Jordan/Yuan-Wei: Mothers & Matrimonies

Hey all, been a minute.  Just dropping in to congratulate Jonah/Krystle on her engagement and state for the record that while I would feel like a complete asshole to ask her to choose a date that's either the weekend before or the one after my brother Max's wedding next summer so that I could just take a couple weeks of vacation and minimize the brutal jet lag next June, I am absolutely not above just casually mentioning this circumstance in a slice-of-life blog entry about how I've evidently reached the point in my life where everybody I know is getting married and it's kind of a pain in the ass.

I am, of course, pretty happy for everybody in my life who is tying the knot, especially them, although I'm not likely to join them any time soon; I had a long string of bad dates before meeting the guy I'm seeing now.  The funny thing is that my mother is starting to get antsy, quoting some statistics about women over 30 getting married or having children, and I tell her that wither you consider me a man over thirty or a woman under, but you can't mix them up willy-nilly like that.  She says it's perfectly reasonable - I've lived that long and I certainly seem to identify as a woman - but she's had two kids and is about to attend her second wedding, anything from me is a bonus.

Meanwhile, both of the Chen-Ais got married this summer, and I was a bridesmaid at both.

For original Chen-Ai/current Bingbing, it's to some guy whose family owns a bunch of factories in Guangzhou, who doesn't seem particularly evil himself, but the rest of his family and friends...  Ugh.  This was my first trip into the Mainland, which I gather isn't necessarily that big a deal for a lot of Hong Kongers, but I've been kind of skittish about it.  I'm not politically outspoken, but folks know I've spent a lot of time in the United States and that I tend to take that perspective.  Plus, I'm a Chinese-American guy who has taken over the life of a Chinese woman and while we've all experienced how the Inn's magic keeps people from believing in it, maybe there's someone in the Chinese government who sees me or the "Lee Yuan-Wei" identity as an asset.  Or just a criminal.

It doesn't seem to have bothered Bingbing, though, who after draining her old bank accounts as much as she could without the lawyers starting to lean on her sought out a new potential rich husband, and this guy is probably a good target because he may technically be what they used to call a "princeling" - wealthy family, educated abroad, not involved with the business's day-to-day - he seems to be an earnest socialist and humble.  Enough that, after I'd wound up dragged along on a few outings with them, I asked if she has Inn-related plans for him, and she stook her tongue out saying "yuk, no interest in having one of those things on my body, and his is big that I don't know what I'd do with it."  I gave her a look and she said she liked being Bingbing and wasn't looking to change.  Much more fun, she says, to be the pretty wife who is good at social things than actually running the business

I think she remembered my skepticism, though, because I fucking swear she had the dressmaker make my bridesmaid dress tighter, shorter, and doing more to push my tits up into a plunging neckline than when we tried them on, so I spent the whole wedding and reception looking like I was some tacky Kong Girl trolling for a rich Mainland husband of my own from among the much-less likable folks on hand.  Just gross even when they weren't grabbing my ass.

(It's been a while, but, no, I haven't become a shrinking violet or anything; I just enjoy guys pawing me a whole lot more after we've established we like and trust each other than before, and part of that is them not being asshats because I'm not one to hide what yoga and dance do for me!)

I admit, I did agree to a date with the least-objectionable one, but I'm glad the night ended on a silly-seeming pop-cultural argument as opposed to actually getting near a second date.  And that wasn't all bad; the guy I'm seeing now had actually been in the restaurant and mentioned it when a dating app matched us up, saying that I was right and he was impressed at my willingness to call something a red flag.  So not a total disaster.

I'm happy for the newest model Chen-Ai, though.  As much as she's made some solid progress in that identity, Cantonese is a tough language to learn at her age.  Six months ago, she met a nice man her apparent age that works at one of the large UK-based banks, they hit it off, and when he was reassigned back home, he proposed.  And while immigrating to a new country by marrying someone from there is not nearly as straightforward as people assume - I've reap up on this "just in case" - Hong Kong to the UK is apparently one of the easier cases; the new quasi-stepfather says that making it easier for Hong Kongers who held UK passports before the handover easier to immigrate was one of the few good/competent things Boris Johnson did.

This was a much smaller ceremony, as a lot of Chen-Ai's friends have sort of fallen away as she disappeared and returned as someone else who had a hard time communicating with her.  It's good, I guess; she's going to be starting a new life on the other side of the world and being able to make a clean break is probably pretty handy, but she gave me this big hug like I was her actual daughter and thanked me for how much I'd helped her to be able to get by so that she could meet someone like him.

I'm not sure what to do with that, really.  I know that I was often a real asshole before going to the Inn and especially while I was Deirdre, and I don't really recall a point when I decided to stop being an asshole.  Anne likes to point to me deciding Benny could keep my old life as that moment, and, maybe, but sometimes I feel like I was more intimidated than generous there, or what it means that I had to be made attractive or female for me to treat others well.  I like myself more than I did, and it's not just knowing that there are folks out there who want to fuck me.  If the thing I've got going now doesn't work out, I know I'll be okay.

But Chen-Ai didn't have anyone from her old life when she got married as Bingbing; her real daughter and the real Bingbing are men in Montreal and I gather she didn't really have any regrets about their not being there.  I don't know if the original Yuan-wei will come when and if I get married, but she came to graduation and we get along okay.  We'll find a way to explain why my folks are there.

Is there a point to this?  Probably not.  It's just been crazy hot and busy and I've had my weekends eaten by weddings lately and I needed to blow off some steam.

-Jordo

Jordan/Yuan-Wei: City Without Baseball

It's a silly thing to worry about, given everything else, but Spring Training has started, and even though the Mets look like they're going to be a force this year, I kind of wonder if I'm going to be able to follow them from here in Hong Kong.  I can - the internet is a thing, obviously, and I can easily afford MLB's streaming package, but trying to watch postseason games in the morning last fall felt profoundly wrong even if work didn't get in the way.  It would be nice to develop a rooting interest here, even if the quality of play wasn't great, but...  Well, there's a movie I found in one of the video stores in the Ladies' Market a few weeks ago called City Without Baseball, and while it's not really about baseball and how there should be more, the name isn't wrong.  There's no damn baseball here and, like, should I start following some Taiwanese/Japanese/Korean team at random?  Would that make me the same as the fucking hipsters from back when I was my original self who started "supporting" an English Premier League "side" out of nowhere and then started acting snotty when I called it "soccer" instead of "football"?

...

Okay, so this isn't really about baseball and rooting interests, but, like, that's the most obvious and harmless way that being Yuan-Wei in something approximating what the original Yuan-Wei's life might have become is messing with me these days.  The only time I actually speak English is at work or when talking with "Mom", and even she wants me to help her practice Cantonese these days.  I'm glad to, because...

