Reese would stay a boy forever if he didn’t use his cream. “Not quite.”
A very confused Malcolm was thrown off by a panicked Dewey coming to him in crisis about which gender to pick when it was his turn to pick the puberty cream. A very angry Lois later confronted Hal about what in god’s name he had told the poor boy.
When Francis came out as bi after being sent to military school at 16 (the homoerotic all boys boarding school to gay sex pipeline at work once again), Lois sighed exasperatedly, “Well, we’ve got the B and the T, two more and we’ve collected the whole set.”
Having two queer kids, Hal decided to sink deep into research of queer topics, becoming a loud and proud supportive parent, much to the embarrassment and discomfort of the two kids in question.
One night, Hal crawled into bed where his attractive wife lay, and told her, “I just read about the most fascinating thing. You know how you said I was the only man on earth who doesn’t look at other women? There’s a word for that!”
One day Hal came home with one small blue, purple, pink flag and one small baby blue, baby pink, white flag.
“You know, many kids like you would be more than grateful to have me as a father, he defended, when both sons groaned with embarrassment.
But the bi flag was missing when Francis returned to school. And Lois came across Reese’s flag tucked neatly under his pillow while changing his sheets. Hal nearly cried when she showed him.