Home is one of the central concepts in any person's mind and heart. It takes a lot to realise that the place you once called home might not actually be that anymore, no matter what has been done to it. Canada has been a safe harbour for former Americans with the courage to leave behind everything they once knew. But the courage to leave is nothing in comparison to the strength it took for a free woman to cross the border back to a country that would kill her for what she so proudly is. In her first post-war interview, legendary agent Mallory Kirk sat down with the Toronto Star's Cindy Kedrick to discuss her double life in "the heart of darkness", the past that led her into working out of SkyDome, and the woman who kept her centred through the years.

CK: Thanks for extending the Star- and me- this honour, Madame Kirk.

MK: I kick your [butt] once in practice fifteen years ago and now we're on formal terms?

CK: Fair enough.

MK: Besides, you didn’t even get it right.

CK: Okay, let's start there. According to Evan Jaymes at the Seattle Times, you reported to training camp with the Amazons as Mallory Basdeo. Where'd that come from?

MK: It's my wife's name- well, maiden name, I guess. When we got married in 2012, Geeta took my name, but it always [got me angry] when players changed their professional names, so I didn't make the change. Always felt kinda bad about it, like I was putting her in the wifey position, so when I signed with the new Seattle team, I figured I was changing jerseys anyway, so what the [hey].

CK: A remarkable woman, I'm sure, to catch you.

MK: You're full of it, I hope you know. Geeta reminds me that I have to be something special if I was able to land her. She's beautiful, she's witty, and she's brilliant. We met when I needed someone to set up investments for me— I had a little of the Kirk money, plus my professional salary, and I was drawing three salaries for several years. She did miracles. She's a genius at her work, and so subtle sometimes. I didn't even realise she was in love with me until she showed me a prospective fund with money in diamonds, gold, silk, exotic flowers, high fashion, and cacao, and even then, she had to suggest a time-share in Paris for me to get the hint.

CK: That kind of borders on the unprofessional, actually.

MK: Well, she was kidding. At least I think she was. I got the hint before she put money into anything. But you see how it works. She's always a step ahead of me. When she took my name, I thought, "wow, she really does love me, doesn't she?" It takes a lot for a professional woman to change her name, you know? New nameplate, new business cards, new identity, all of that, and I was letting her down by not doing the same. So I did it. Eventually. (smile that might be sheepish)

CK: Was it a hard choice for you to make? You are rather well known under your maiden name.

MK: Was it hard? Yeeeeah, it was. But I'm not sorry I did it. I love Geeta and I want the whole world to know that I'm hers and she's mine.

CK: You don't sound very certain of that, if you don't mind me saying.

MK: Didn't all your classmates major in communications, not psychology?

CK: I was always a rebel. Do you regret changing your name?

MK: No, all right? I'm not Kirk anymore.

CK: So let's tackle a different subject, since I know just how hard you hit. Since we started on the topic, let's talk basketball. What do you plan to bring to the Amazons?

MK: Same thing I've brought to the Tides: hard screens, fierce inside play, a reliable three-point shot, and hard-nosed defence. I've still got a couple of years left in me- good thing I've been healthy all my career. The only thing that's suffered is my conditioning, for a few reasons, but I'm working that out in camp. Playing in front of my home crowd is going to be— unbelievable doesn't even begin to describe it. I've never been a home player in Seattle before, but I know how the crowd used to be, and I know they're looking to prove that they've gotten themselves back.

CK: When you were with the Tides, you proclaimed that "outside shots were for sissies", despite having been top-ten in three-point percentage for three years before that. Now you say you're bringing it?

MK: I said that five years ago. Things change. People change. I learned how tough some outside shooters were and how soft some post players were.

CK: Any bold predictions for this season?

MK: We're going to surprise a lot of people. There are a lot of good young players out there who've had a year to fall out of their habits, or never had a chance to pick up any in the first place, and Lynne [Daniels-LaRosa, coach of the Amazons] is amazing with them. I'm looking forward to this season like none other, especially the matchups with the Rebels. I haven't been to the Garden in years.

CK: I remember it well. We had some hard work to do for those guards. New York was a good place to be, both before and during the Britney era. You went from safe haven in New York to safe haven in Toronto and Vancouver. What made you decide to not only return to the United States, but to Seattle, one of the most tightly controlled cities in the country? Did you know the risk you were taking?

MK: I kind of realized it, but I had work to do. Seattle is my home. My city. There were Kirks in Seattle before there was a Seattle. You [mess] with Seattle, you [mess] with me, and that blonde [trollop] [messed] with Seattle hardcore. I couldn't just stand by and let it happen. Passivity is the first step towards the rise of tyranny.