You know what?  I should have led with this.  The person who was living the live of the lady now going by "Wang Chen-Ai" died a month ago.  It took us two weeks to find out because, I mean, why would you tell some random middle-aged woman in China that your grandma passed away, and neither of them really did social media.  It's not immediately some sort of tragedy in terms of someone's life being cut short because they aged fifty years overnight - I gather it was someone about the same age - so maybe something like that is going to happen down the chain, but it was a shock.  Fake Chen-Ai figured she'd had at least ten more years in her once she got back to being herself, but, well, sometimes a decline comes fast.

I don't really know what she's thinking, but she's seemed really shaky at times, so I've tried to spend more time with her.  She's been taking Cantonese lessons and appreciates when I help her practice, and about a week ago she said we should probably try to do more together, stuff that looks like mother/daughter but is just two people trying to get to know each other and the city we're supposed to call home on the one hand, and maybe trying to carve out some sort of corner where we can kind of be ourselves, and she says she and her father used to watch the Giants a lot back when they had just come out west, so I thought maybe that would be something.

Selfishly, I'm not happy but with this turn of events but kind of like the idea of not having to start over with a new fake mother every year or so.  I tell her that a lot of us have gone through something big like this, but she's kind of getting a lot of culture shock that she'd been able to stave off by leaving a lot of things to Chen-Ai/Bingbing and staying in, and I'm not sure of the best way to help.  There aren't fucking books on this!

(And, once again, I want to know how things got to the point where I'm the mentor/voice of reason!)

-Jordo

Jordan/Yuan-Wei: Finally Being Called "Home"

I'll get to the title I just entered, but first - do you ever think of how weird "Western Names" for Chinese people are?  Like, if I asked you what your favorite Chan Yuan-Lung movie was, you'd think you'd never heard of the guy, and that's kind of fucking crazy - you would think that after decades of having success on both sides of the Pacific, folks would at least absorb the name by which Jackie Chan is known in Hong Kong as a fun piece of trivia, or maybe try to use it more if they're good progressive folks, but nah - they (heck, I admit it, we) just keep using the name he chose because white people couldn't handle a Chinese name and he wanted to do business with them.  Even though people use the names of Japanese and Korean actors all the time, this weird and sort of racist tradition continues.

Although, heck, I'm named "Jordan" because my parents wanted to make things easy on me and Max at school and later on, and I went to using that after graduating college as Yuan-Wei because I'd rather go by that than "Missy".  Sometimes, growing up, I kind of wished I had a Chinese name; today I'm kind of grateful because it gives me a way to more easily reclaim a bit of who I am than other folks who have been to the Inn get.  Being Jordan Lee lets me more easily separate myself from Lee Yuan-Wei, even if it also means I'm also not Jordan Chang.

But it's apparently time to accept being Lee Yuan-Wei more.  The person who has been Wang Chen-Ai for the past couple of years is kind of stuck in Hong Kong despite not really knowing any Cantonese or Mandarin - just disappearing in the United States for a few months gets a flag put on your passport, apparently.  It's not as bad as it sounds - you can get by there just speaking English, and whatever magic the Inn has which keeps people from believing it exists must make her claim that some sort of stroke erased her first language but not her second sound less ridiculous.  She's hired "Bingbing" - the original Chen-Ai - as an "assistant" despite my warnings, but I can't exactly argue with someone on the other side of the world and a different culture from what is home that she shouldn't lean on the person who knows it best.

The family's lawyers feel a little differently, though, and have contacted me, saying that I really shouldn't leave my mother in this situation.  Romain and René - the original Yuan-Wei and Bingbing - either don't have super-strong opinions or just sort of freeze trying to figure out what their interest should be at this point and I don't blame them.  Meanwhile, my employer is finally getting around to opening a department in Hong Kong; they'd planned to do it a couple years ago, but then there was a fucking pandemic.  Now, though, they really want a piece of the visual effects market in China, and to a lesser extent Korea, Japan, and India, and here I am, with a pretty good record, speaking the language, and technically only living in Southern California because they sponsor my visa.  As it turns out, the timing of this works out pretty good for "Lee Yuan-Wei" - because they couldn't open two years ago, I've got more experience, so if I transfer to the new location, I'll get a promotion to lead animator, probably a couple years ahead of when I would if I stayed in L.A.  It's a good opportunity, but I'd like it more if it felt like "spend a couple years overseas, come home with a promotion" rather than maybe the end of my life as an American.

I don't think my employer would fire me for not going, but I have joked about it being a shame I'm not in a relationship so that I could believably become a citizen through marriage.

As you can see, there's a huge part of me that hates all this and resents that it's going to push me into upending my whole life again, and I kind of want to do what i did when I woke up as Deirdre and just put my foot down and say fuck it, I'm going to keep living my life no matter what.  But I was talking to my folks, and they kind of pointed out that the Inn has been good to me.  Not that I should be grateful for the way it messed up my life, but I've got friends, I'm physically younger, healthier, and more attractive, if in a different way.  This life comes with resources and I've been able to redirect it into something that probably suits me better than both my original path and the one it was on.  I've got friends in Annette, Jonah, Ernesto, and a few others like I haven't had before.  If that means helping to look after some 75-year-old white woman who finds herself trapped in a Chinese life she doesn't understand, I guess it's not a bad price.

I'd just like to feel like I've got a little more control over it before something else sends it in a different direction!

-Jordo

Jordan/Yuan-Wei: Different sorts of weird

Hey, it's been a minute, and I can't even really say that the last year of my life has been screwy in ways that don't involve the Inn, because I've still been in contact with Chen-Ai/Bingbing about stuff, and she still acts like she wants to be friends. Like, the sort of friend who charges you ten thousand American dollars to sign documents so that nobody goes looking for Chen-Ai because she didn't file her taxes on multiple continents, but still a friendly sort of mercenary.  We're helping each other out, so I should be happy to kick some cash her way!  Really, she says, I should just let her hire herself as her own business manager.  I'm actually not sure why she hasn't just gone and done that anyway, beyond maybe not wanting to have an ugly confrontation when the Inn spits out a new Chen-ai.  I half-suspect that she had someone lined up, but she's gotten cagier since the pandemic, because who knows when there will be enough people at the Inn to trigger the curse?  It didn't happen at all this year, from what I can tell, and I have moments when I think we won't be out of the woods by next May.

