Chapter One- Julian with the Dolls and Dresses

            I was always an odd child. There was little normal about me and I can only realize that now because I’m old enough to review old home videos, and recall the memories that stuck with me. I once bit another child’s nose because I felt like it. I was never violent though; I just wanted to know what biting a nose would feel like.

I didn’t start out feminine. My sister is probably to blame for this. Viviana is three years older than I am, and I grew up alongside her. The relationship between my sister and I was probably the most normal thing about my childhood. I am grateful for that.

Viviana was always a typical girl. She grew up with a pretty predictable childhood and I envied that. Not to be a predictable boy, but to be a predictable girl. I never wanted to be a girl, but I always wanted to be treated like one. I never liked what was expected of me as a boy. Ever since I can first remember, my mother had been saying I would one day make some girl “so happy”. I never liked being treated that way. I was taught to hold open doors and always to be respectful. My mother was trying to make me into the husband that she wished she had married.

The incident of the dolls came before the time of the dresses. As feminine as I was I was still a normal little boy. I like action figures and superheroes more than anything. I love to play with Legos and toys and even now you might still find me tinkering with some Spiderman thing. Anyway, the point that I am trying to make is that I wasn’t trying to be girly when I did it.

My sister had big box of dolls, dolls of all types, not just the typical Barbie and Ken, but little dolls from companies that no longer exist. And her dollhouse, that was something to see. My parents didn’t believe in plastic much, so they got my sister a huge, wooden dollhouse. It stood the same size at me at the time and it was incredible. Three whole floors of house. It was bigger than our own house. I think that any boy would have done it though. It’s not like it was so outlandish to play with dolls, I mean they’re basically actions figures with interchangeable clothes.

So I sat there, on the floor of my sister’s room and played with the dolls like there was no tomorrow. It felt good. It was like a high that only a four-year-old boy could feel. Barbie kicked Polly-Pocket’s ass all the way to the kitchen and back. Ken lifted the fucking house like it made of Styrofoam and smashed it on top of the homemade cloth dolls, and then he roared at the top of his lungs with a ferocity that startled people. But unfortunately the people that the roar startled weren’t dolls…

My mother ran up the stairs.

“What was that noise?” She barged into my sister’s room.

“Nothing” I rushed to hide Ken and Barbie under the bed.

“What are you doing?” said Carlota as she made her way further into the room.

“Nothing. I was just playing”

There was silence.

“Ernesto!” My mother shouted for my father.

“What!?” replied my father from his laid down position on the couch directly under us.

“Come upstairs!”

“…” Replied Ernesto.

“ERNESTO!”

Ernesto made his way up the stairs. His footsteps were slow, and the sound of his coming was easy to detect. I shivered in fear as I tried to put back the dolls without Carlota seeing. At the time I didn’t think that I had done anything wrong. I didn’t understand why playing with dolls was wrong but I understood that my mother being mad meant unhappiness for me.  Ernesto made his way to Viviana’s room. Feeling left out my sister joined us from the basement. All four of us existed silently in the room. Me, on the floor hiding a box of dolls behind my back, my sister, laying down on her bed, ready to watch the show, and my mother and father standing at the door, with the face that one gets right before they yell.

The details to follow aren’t pleasant; to talk about them would actually make me sad and angry with my parents, and continue to further destroy the relationship between us. But what I know is that an injustice took place that day, one that my parents and probably even my sister would forget, but it was an injustice nonetheless. This was one of the earliest memories I can recall, probably because of the impact that it had on me, and because of the impact that it continues to have on me. And because of the events that would follow because of that injustice.

My sister loved dolls. She loved to dress them up and make them look pretty. One day I decided that I wanted to be Viviana’s perfect doll. She dressed me up. I wore the cutest little skirt, and a nice blouse. We had put some lipstick from my mother’s room on me, and I looked adorable.

This was the first act of rebellion that I can remember.  Even back then I could understand what an injustice was. I knew that my actions regarding the dolls wasn’t wrong, not because I thought a boy being a girl was right, but because I just wanted to play with them like I would with action figures.

I rubbed on the makeup and pulled up the skirt with pride that day. Pride that I was teaching my parents a lesson. That they would feel like they had failed in raising me, and that I was in fact the thing that they punished me for being. I was a girl.

The scolding was even worse that time around.  But I felt satisfied afterwards. I had won. I had outsmarted them and they didn’t even know it. My mother and father would cry because their only son was in fact a girl. I manipulated my parents intolerance before I even knew what intolerance meant.

The dolls and the dress are the most important memories I have. Not because they are the most life changing or the most significant, but because they started it. It was those memories, those injustices, that have made me who I am today, and it was that story that starts my journey in this world. And as I was getting spanked that day, I was born. That was the day that Julian Vargas started.