Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Andi/Andy: Weird Christmas Break

For those who feel like I left my last post on a cliffhanger, Andy's date with Len was, sadly, not a disaster. I'm mostly happy about that, I guess. As much as it puts them on a path to having sex before we switch back, it's not like I want Andy to feel like his friend is rejecting him, and I sort of like the idea that he might find me attractive, even if a lot of it comes from actually clicking with his friend. It kind of took talking to Mom and Dad about it to think about it that way, and I don't know if I really fell it, but it could be worse. Andy isn't really that hot on getting that intimate with a guy anyway, so he'll probably be able to take it slow.

Plus, it's created more excuses to hang out with my friend Shawna.  Andy kind of likes to have me around when he and Len are out to kind of cool things off and warn him when he's getting out of character, so we find a way to invite her to keep anyone from feeling like a third wheel.  At first, it was super-awkward - she knew what was up in general, if not the extent of it, obviously, and didn't know what to say to "Andy" when "Andi" and "Len" were focusing on each other, but, hey, she suddenly realizes she can talk to "him"-slash-me.  It kind of works out.

Or I hope it does.  If she's trying to send me signals that I should ask her out...

At least being on break means we're not dealing with school right now.  It looks like there's another round of Covid chaos coming up, but at least it's not spending all day worried we'll get called out for not being nearly as knowledgeable in the classroom as we are on our homework - we try to write our own essays and stuff even if we can't take our own tests, hoping like heck that schools aren't going to weight SATs much because we can't fake that.  It's really stressful trying to be both Andi and Andy depending on the hour.

Especially for Christmas!  Since Mom and Dad know the truth and we weren't Zooming with the grandparents to start the morning, we must have looked weird under the tree, with the guy psyched about the Taylor Swift album on vinyl and the girl whooping at some football player's bobblehead (we're not total stereotypes but we're not exactly the opposite of what you'd think if you saw us with our normal bodies).  Mom and Dad like taking reaction pictures, which look screwy, although we kind of had fun recreating them so that they could have some to post on Facebook.  We kind of hammed it up a bit.

Still, the calls with the grandparents were awkward.  They'd mailed us presents from Florida and wanted to watch us open them, so I fake looking excited at what they got Andy and he acts like the hat with the pom-pom on it is way cuter than it is.  I mean, it's pretty cute, but he's not exactly into cute for himself, so he overdoes it a bit.

Lying to them sucks.  Lying to everyone sucks, but lying to them sucks more, and I hate that I'm kind of relieved that they couldn't fly up for the holidays so that I didn't have to be lying to them full time.

-Andi-with-an-I

Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Jordan/Yuan-Wei: How Did I Become the Voice of Reason?

I hit "new post" to offer some advice to Andi after reading her post, but just doing that made me pause, because who the heck am I to offer expertise?  Like, I fell into a situation where it seems like I know what I'm doing and have the resources to cushion my stumbles, and every once in a while I get Jonah asking me something like I'd know better just because I graduated college a couple times and now I'm acting like I can just jump into Andi's issues.

But, you know what, I kind of can.  At least enough to say it's okay to be freaked out.

I mean, you look at the way people stop posting individually or sometimes the entire blog gets real quiet for months on end, and you might think that when there's no relationship drama or external circumstances messing with chances to get back to the Inn, you're supposed to just have completely acclimated after a few months or whatever, but it's been seven and a half years for me and it's still weird as hell sometimes - fuck, it's weird more often than not, both because or in spite of being able to let family and friends in.

Anyway, I can speak to her specific situation a bit - go ahead and let a guy suddenly having an interest in Andy-as-you throw you!  Maybe you never though of him that way, but he sounds like he was a big deal and it's totally natural to have trouble with the idea that someone else is being a better you than you could be.  Benny dropped a huge chunk of fat that I'd just accepted and had girls looking at him in ways that they never looked at me, and even before Kareena, I had a lump in my stomach about fucking that up and then was mad about what he'd taken from me.  Yeah, I relinquished it willingly, but I had to, or else I'd be the asshole, right, and in a really bad situation with a good person.

So, it's probably a little too late because your brother went on his date while you were posting, and maybe it was a comedic disaster that will never be repeated.  But if it's not, tell him it bugs you so that he can slam on the brakes before it gets too late.  He's your brother, and I as much as Max would probably be pissed at me for horning in on his dating life just because it intersected with my life, I'm pretty sure he'd listed.

It's probably going to be nothing, though.  I mean, yeah, you see some people get all caught up in their new hormones and rewired brains and meet someone new or see someone with different eyes and just fucking go for it, but most of the time, diving into a relationship is hard.  Like, I enjoy getting laid and even going on dates, but when it becomes something else, I'm still trying to figure out how to make it work.  A lot of my not posting this year was because I met a guy and it was going well enough that I didn't want to jinx it, but it still never clicked.  I'm not trying to be the guy, exactly, but never really seemed to click as the girl, and a month ago he got frustrated with something stupid and we ended it.

Then again, you guys are teenagers and probably crazy with hormones and he might dive right in thinking he's just going to hang with his best friend and gets really caught up.

Probably not helpful, that last bit, but you've got to consider the possibility.

See, I suck at this.

-Jordo

Monday, December 13, 2021

Andi/Andy: Help!

Do I have the order right for my names?  I was born Andrea, but now I've got to be my brother Andrew, and since we're twins, our folks always made the effort not to elevate one of us over the other, but it always trips me up in stuff where order is important.