I never thought I'd be thankful for travel restrictions, but she absolutely would have come to visit "friends in California" this summer if that had been a thing.  Of course, on the other side, it's been a tricky thing with my visa.  VFX work is still going on, so I've got a job in California, even if CGI is not as easy to do from home as you might think - the 3D scanners and powerful render farms are at the office, so I'm a bit limited in what I can do at home and there's lag.  Plus, the amount of work has tapered off as studios push movies out and thus need less overtime to hit a date, and a lot of film and TV just hasn't been shooting, which means less work is coming in.  Ironically, a lot of what is coming in is from China, which raises the question of maybe me working from "home" in Hong Kong.  There's been talk, but the lag would really suck unless we opened an actual office there, which the guys up top aren't quite ready to do.  Plus, if I leave here for Hong Kong, who knows when or if I'll be able to come back.  My passport as Yuan-Wei may be Chinese, but in my head and heart I'm still Chinese-American, and not being able to see my family or anything would just suck.

Not that I don't occasionally think of picking up stakes and settling in Hong Kong for good.  It's not like I didn't notice racism for the first twenty-five years of my life, but when you're a big guy who has lived in Queens all his life, your voice says you belong there, you've got places you can go to escape it because everyone's Asian there, and I was kind of tough to beat up.  I didn't know much kung fu, but I was fucking difficult to knock over at my size.  Being fat isn't much fun, and makes you another sort of target, but I didn't get kicked in the face like the skinny guys did.  It's something I didn't have to deal with a whole lot after becoming Yuan-Wei - I spent my time in good environments and the creeps just thought I was exotic and might be excited to fuck any white guy - but ever since people started in with that "China virus" shit, there have been a whole fucking lot more people yelling at my ass, and some of the worst are in the nice neighborhood where I live.  Like, Wuhan is as far from Hong Kong as L.A. is from Texas or something, but they don't even need to see me pull out some sort of ID that shows me as legally an immigrant to figure that I personally brought the virus here and my having a house is stage one of some communist conspiracy to kill all the white people and take over their country, but I guess these guys have always been rich white assholes and they are not handling the first time they've ever felt unsafe or restricted very fucking well at all.

They need a trip to the Inn, every fucking one of them.

I don't know if that would really change them, though.  Like, I always used to think that the last few years have really changed me, but seven months of mostly staying in has me wondering how much the stuff I thought was different really was.  Sure, I've got a clitoris which has a direct line of communication with my pleasure center, and I'm kind of at the point when whatever chemistry happens in your brain when you're around a guy with the right pheromones is starting to train me to find them attractive even from a photograph, but, shit, that's just chemistry.  I'm back to hanging around the house, working on a computer all day and then either shifting it to gaming mode or finding something on Netflix after that, pretty much like before I went to the Inn the first time.

It's starting to make me feel like I'm seeing a stranger in the mirror for the first time in a while, too.  Especially since I'm not really using that time to make the girl in the mirror into what I want from her, unless I know I'm going to have a video call with upper management or a client that day.  The rest of the time, there's no point in makeup, and I'll just slip into a t-shirt and either some loose shorts or some leggings, and flip-flops for shoes.  I haven't worn heels in long enough that I went to the closet and made sure I could still walk in them while writing this.  A lot of my female co-workers have said that they're not looking forward to having to wear bras again when this is all over, but I'm not quite with them on that; my tits are just big enough that it stops being fun after a few hours.

I haven't quite eating too much or stopped doing yoga, and I've even started swimming a bit in the little slice of ocean I've got behind my house on occasion because I do like seeing a narrow waist in the mirror, but it's an effort and between that and my period, I'm starting to wonder what the point of being Yuan-Wei is if I don't get to hang out and be with other people.  It seems to be a whole lot more fucking work just to be the person I used to be!

And it makes me wonder how much this Inn stuff really becomes normal.  Annette and I have talked about how we're not like "regular" trans people because we figure that the part of our brain that determines gender identity also gets changed by the spell, and we just have to catch up the same way we do with who we're attracted to, but I'm starting to wonder if I ever really accepted being a woman, or if it just seemed like an okay trade-off to having a chance to go back to college and be popular and have lots of sex this time, even if it was the other kind.  Now, though, I'm starting to wonder if I'm actually comfortable with being a girl, or if I just like being attractive and popular.

-Jordo

Jordan/Yuan-wei: Not Seeing a Master Plan Yet

Jacky kind of left his post-Inn visit to chance, but that is not how Chen-ai operates.  I may not know what her whole deal is about, but she had never sprung anything on me that hasn't taken some planning, even if I never see it coming.

Take last night.  My co-workers and I are rolling out of the building at around 9:30pm - something can't miss its Christmas release date, and, no, it's not Star Wars - and doing the usual when we've been hit with that much unpaid overtime:  Grabbing a snack at the taco truck a couple blocks away, because we've worked straight through dinner and who is going to want to fucking cook by the time we make our way home through traffic?  Add some beers from a nearby convenience store, and it makes for a fine end-of-week bitch session.

It's my turn to buy the beer, and I'm walking back to the truck when a bright green convertible slams on the brakes and turns into the lot.  The driver gets out, a blonde wearing a sparkly pink dress that shows pretty much all of her legs and has a plunging neckline that makes it clear she's got the sort of slender build to go braless, plus matching stiletto heels and dark sunglasses.  She makes a beeline in my direction.  "Missy?"

My colleagues raise their eyebrows, and I'm pretty confused too.  "Do I--?"

She takes off the glasses, and it's suddenly more obvious that the blonde hair is a dye job.  "It's me!  Bingbing!  Oh my god, the look on your face!"  She quickly pulls a phone out of a handbag, shoves herself against me, and takes a tongue-out selfie with one hand while extending the two fingers with the other.  "Can you believe this?  Missy and I grew up together in Hong Kong, and then I'm out here doing a scavenger hunt of all things, and I find her!  What are the odds?"

All my friends are smirking like seeing me uncomfortable is hilarious.  Rafik is the first to respond.  "If you want to catch up--"

"No way."

"Yes!  We're supposed to do this with partners, but since I'm between boyfriends...  Oh, you're still hung up on that!   But that was ages ago, and we were totally different people!"

I sighed.  "Fine.  Whatever you say."

Chen-ai/Bingbing squealed, and everyone made a point of calling me "Missy" as I got in the car, barely shutting the door before she hit the gas and tore out onto the highway, leaving me grabbing hold of the door while trying to buckle my seat belt, and soon work was out of sight (along my own car, I suddenly realized).  I looked over at Chen-ai, expecting her to drop the act, but she just switched to Cantonese.

"I should have done this years ago!  Is this what it felt like for you, seeing Yuan-wei's face in the mirror after choosing not to go back to being that fatty again?  So light and sexy and full of energy and free?"

"No!  What the fuck is wrong with you?"

