Roy: Not something I would have wished for myself.

It looks like I will be joining these kids on their international trek. I haven't gotten to know them very well yet, but I'm hoping we can come to some sort of an understanding. The silver lining in all this is that I kind of like Canada... I spent some time in Montreal, altho I don't know much about their west coast. I'm hoping it's culturally similar to Seattle or Portland.

As Lila seems to have already told you, my name is Roy Hutchison, I'm 34 years old, I work in geriatric care, and I'm gay. That last part does not mean I relish the idea of living as a woman, in this young, somewhat doughey body. After all, I put a lot of work into mine and now it's just... gone. Handed over to someone else, at least for the year. But if anyone had to be this woman, Christine, I guess it's only fair that it's me. We're all in the same age group (they aged up, I aged down,) but Christine's biography has more the ring of a "grown up." She Assistant-Manages a book store, she has a house... she's married.

I'm not crazy about any of this. I'm very, very not eager to pretend I'm somebody I'm not, and I know that relationships based on lies... well, let's just say I'm going to try my best.

Worse than putting on the femme is trying to reduce my life into a few sheets of paper. Even trying to boil it down to the essentials is hard. I want to draw a map of everyone in my life and how I know them, how I feel about them and hopefully the "new" me will be able to emulate that, but the more I try, the more frustrated I get that I have to do this. And then there's my job. I've spent a year getting really good at it, and now I have to cram all that into a few pages of instructions.

I told them basically that if it seems like too much, just ask for a leave of absence, because they don't want people who don't feel up to the task, and then find something, anything else to do for money in the meantime. I'll be disappointed if my life isn't just how I left it, but it wouldn't be the first time I started over.

That's all I feel like saying right now. Thanks. Bye.