CK: Someone's been reading the Kincaid book.

MK: I only look dumb as a brick.

CK: So you felt you had to go back. That makes sense, but why did you choose to go undercover as a man?

MK: I look good in suits. I've got good shoulders.

CK: Other than your rampant vanity.

MK: Take a look at me. I'm tall, I'm big, and if Nita McKenzie says you got hit with the ugly stick… Look. Even if I swallowed my pride and put on a skirt and heels, no one would take me seriously as a woman. Besides, what did women get to see in that world? Game shows, soap porn, shopping? It might reveal their habits and their addictions, but those were already known. As a man I could hold down a job, get out and about, maybe find out something useful.

CK: So how did you get away with it?

MK: I'm not exactly feminine and delicate, in case you haven't noticed. I was keeping my hair short anyway, for pride's sake. A few pants adjustments made Kirk look like he had parts he didn't have and didn't have parts I kinda do. As long as Kirk looked enough the part and acted enough the part, no one would see the inconsistencies and question him.

CK: Whoa, sudden point-of-view shift. You just went third-person there. Part of your training?

MK: A major part of it. To function long-term in that society, it wasn't enough to pretend that I was under and rely on acting ability and drugs. I could have gotten away with it for a year, maybe two, but then I'd be a goner. Part of me had to be brainwashed to serve as a shield. So I created Kirk Drake in my head while Skydome's hackers created him in the various systems. We made him average, unmemorable, uninteresting. His grades were in the system at Oregon and good ol' Lake Washington, his vitals slipped into the system at Seattle Grace, his driver's licence and associated test grades were recorded with the DMV… you get the picture. And I worked with a team of psychologists to train myself in being a guy and to switch into that role on certain triggers.

CK: And this alternate persona was…

MK: Completely loyal to America, Channel 1, Britney, whatever he was told to believe in, he believed in. I just sat back and·watched him work, taking notes the whole time. He had no idea what I was doing. None at all.

CK: You talk about Kirk Drake like he's a stranger, but aren't we talking about your false identity?

MK: Well, he kind of was. A stranger, I mean. I didn't spend eight years as Mallory Kirk pretending to be Kirk Drake, with the chance of slipping up and revealing myself through a slip of the tongue. I spent eight years switching between being Mallory Kirk and being Kirk Drake with Mallory Kirk in the back of his mind. To be honest, Philippe got after me for the amount of time I spent as Mallory. He thought I was endangering the mission when I came home for weekends, but I had to reassert that control, and besides, a woman has certain needs, you know?

CK: What did you do that you were not proud of?

MK: I tried to keep Kirk out of things where he'd have to gay-bash or hang some unfortunate Japanese businessman from the nearest streetlight. I'm not happy about some of the things he had to say in order to fit in. And I did have to have a woman in the house who was, as far as the neighbors knew, Kirk's wife. Geeta was [very angry] about that, even if she knew she couldn't play the part and she knew Devon wasn't interested. Thank God for the CWBL. If Yuki [Nakamura, athletic trainer for the Vancouver Tides] hadn't whipped me into shape, I'd be as fat as the rest of them. Bad enough I had to hear it from the commentators about how I always came in out of shape until Phillippe had someone inform them that there was a reason for it.

CK: How much detail can you go into about the process? I understand there are state secrets involved, but-

MK: Part of why I agreed to do this interview was to come clean and put as much of my undercover days behind me as possible. I've been authorised to answer any and all questions fully.

CK: I feel obscurely flattered. All right, one thing you've gotten me curious about is how you triggered the switch. Was it a conscious decision, or could it happen by accident?

MK (laughing): Little of both. I underwent deep conditioning to respond to certain triggers. If I put on mainstream men's clothes, I switch a lot of my behavior. My voice goes down as deep as I can get it, I walk like I've got something stuck between my legs, my body language completely changes, all that kind of stuff. When I was still in full cover, the suit was my trigger to let Kirk take over, but the key was really the pants. If I took them down, I could take control even with the rest of the suit on. I did it every morning, just to remind myself who I was when the system tried to get into my head.

CK: Didn't anyone think it was… odd?

MK: Everyone at the office had a computer. Every computer had Britney's spyware. Every piece of spyware rewarded people with actress porn. You know what happens when guys see porn. There was always a series of synchronised bathroom breaks mid-morning, and everyone needed his own stall. As soon as Kirk's pants came down, I was back in control. Not that I didn't enjoy it in my own way, because I do appreciate hot women as much as the next man. Natalie wasn't quite my type, but you get what you can, and besides, that was a constant reminder of what I wasn't, if you know what I mean.