She didn't say anything for a few minutes, and then seemed a little more serious and like the Chen-ai I remembered as we pulled into a gas station.  "You know, it's going to go a lot better between us if you just let some things go.   I promise."  She reached into what passed for a back seat and pulled out a garment bag, then nodded toward the restrooms.  "C'mon, go get changed."

I thought of refusing, but we were kind of out in the middle of nowhere and pissing her off was maybe not a great idea.  I snatched the bag and went to the back of the station, hoping this wasn't how I got left behind.

It was a really nice dress, as sparkly as hers but not quite so low-cut, even if there was no wearing a bra with it.  The cut (and underwire) pushed my tits up and in, anyway.  The matching handbag was just big enough for phone, wallet, lipstick, keys, and pepper spray; the matching shoes were also stilettos, and I felt a little wobbly from not having really gone out in a while (and folks were just going to have to deal with my unpainted toenails).

Chen-ai hadn't abandoned me, so I tried to play it cool.  "Pink and blue dresses?  Trying to say something?"

"Nah, it's just funny.  We've got a private joke."  She let me get secure in my seat before driving off this time.

We were in the city a half-hour later, able to walk past a round-the-block line at a club.  She asked what I was drinking, I said a 7-Up, and she said "Bicardi & 7, got it."  Before I could say no, it was in my hands.

We attracted attention, and though we weren't attached at the hip for the next three hours, I would always find her near me after a while.  I'm not going to lie, there were moments when I was a bit carried away by the great DJ, the cool light show, and the very hip crowd.  Some folks bought me really expensive drinks, and I do have the phone number of an actor who went from flattered that I recognized his face to curious when I said it was from putting it on a stuntman's body.

But Chen-ai seemed to being having an even better time, grinding on the biggest stars in the place, screaming that she loved that song, flirting and getting numbers from people half her age like it wasn't fucking weird at all.  Every once in a while, she'd make sure to introduce me to one, taking about how he might be a really good contact to have, or saying he'd been looking my way.

I guess she didn't quite know how much Bingbing could hold, because after a while she put her arm around my shoulders and said she needed me to drive her to the hotel.  I disentangled myself from the finance creep who was hitting on me, got her to the sidewalk, and took the key when the valet returned.

The car was annoyingly fun to drive, and the hotel was five-star.  I tried to drop her at the elevator, but she grabbed my hand, half-drunkenly saying we had to talk.  Her room was a suite, of course, and she had apparently already used the place's app to order room service, remembering how I liked my steak.

Hungry from not having my tacos hours ago, I attacked it right away, looking up to see her smiling.

"So what's this all about?  Making sure I can see how well you planned everything and prepared to fit in so that I don't try and push back?"

She gave a little "ugh!" gap, like the accusation was me being paranoid.  "Fitting in's not that hard, Jordo.  Like, all those eighties and nineties movies and TV shows you millennials watch, that's us.  Not that much has changed other than the phones!  And as for what it's about, like I said, it's easier for everyone if we get along.  Everyone thinks we're best friends anyway."

"Right, you want to be my friend."

"Why is that so hard to believe?  I told you that I'm impressed by how you handled all this, I stepped in when I saw Carlotta and Giorgia were trying to mess with your life, I've shared what I know about the Inn.  I know it's not great that I never really learned to play the part of a good mother because I resented Yuan-wei and that I like you better than her, but now I don't have to!"

"If you like me so much, why did you make me dump Jacky?"

"Did that turn out to be a bad thing?  Look, it's not your fault that you never developed the instinct for when guys are trouble the way other girls do, but were you going to listen to the woman you imagine is some sort of supervillain if I said he set off alarms?  Obviously not.  I figured maybe a little time as a woman would have made him appreciate you more, but from how receptive you seemed to be to other guys tonight, I'm guessing it didn't turn out that way."

I didn't concede the point, but I didn't say anything.

"Besides, you're going to want me by your side when they start asking about your mother."

That was what I was waiting for.  She said it in the same casual, fun-loving way as everything else, but a chill went up my spine and I carefully set my fork down.  "Chen-ai, what did you do?"

"Nothing, really, but my old identity is in limbo, so when nobody sees her for a few weeks, there will be some questions, especially if anybody finds out she's not at that place I checked myself into."  She gave me a look like I was the one making trouble.  "What?  It's not exactly easy to disappear for long enough to overstay a visa.  But I trust you to cover for me!"

"You expect me to cover for you?"

"I wouldn't have given you power of attorney otherwise, although I admit, I did figure you'd be coming to your friend Bingbing for advice."  She shrugged.

"What the fuck else?"

"What do you mean?"

"What sort of other fucking mess have you stuck me with?"

"There's no other mess, and the business runs itself."  I crossed my arms and stared bullets.  "Okay, fine, I put ten million dollars into a numbered amount.  Hong Kong dollars, not U.S., I'm not greedy or anything.  It's just kind of like start-up money."

"You did what?!!?"

"Hey, I earned that money, and I deserve to take some with me!  It shouldn't affect you at all - I didn't touch your trust fund, and barring any sort of emergency, nobody will have any reason to freak out and call the police about how your frugal, sensible mother hasn't been seen in weeks if you just stay in California and let our employees do their thing."

I pushed away from the table.  "There's the fucking threat."

She stood up and chased after me.  "It's not a threat, Jordan, it's precautions, just in case something went wrong or I got homesick.  I didn't even see the need to tell you before you started interrogating me because I could see you're so happy here and such a good person.  Trust me, we're going to be great friends by this time next year.  Maid of honor at my wedding."

I snorted, and she ignored it.  A big, genuine-seeming yawn escaped her.  "Wow, I haven't had a night like that in twenty years!  I've got to crash.  The hotel laid out a toiletries in the other bathroom and some really great pajamas in the other bedroom, so we can talk more in the morning if you want."  She hadn't taken her heels off, and giggled as she had to find her balance on the way to the bathroom.

I said hell no to that, calling to charge a cab to the room as soon as she had closed the door.  I'd been watching my drinks, but I still felt pretty drowsy when I got home, and feel asleep right away.

This morning, there were text messages from "Bingbing", saying she understood this was going to take some time, and since she had to go back to Hong Kong anyway, she'd give me my space.  Then the selfie she took at the start of the night.

The whole night almost doesn't even feel real, even with that stupidly nice dress hanging by the hamper.  There's got to be some sort of angle.  There's no fucking way that Chen-ai really thinks we're going to be besties after all she's done, unless she's crazier than I thought.

-Jordo

Jordan/Yuan-wei: Half a World Away

Been a while since I checked in, but I guess that happens to everyone - at a certain point, you are Jordan Lee Yuan-wei, recent college graduate with a job in the visual effects industry, and the fact that you used to be Jordan Chang, male and five years older, is less important on a daily basis.  Especially with my parents doing their best to act like I was born this way.  It was weird to get earrings for Christmas from my mom, but I'm not complaining.  Even though becoming a girl hasn't made me really into jewelry, that's her accepting a lot.