I don't know if I'm going to become a regular poster here, but I lost contact with Krystle-slash-Mackenzie when I changed "back", and I'm hoping that she reads it or her foster dad does or something, or maybe someone who has been in a situation close to mine, because I need some advice and Mom and Dad are being no help whatsoever.

So let's start from the top:  My family went to the Trading Post Inn at the start of summer - me, my brother Andy, my mom and my dad - and you know the drill; we got changed into new people, another family like us, who I guess were locals who had stayed at the Inn while some repairs were done on their house.  It was weird - Mom and Dad became Dad and Mom, and we had to get used to new faces - but mostly I was a year older and Andy a year younger, so I got to do some bonus college visits, but Winona's life was enough like mine that I could handle it, and Krystle was around if we wanted to talk to someone who wouldn't think we were crazy.  And since there weren't a whole lot of people making long trips and stuff because of Covid, we were able to do the backwards-reservation thing during the same summer, meaning we could put it all behind us, although we had to tell the school we'd gotten positive tests while we waited to switch back.

That should have been it, but SOMEONE put mine and Andy's luggage on the wrong sides of the room, and we woke up as each other!

Now, don't get me wrong, I love my brother.  We used to say that we were best friends even before we were born, although we've each got our own friends now and don't even have a lot of the same classes because he's weirdly good at social studies while I'm better at math and stuff like that.  He's also almost a foot taller than me - or I guess I'm a foot taller than him now - so I woke up with my panties digging into my hips and everything else that goes with it, and we both really freaked out when we looked under our shirts and pajamas and stuff.  But we instantly knew we were each in the same boat, so I wasn't mad at him or the other way around.

So, we went to our parents and said this had to get fixed, but they pointed out that there wasn't enough time to do it before the Inn closed for the season, so we'd have to spend our junior year like this.  Which sounded gross, although they said that experiencing life as the opposite sex had been good for them, which sounded REALLY gross, but we at least kind of understood what they were saying in theory.  Still, that's a whole year!

We made it kind of a game for a while.  We may have each had our own friends, but we all still knew each other, so we didn't trip up, and the fact that we have different strengths made it a bit easier to make excuses, because we each had to work a little harder at school to keep up, so not a whole lot of extracurriculars, and neither of us were stars anyway.  If I kind of suck at soccer, whatever, Andy was only on the JV team and wasn't counting on a scholarship or anything.  He bombed my audition for the fall play, but I've never had a big role, and he likes doing tech anyway.  We kept busy.

Somewhere in there, we started having to deal with health-class stuff, which was nasty, but we handled it pretty well, if we do say so ourselves.

Which kind of gets us in the general area of what I'm writing about.  Last week was our birthday, and though we hadn't really had joint parties for the past few years because that feels like kid stuff, Mom and Dad suggested we do it this year, and we liked the idea.  It winds up being kind of lame - it's cold and even though we see each other at school all the time and know that we're all vaccinated, folks get nervous in basements when we're not masked and it's weird when we are.  It breaks up kind of early, with just me and Andy's best friend Len hanging around playing some video game while he's giving my friend Shawna a ride home.

"Hey," he says, "I'm gonna ask you something and you don't have to answer if it's weird."

"Trust me," I say, "I'm okay with weird."

"So, I never thought of your sister this way, but for the past couple of months, there's been something different about her, and I was wondering if you'd freak if I asked her out."

I dropped the controller, obviously.

I don't want to make it sound like I've got a crush or anything - Len's been just Andy's friend for as long as I can remember, and I got so used to him as Andy's friend that I never started looking at him that way even when our bodies changed.  And his sure did change - he got tall quick, he's kind of got a perfect physique for the swim team, and he has to shave about twice as often as I do now.  He dated girls a year or two older than him freshman and sophomore years.  Even if I wasn't Andy's twin sister, he'd be out of my league.

Not that I'm unappealing as myself or anything.  I always figured I was average, but I could be a bit more if I put a little work in - my skin and hair were good and I wasn't totally flat or anything.  A little makeup, a lot of brushing, etc., etc.  Andy hasn't been one of those guys you read about on this blog who dives into girly shit or anything and hasn't really developed in a way I hadn't yet - he's maybe in a little better shape than I was before because he enjoys running, but it's not like he's wearing shorts and belly-shirts to show it off, just wedges and chunky-heeled boots on occasion because he feels short - so it's not like he's suddenly the sort of girl that Len notices.

I stalled, saying that "Andi" was her own person and all that, the kind of thing I'd say to Shawna if she suddenly decided my brother was hot, but it kind of felt like it wasn't me talking.  Len left soon after, saying not to tell anyone, but obviously I grabbed Andy when he got back and told him everything.

At first, he looked like he was going to puke, and we laughed at it, him eventually saying it was a terrible idea.  We decided that we'd play it cool - I'd say I was okay with it as him, he'd say it was too weird for him as me, and nobody gets hurt.  We just made one stupid assumption, that Len would ask him one-on-one.

He didn't.  Len asked my brother out in front of all my friends, who of course all said he had to say yes, so he did, and now they're out having dinner before seeing West Side Story (that he's seeing it before me despite me being the real theater girl would be so annoying even if Len wasn't involved!).

I don't really feel like I should be too worried about anything happening tonight, but are we doing the right thing here?  Is this the start of a slippery slope, or something that just messes with our heads even after we change back?

-Andi-with-an-I