The Adventures of Lesbi-Man

At four and a half, my daughter came out to us. Serena and I were swinging in the yard on a warm summer day, when my husband yelled down from the bathroom window. Whatever he asked and whatever I replied vanished the moment my daughter spoke. "And I'm a lesbian!" she yelled up to him enthusiastically, grinning.

My swing came to a stop. In fact, the entire planet stood still for several moments. "You're a what?" I asked her. My husband's jaw was hanging two stories down into the yard.

"A lesbian?" she said, suddenly unsure.

I don't know where she heard the word. My guess is that it came from a stray episode of "Friends," a show we stopped at for a few seconds a few times on our way to anything else. But then again, it could've come from anywhere. We have gay and lesbian neighbors in every direction; maybe she heard the word from us.

"Do you know what a lesbian is?" I asked. She didn't, and so I gave her a quick and dirty definition that wouldn't lead to a need to define more words. I told her that a lesbian is a woman who marries another woman. She'd understand it was different from a girl loving her sister or her mother. And she was only four.

"OK, Dad," she called up to him. "I'm not a lesbian!" And we went on swinging.

The following morning was warm and sunny, and my husband was, once again, in the shower. Serena had gone to the bathroom and was looking out the window, from which she could see into our neighbor's yard. "Oh!" she said. "There's Abbey in a bikini getting a suntan!" We liked Abbey. She and her sister were our best babysitters. "Abbey's pretty," she said. She paused a few moments and added, "Daddy? Maybe I am a lesbian!"

I have told this story dozens of times, probably to the same people. I told it at my 40th birthday party to a table full of lesbians, who laughed and clapped and whooped it up like guys in a locker room celebrating someone's having gotten laid.

I don't remember the precise moment that my daughter decided she wanted to be a boy, but it happened before she left preschool. She went from outfits with bumble bees and lady bugs, flowered tops and leggings, and overalls with cute frogs, to camouflage shorts and muscle shirts. Her gorgeous long hair was pulled into a tight pony tail at the nape of her neck, imprisoned in black elastic.

Barbie vanished into the bottom of boxes, while dinosaurs and GI Joe and Batman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came home from friends' houses and were soon gifts of choice for every holiday. Never a fan of girly dress-up clothes (we had a box of beautiful ballet costumes—never worn), Serena would often sport a necktie. She particularly liked the Harry Potter necktie that I painted for her Halloween costume one year and would wear it often, until I misplaced it.

She's seven now. She stamps her feet and has a tantrum whenever I tell her of an upcoming event to which she will need to wear a dress or even dressy pants. She hardly has any girl friends; her play dates are with this boy and that, different ones falling in and out of favor. When she plays with our neighbor, Caitlyn, they always play house, and Serena is the brother. For Halloween two years ago, she was Leonardo (TMN Turtle). Last year, she was Spiderman. When someone called her Spidergirl, my daughter corrected her loudly: "There's no such thing as SpiderGIRL. I'm SpiderMAN." And for that, she got two pieces of candy.

Sometimes, just for fun, we torment our daughter with promises of Hello Kitty nightgowns. We told her Santa was bringing Spiderman toys for the little boys, but the girls were all getting My Little Pony. It's fun to make her scream.

I sure do miss the old days of ladybug dresses and pineapple overalls. I miss the pigtails. Every once in awhile, I pull my daughter's ponytail holder out and spread out her beautiful hair. Last time, I took her picture so I could remind myself that I have a beautiful daughter hiding under the monster truck rally t-shirts and basketball shorts.

One night, while watching Best in Show, Serena noticed the couple with the Bijons and asked, "Mommy? Are they lesbimen?" We chuckled and told her they were. She decided it's what she is, too; after all, she loves boys, and she intends to marry one, even though she's a boy herself.

So this isn't about being a lesbian at all, and it's not about some gender identity disorder, either. This is about being boy crazy! Serena's first complete sentence was a complex salutation and question: "Hi, Boy! Kiss you?" (There's nothing cuter, really, than a tiny girl chasing a medium-size boy all over Safeway for a smooch, especially when the boy is a complete stranger and wears the frightened face of "Ick!")

It took that little girl no time at all to realize that little boys weren't interested in kissing little girls. She chased our 10-year-old neighbor and his friend around their yard until they abandoned her and went inside. She had to find some way to get them back out. So she became them. Now she's the only girl invited to all-boy parties. She's Harry Potter on the school yard at recess. And, because she really is a girl, she's also the boss.

This summer will likely bring another fight about whether she can wear Spiderman swim trunks and no top at the pool. But that's OK. I'm savoring the moments until she realizes that girls who hang with and behave like boys are not the girls they date. But I'm guessing she'll pick up on that pretty quickly. And then, well, as Santa put it when my beautiful four-year-old sat upon his lap: "Lady, you better get yourself a shotgun."