Of course, I don't may have one mother now, and Yang Chen-ai has been anxious in recent weeks.

I know that not many Americans have been following the news out of Hong Kong (this country has its own issues to fill all your worrying about the world going to hell needs), but it's something I get asked about a fair amount because I'm from there as far as anybody who doesn't know about the Inn is concerned.  What's going on scares the shit out of me, to be honest, because there's not a lot of scenarios that don't have Lee Yuan-wei going back there for more than a visit at some point, and I'm scared that it's never going to be close to the place I know again.

On the one hand I don't know if Chen-ai really cares about that.  Maybe she does; even evil people can love their home, though I think she's mercenary enough to put up with anything so long as the business continued to bring money in.  On the other, well, she had had her husband killed with the intention of setting me or whoever else wound living Yuan-wei's life up for the fall, so who knows what else she's afraid of happening to her should China take more direct control over Hong Kong and start looking into things that had previously been ignored.  It's enough to spook her, enough to get in contact with Bingbing and hint that if she would like to go back to her real life, that could be arranged, if Chen-ai were to become her.

I'm almost angry that she said no, for a bunch of really fucking stupid reasons.

I suppose all of you that read this blog because you, not having been to the Inn, see it as a weird or kinky fantasy saw this coming, because it's the most dramatic way to fuck with me, but it turns out that the person who has been living the life of Chen Bingbing for the past couple years is, you guessed it, my ex-boyfriend Jacky.  The one I broke up with because Chen-ai promised to ruin our lives if I didn't.  Who then, apparently thinking that I wasn't upset enough by the whole state of affairs, proceeded to fuck and then get involved with my brother without telling either of us what was going on.

The whole finding out deal was weird - I guess Jacky found out that Chen-ai was sleeping with whoever was living his life (he was working as her personal assistant), figured that meant he was never going back, so came clean to Max.  They didn't immediately break up, but he told me, and...  Well, the whole thing felt gross, and for a while my brother and I weren't talking, but eventually he met another girl and decided he didn't want to be in a relationship that wasn't just about the two people involved.  Jacky/Bingbing graduated from college this May and went back home to HK, and we'd kind of figured that was it.  I wanted that to be it.

I asked him what he wanted, and while he said that he had come to accept the idea of being Bingbing for the foreseeable future, it wasn't like he'd put down roots, and I can testify that the call of "how things should be" is damn strong, even when everybody thinks they're probably better off.  So who am I to tell him that there's probably some major league catch?

It's got me stupidly distracted, though, to the point where people are noticing at work.  I can tell them that I'm worries about folks back "home", but the truth is, they really don't give a shit; they just can't have our team missing deadline on animating a swarm of monsters.  so there's been a lot of overtime and I probably haven't been doing my best work.

And I don't get it.  I've always had it in the back of my mind that Chen-ai might decide to leave her old life behind and become a generation younger, I always thought it would be to become Yuan-wei.  It's just so much fucking simpler!  Has she stayed liking me enough to not want to mess with my life, or does she see some other way to mess with me?

Who the fuck knows?  This shit doesn't matter as much as the rest of what's going on in Hong Kong, and I wish it wasn't my first concern about the whole thing.

-Jordo

Annette & Jordan/Yuan-wei: Graduation

Annette:

This probably comes off as a little weird, but since both Jordan and I graduated from college a couple weeks ago, we figured it would make sense to do this as one post together, rather than bore you guys twice.  We were going to do it right after my graduation, but we got really busy - I'm moving in with her for the summer, and that takes some effort, we've both been looking for work, she's got immigration things to figure out...

Jordan:

We really need to get an Inn person into ICE so that we can say "I was born here" and they'll believe you and find a way to make everything work.  Sure, I'm not the sort of person those fuckers target, but who knows whether Americans will freak out about Chinese people by the time they can send me back to Hong Kong for overstaying my student visa in a couple of months.

Worrying about that sort of stuff was part of why I thought about skipping graduation altogether.  I'd done it before and it seemed kind of strange to invite those who remembered back for another one, and it also meant that Chen-ai was going to be there.  We avoid having to pretend to be family these days, but some things can't be skipped without people hitting you with way more pity or suspicion than you want to deal with.

Despite switching up my studies after my first year as Yuan-wei, graduating late or the like was never going to happen.  I didn't get the marks I'd hoped for on "I, Fembot" even though there weren't a whole lot of complaints about technique.  Someone thought it was tacky for me to use those themes and dinged me for that. 

Annette:

If only they knew!

Jordan:

Whatever; all the folks I've shown it to who have been turned from men into women and had to deal with new urges like it, and it gives me something to show prospective employers on Vimeo.  Freaked Harmon out to see the finished product, though.

And Ernesto seemed to think it was pretty decent.  He jokes about the best part being the brain he made and seeing "Alicia" vamp it up after being so prissy off-camera, and kind of doesn't entirely get that he does a lot of the "guys expect too much of women" stuff we're spoofing, but he thinks it's funny anyway and is impressed that I did some coding for some of the effects work.  He wanted me to show it to his family on Saturday night, but his grandmother seemed like she wouldn't be amused by the sex stuff.  On the other hand, not showing them stuff we'd worked on together made them positive that I was his girlfriend.

Annette:

You should be his girlfriend.

Jordan:

Even if I was interested, Chen-ai would destroy him and you know it.  You notice I haven't heard from Jacky at all since dumping him?  You'd think he'd be at least try to win me back rather than just giving up.

Annette:

Apparently not having a penis for four years doesn't get "no means no" to sink into a guy's head.

Jordan:

You're a fuckin' riot.

Anyway, Sunday was the big day.  I got a bunch of texts in the morning, half congratulations and half asking what was going on later.  I didn't get to meet anybody who had come to town for it before heading to the building, dressed a little nicer than I initially planned to.  It was hot and humid enough for cutoffs and a crop-top, but Romain was going to be there, so I did wear a nice dress under my robe.  It would have been nice to send Chen-ai home with pictures of me looking trashy, but Romain deserved better.

Annette:

Is it weird that I've got a crush on Romain and René as a couple?  Like, I want to figure out how they could fit me in?

Jordan:

YES.

Anyway, graduation was, like, pretty much the same as the first time, only longer, and I was doing it in heels this time.  Not a huge deal - I've made stilettos my bitch by now - but not ideal.  Ernesto's folks waved, Chen-ai nodded, and that was that.  I was kind of glad Romain had decided to forego sitting in the audience (even with a couple of seats between him and Chen-ai, it would have been fucking torture for him), even though he'd wanted to be here.