CK: Now you've got my face matching my hair, and that's just embarrassing. How else were you able to keep from going under, considering the constant pressure coming from all around you?

MK: I spent a lot of time as myself when I was home. Devon made sure of that- that was her job. The TV might have been on, but I wasn't drinking Oaktree and smoking Cowboy Lights. All things in moderation, though. I spent a lot of nights writing up my notes and drawing my conclusions. I had to stay up for the cheesy late night TV-movies, too. I might get in trouble for saying this, but Captain Canada was the hottest thing to grace a television screen. I love a woman in tight pants.

CK: So porn, booze, and drugs?

MK: (smile) They do a lesbian good. (serious) What I saw done to Seattle was enough to keep me from going under even if I hadn't brought my own beer and joints, and even if I had been born straight. What Seattle became is not Seattle, was never what Seattle was about. If it were just about hatred, homophobia, sexism, racism, whateverism, I'd have stayed here with Geeta and let them all go to hell in their own way.

CK: Do you really mean that? You don't strike me as the kind of person to stand by while injustice is done.

MK: If I had thought this was just the way people were starting to think, I would have been sad and [extremely angry] about it, but societies change. I would have just walked away and stayed away. But when I saw what happened to Seattle, I knew that whatever was going on wasn't natural. Seattle would have resisted if it could, and I'm told a lot of it did resist by going to New York or coming up here.

CK: What was the hardest part of your job?

MK: Making all the numbers make sense. I was never good at maths.

CK: Too busy practising stand-up comedy to work on it, I see. I meant your real job.

MK: Oh, that one. The hardest thing, emotionally, was seeing people I knew, or had known, seeing how they'd changed, and knowing that they didn't, couldn't, know who I was because I wasn't what they expected me to be. They couldn't recognise my face. I never tried, because it would have been completely and utterly unprofessional, but I know that if I had walked up to any of them and told them, "I'm Mallory Kirk," they wouldn’t have been able to process it. Either that or they would have yelled "d***!" and pulled a gun on me. Didn't want to risk that, either. I was a stranger in my hometown, and that hurt the most.

CK: You've been back in civvies for a couple of years now. Has it been hard making the adjustment to just living one life?

MK: I've only started fully making it. I had to tie up the loose ends on Kirk's life, get him out of his job, arrange for him to get out of his lease, sell his really ugly furniture, and have him disappear while the hackers removed him from the system just as nicely as they put him in. That took longer than I anticipated. I'm sure my psychologist would also tell me that it's not mentally healthy for me and Geeta to have moved into Kirk's old place, but it was vacant, close to public transit, and extremely affordable.

CK: And what about Kirk?

MK: Oh, he's dead.

CK: You're going to have to go into more detail than that.

MK: This is going to sound crazy, but the way I figured it, if he lived inside my head, he could die inside my head. So the same way I created him, I uncreated him. The physical triggers still work for me to deepen my voice and change my body language, but I don't start— I'm not— it's really hard to explain it. When he was there, if the triggers were in place and we were having this interview, the first reaction he would have is to correct you that his name was Kirk Drake, and he'd probably go off and make some remarks not suitable for polite company. Now I could sit here in a nice suit and a pair of briefs, and we'd have the exact same interview, except I'd be talking in a deeper voice. I have some memories I can't get at because I was less in control than usual, so when he went they went too.

CK: Sounds like quite a hard choice for you to make.

MK: Shouldn’t have been. He was kind of a[n rectal opening]. He was a red-blooded American male. He was the same kind of guy we were fighting against, you know? Know thy enemy and all that jazz. I spent way too much time living with him, so yeah, it was hard to kill him off, but I had to do it. I needed my head back.

CK: And he's completely gone?

MK: Gone like a thing that never was. Phillippe was [angry] that I arranged for that, because he thought Kirk could be useful again. But I still have the training. Oh, and the special pants. Those are fun.

CK: Still blushing here. What do you think the future holds?

MK: For me, for the world, for Canada?

CK: Take your pick.

MK: For me, basketball and settling back into Seattle as myself, with my beautiful wife by my side. For the world, rebuilding and reshaping America, and the turf wars as everyone tries to make it in their own image. For Canada, a place of power on the world stage that I hope she can handle. We're going to be living in interesting times… just like that ancient Chinese curse says. It'll be something to tell the neighbors' kids about.

CK: Or our own. Thank you for all you've done, and for your time with the Star. Good luck in Seattle!