Chen-ai had a list of places where she wanted pictures with "her graduate", so we ran around town for the rest of the afternoon.  I think the only time we really spoke during it was when she decided she wanted a snack at Flour and set out what sort of budget I should adhere to in various cities.  We had the conversation in Mandarin, at her insistence, leading her to say Beijing was out about halfway through.

Annette:

What's the furthest from her you could reasonably go?  New York?  London?

Jordan:

You joke, but...

Annette:

So, did she just fly in for the ceremony and then leave?

Jordan:

If she did, she's got a demonic ability to avoid jet lag.  But, no, I think she arranged some business things, and I figure she wanted to talk with Bingbing at some point.

Annette:

Must have been later in the week, because I was fifth-wheeling it with her & Max & Romain & René until you got to The Changeling, and she didn't even get a text.

Speaking of, how awesome was the cake Ashlyn and Jonah got for us? 

Jordan:

FUCKING INSANE. 

Like, I know Ashlyn likes to doodle and draw, but five or six pictures of us as we were from before we went to the Inn until we're in caps and gowns printed on a lenticular card and put on the top of the cake...

And it was a damn good cake!

Annette:

Plus, the look on Max's face when you mentioned carbs...

Jordan:

The hotness does take more than good genes and yoga to maintain, sadly.  But I guess that's another thing I've learned and gotten better at these past four years, right?  Learning how to handle my body so that, no matter how it's shaped, it looks and feels right and shit.

Annette:

To tell the truth, I'm still not sure what I want to be like that.  Sandra left me kind of skinny and living with a bunch of judgmental sorority sisters after I'd just come off three years of eating like a guy.  Like, that was kind of tough on me, and it really messed me up a lot this year, trying to catch up with low blood sugar all the time because I felt like I'd forgotten how to be a woman and tried to follow their lead.

Jordan:

And yet, you brought your GPA up over your senior year.

Annette:

Not by that much, but I've got to admit, it felt good.  My    was never actually disappointed with how Sandra or I was doing, but when you come back to your original life, you want to do better, make them understand that what they've been seeing wasn't the real you.  And I think that's why all our friends from the Inn who threw us that graduation party did it as a combined thing, because they knew that I'd want the end of the week to be just for me and my mom, even if Max is the only other one I know who's really been able to come full circle like that.

Anyway, I didn't have a hot/humid commencement like you did, and guest tickets were really at a premium, but it was kind of amazing.  I felt really lucky to be graduating from such a top school, kind of pinching myself as we got closer to it.  It's stupid, I know - everyone else in the class has kind of taken going here for granted after four years, and I've experienced literal actual magic three times, with half my friends being part of a secret club that even the most elite legacies here don't know about.

But I did it!  I did it despite strange supernatural forces sending me onto other paths.  I did it despite having to spend my first year doing it from afar, living vicariously through a girlfriend, and then having to catch up.  I don't know if a tag-team post is the right place to say it (feel free to delete this paragraph when I hand you the laptop, Jordo), but there were a lot of times where even though Jordan was the person who understood what things were like for me the most, I really resented her.  Every visit to the Inn made her younger and more attractive and was like a second chance, while mine seemed to take me further from where I wanted to be, making me older and with my options seemingly narrower, and really just a stroke of luck getting me back to my real life and worried I wouldn't fit in it any more.

But I did it.  Even if I don't know what I'm going to do now.

Jordan:

Me neither.  It's kind of fucking terrifying - I don't know what country I'll be living in by the end of summer, and the whole thing with Romain the past few weeks has been goddamn weird.  He wants to be here for me finishing what he started, but he and René don't want to take back their old lives.  But that's an improvement; at least he's willing to talk with me at all now.  I think he's kind of curious what I'll make out of his old life.

Annette:

I think I'm going to wrap it up because I've got a Skype interview early tomorrow, but I want to make sure you say the thing before we hit Publish.

Jordan:

Ugh, does it have to be a fucking announcement?  (She's nodding)  Okay, fine.

I changed my name.  Back, sort of.  When I watched the finished cut of "I, Fembot", it didn't feel right, but it didn't really hit me until later that it didn't feel like mine with "A Missy Lee Film" on it.  I fucking hate being called "Missy" - not even "Melissa", just plain "Missy" - and no offense to Romain, but I can't see putting it on my résumé or in credits for movies and the like.  I can deal with "Lee Yuan-wei", but a lot of folks here want a Western name, and since Jordan can be a girl's name, I decided to reclaim it.  I'll be "Jordan Lee" from now on.  First use of that is on my diploma.

Annette:

And, honest, I think that's a way cooler graduation/commencement thing than just moving a tassel on your hat.

Jordan:

Says the person who's not filling out a bunch of forms.

Annette:

And with that, I'm going to bed.  Wish us luck as we try to figure out what tomorrow is going to bring, but in a perfectly normal way!

Jordan: Reset Again

Tuesday

As you read from Max, things got a little heated between us a week ago; one of the things I really didn't think about with the Inn, at least for me, since I've turned into single adults both times, is that it reduces family drama a whole ton. I miss Max and my parents, but I'm a little glad not to have certain obligations, or them looking disappointed at me, or all the times Max made fun of my weight as a punk kid.  So not seeing them doesn't make me happy, but there's also things I don't miss, and when you drop into a new life with a clean slate, you don't automatically pick up someone else's issues to compensate.  Like, I didn't know what Yuan-wei's issues with Chen-ai were, but what-the-fuck-ever, I didn't need to make them mine.  Net drama level, lower, even if I missed people. 

So, fighting with him kind of sucked, and sucked more because I'd forgotten what it was like to fight with him for real, not just argue like we have been ever since he got turned into Elaine #3.  And maybe we would have kept fighting if Annette hadn't been there to meet us at the train station, but she was, hugging us both and saying she'd already scouted the Inn, and it was pretty much empty, which was to be expected since Brittany had posted on Monday.  It would have been tough to get hints about what I had in store for me anyway, as Room 7 is hard to see into from either the street or the beach.

She was looking kind of furtive as we walked down the street toward the condo I'd found on AirBNB, saying that it had been fun to not really flirt but still talk to Benny's cousin like they were old friends when she bumped into him on the street earlier that day, and boy, did guys start assuming that meant she wanted to fuck.  She asked if college guys were like that, and I had to tell her that, from relatively recent experience in both sides, they were worse.  She groaned about how she was not ready to jump right into her senior year like she knew what she was doing, either academically or as a girl who isn't even old enough to drink.

The subject changed when we got to the condo I'd rented - "only" two bedrooms but furnished and nice, right near the beach.  If I was going to lose Yuan-wei's trust fund in a matter of days, I figured I'd better get some use out of it until then.  Annette said that if this were a movie, that would be the signal to start a shopping montage, so we took a cab into Portland and did some of that.  I may not have had much reason to do it for myself, but Annette was into getting some new outfits, and even Max admitted that he might as well stock up, because he didn't know when he'd be working.

Wednesday

It was 80 degrees on Wednesday, so I declared a beach day, and Annette agreed, leaving Max out-voted.  Annette was a bit nervous about her swimsuit, but she looked super-cute, and the two of us even managed to cajole Max into one, saying that we should have one day as sexy girls together.  I'd sneaked a red one into a shipping bag the day before, and as he was changing, I told him through the door that it wasn't a big deal - I'd seen him wearing a Speedo at the beach before, so I knew it wasn't the near-nakedness, it was just feeling the bra part do its work, a constant reminder that you've got tits and dudes are judging you based upon them. 

Max reeked of fear more than I did as Deirdre at his 9-man tournament, and you could see it until Annette got the idea to give him dark shades, and then, daaaaaaamn!  He kind of looked badass even before he realized he looked badass, and I think he finally realized that this could be like a Halloween costume, that you can be yourself and this other thing, and maybe use that other thing to bring part of yourself out. 

Anyway, we had fun on the beach, played some volleyball, ate some pizza at lunchtime and fish and chips for dinner.  I actually ate a fucking lot that day, because while I've been pretty lucky to have a good metabolism as Yuan-wei, it's not like I can just shove as much down my throat as I used to and keep it up.  The good news is that, between vanity and changed taste buds, I like grilled fish and vegetarian meals way more than I used to; the bad news is that is not quite enough.  I don't have to actually go out and run to keep fat from selling in the wrong part of my ass just yet, but I kind of figured it would serve Carlotta right if she had a few pounds to work off.

Shit, I spent a few minutes in from of a barbershop, thinking about going in and having them cut it all off, but Max said they'd probably take it out on him.  Wasn't terribly impressed with my idea of getting my hair dyed blue to see whether Carlotta got stuck with it or if the chemicals stayed on my head, either.

Day had to end, though you couldn't tell my brain that; I was up until 4am dicking around on the Internet, trying to finish a book, and other shit until I finally passed out when the sunrise made a mockery of my apparent attempt to keep the next day from coming by not sleeping.

Thursday

It did, though, even if Max and Annette let me sleep until noon.  I didn't spend long writing a letter to go in my luggage - "Fuck you and your sister" seemed to cover it - but still put everything together and started dragging it down the street.  Picked up the key and coupon packet, and felt kind of jelly-legged as I got to the door of the Trading Post, glad Max and Annette were along for support.  We navigated or way to Room 8 and felt pretty fucking stupid praising before we opened the door, as we all knew from experience that there'd be nothing in there but a cheap-ass hotel room.

Wrong again.  Yang Chen-ai was seated on the edge of the bed, wearing an elegant traditional Chinese dress, legs crossed, a tablet right next to her.  I dropped the handle to my suitcase out of shock.

She looked at Max and Annette in turn.  "Ladies, I ask you - is it proper for a girl to go her entire summer break, her last one before graduating University even, without visiting her lonely widowed mother even once?"  Getting no response, she walked up to me, making me look up because she was wearing four-inch heels and I had sneakers.  "And you, you ungrateful daughter!  Did you never learn to talk to your mother when someone is bullying you?"

It would take Max and me a few minutes to figure out how to respond, but Annette's needs were simpler.  "Guys, what is going on?"

Chen-ai turned to Annette and smiled in a less sarcastic fashion, switching to English.  "Still don't speak Cantonese, eh?  Well, I don't blame you - Mandarin is the language of the twenty-first century, isn't it?"  She walked back toward the bed, picked up the tablet, and then turned around.  "That's what Carlotta was counting on, you know - that either Annette or Benjamin would wind up as Yuan-wei, and then by either staying in America despite the police wanting to speak to her or being unable to answer a simple question once she arrived back home, she would look guilty enough for the admittedly circumstantial evidence linking her to my husband's death to look damming.  They certainly didn't plan on the likes of Jordan Chang being able to come to Hong Kong and pass as Yuan-wei well enough to avoid suspicion, no matter how many anonymous tips they sent to the HKPD."

My mouth went dry.  "How did you know?"

The smile want friendly any more.  "Sweetie, haven't you figured it out?  If you're one in a million, it's almost unfathomable that two felons from the streets of New York's Chinatown would just happen to show up directly after a couple of teenagers from Hong Kong unless someone arranged it.  I arranged it."

Max was the first one to react, stepping out in front of me and seemingly ready to attack Chen-ai before Annette and I grabbed him.  "You did this to your own daughter?  What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Well, that's the question, isn't it?  I came to the Trading Post Inn in the summer of 1994, twenty-three years old and looking to paint lighthouses for a couple of weeks.  Well, you know how that goes; I wind up in Harlem, of all places.  My English isn't great, but I kind of think it might be good for me to be American for a year - you guys are all too young to remember what Hong Kong was like before the handover, but a lot of people were looking for a way out, scared.  I almost think it's fate, even, because the next year, the new Yang Chen-ai says she's having visa problems, but we book things for the next spring.

"That's when I find out I have a daughter, eight months old, who has no idea that I'm not her mother, no instinct saying she should be with someone else.

"I'm not asking for your sympathy here.  The rest of my life is good - Siu-wong has built the business, started cultivating contacts with the mainland, and don't get me wrong, if Yuan-wei was someone else's kid, I'd think she's delightful.  But I didn't have nine months to get used to the idea,  I didn't like how she was first in my husband's heart, and when Siu-wong updated his will to make her his primary beneficiary, saying it's just good estate planning, right around the time she announces that she wants to study in America, and I find out that Carlotta Wong has just gotten out of prison...

"Well, I suppose I should tell you about the Wongs, first.  Not that there's really a lot to tell - Chinese-American father, Italian-American mother, in trouble since they were kids, and they tended to make bigger bad decisions as they got older.  Not many people liked them.  But they hung out with the black girl who was more comfortable speaking Cantonese or Mandarin than English.  They beat the bastard who got turned into that girl's husband half to death when he tried to rape her.  I owe them as much as any of you owe each other.  More, because they helped me without any understanding of why I was so strange.  So when I saw a chance to give them a little of what I had, I took it.  They did far more to earn a comfortable life than Yuan-wei or Bingbing ever did.

"So I truly regret that it had to come to this."

She activated the tablet, jumped to a video app, and handed it to me.  Max and Annette drew in closer, and I hit play.

The image that appeared was the room we were in, lit by just the overhead light, but that was enough to see Max and Bingbing tied and cuffed to metal chairs, gags in their mouths, eyes wide open.  "Max" was already on the floor, trying to make his way to the door, but a chain between the chairs ran under the bed.  They were well and truly fucked, and then the change started happening.

It took a while - we had to fast-forward the recording - but when it was done, they were both Asian-American women about Chen-ai's age, but you could tell they'd lived harder lives.  Carlotta -the one who had been Max - was able to wriggle out of the handcuffs and push the now-loose ropes around her off, pulling her gag out and yelling "Chen-ai You Bitch--!"

She stopped the recording and took her tablet back from me.  "I should have seen it coming, of course.  They were always up to no good, and it's easy to get along when you all have nothing, but when there's something to fight over?  Things get ugly.

"I don't really hold a grudge against them.  But this whole deal, with Max and you and everything, it probably ends with them trying to kill me and inherit everything, and my gratitude for what they did for me only extends so far."

The three of us had inconvenient pulled a little closer together as she told this story.  I tried to stand up a little straighter, but my back want really feeling it.  Annette asked what she wanted from us.

"From you?  Not a thing.  Study hard, stay in school, or don't."  She turned slightly to face Max.  "Same for you.  I figure you'll want to get out of that body, and as you saw, Carlotta was right here--"

She pointed to a spot on the floor.

"--when she changed back.  I suspect you'll want to use your brother's reservation and maybe either drag the bed to this side of the room or just plant a chair there every night.  Unless you'd like to try being Bingbing for a while."

Max shook his head hard, and Chen-ai smiled before looking at me.  "As for you, it's pretty simple.  I want whatever I want, whenever I want it."

I swallowed.  "That's... vague."

She shrugged.  "Well, I'm not sure what the next few years might hold.  I often thought that I would take over Yuan-wei's life right after she graduated from college, but I don't exactly feel old enough to stop being me yet.  But maybe I get sick.  Or maybe I just want you to invest your money a certain way - Siu-wong was right about paying it straight to his daughter rather than allowing it to be taxed twice if it passes through me, especially if my daughter will do what she's told.  But let's start with this:  Get out your phone and send Jacky a text message saying that the last couple weeks were fun, but it also made you realize that the long-distance thing will never work out."

I actually staggered a bit.  "What?  Why?"

"Because your mother knows what's best for you, and it's important that you understand that, and it's important that I know I can count on you."  She walked over to the room's desk and opened up the designer bag that was laying there, taking out a phone and a piece of paper.  "I can get the men who brought my friends to this room here very quickly.  I don't want to - any damage they do to you will show up on the next Yuan-wei, and that's trouble I don't need, but I can probably figure out an explanation.  And I've got this."

After gesturing with and replacing the phone, she held up the paper.  It was heavy, with some gold leaf and embossing, and when I saw what was in bold letters on the top...  "Holy shit!"

"It's not that impressive - just one piece of voting stock for 'Trading Post Inc.'  I have more.  Not nearly enough to be majority shareholder, but having this does bring some privileges, like getting bookings canceled and rearranged at short notice, or even a spare key to surprise your daughter, if you know who to ask."  She changed how she was holding it, using her fingers on the corners to hold it flat.  "Happy birthday, Yuan-wei."

Annette looked from me to her and back as I nervously took the other corners as Chen-ai let go.  "Excuse me, what?"

Chen-ai looked at her, shifting to the outwardly-sweet smile.  "Look at the last three years, girl.  It does me no good to have a daughter actively plotting against me.  And I like this Yuan-wei.  She's smart in certain areas, but not hugely ambitious.  She's practical.  We can work together when need be, and I think we can ignore each other most of the rest of the time.  And while it's important she remember that, while she may have gained her life by chance but has it now because I think she should, it's also important she find it rewarding.

"Now send that text, honey."

I nervously got out the phone.  Max put his hand on my wrist.  "Jordan, don't let her--"

I took the phone with my other hand and started sketching characters.  "Better her than Carlotta and Giorgia.  Besides, is not like I was going to fucking marry the first guy I seriously dated, and I'm probably going to be looking for visual effects jobs in Hollywood this time next year anyway.  Think he's leaving Hong Kong and his family, even for a piece of ass this hot?  Might as well get it fucking over with!"  I held the phone up in front of Chen-ai.  "Good enough?"

She nodded.  "That will do."  I brought the phone back down and tapped send.  "Fuck you, 'mom'."

"I know you're upset now, but trust me, he would not have been right for you.  You're destined for more."  She placed her tablet in her purse and slung it over her shoulder.  "Now, seeing as I'm not in this time zone very often, I think I should fly to Manhattan and do some shopping.  I'd invite you along, but I'm sure you've got a fair amount of back-to-school things you suddenly find you have to do."  She opened the door and waved.  "Have a great year!"

Max interrupted.  "Wait - there's still one thing you haven't said.  Yuan-wei's father--"  He couldn't actually say the words.

"It would hardly make sense for Carlotta killing him to be my plan, would it?  Besides, despite his not realizing he was married to an impostor for two years, I never stopped caring for him any more than I stopped caring for Giorgia and Carlotta.  Really, you shouldn't think too much about this.  That all being a horrible accident makes the most sense."

She smiled and shut the door behind her.

We collapsed on the bed as soon as she was gone.  Staring up at the ceiling, Annette asked if it was weird that she was really happy for us.

"Yeah," I said, "but it will be less weird with alcohol.  Let's get out of this fucking place and let Max buy us some of the good stuff while he still won't get carded."

There was no argument there.

-Jordo/"Missy"/Yuan-wei  (still)

Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-Wei: Boyfriends

I don't have any records of how long I ever lasted with any chick in my original life, but I think Jacky Lau may be the longest relationship I've ever had.  Benjamin suggests that this should have an asterisk, since roughly half of that time has had us in different hemispheres, but I kind of call bullshit on that.  After all, if we were living in the same city, he wouldn't have the chance to forget just what kind of body he could be waking up next to.  Temptation increases with distance, right?

It makes the reunion more exciting, too.  I wouldn't exactly say it was sexual torture being away from him for the fall semester, but it did feel damn good to put on a push-up bra, fuck-me heels, and a tight dress to go down the arcade, where Jacky had just talked about hanging out, though I don't think he minded heads turning to his girlfriend and him at all.  I'm admittedly not at my best gaming in that outfit - even now, when I get in front of a fighting game, I kind of want to take a wide stance and use my size to establish dominance, for instance - but it pepped him up and made it very clear what the real highlight of the night was going to be.

I introduced him to my "mother" Chen-ai the day before Christmas, and I don't know whether she was more being playful or trying to do something to break us up when she asked if Ernesto knew about Jacky.  Yes, I said, my classmates know I've got a boyfriend back home.  It got a bit weird when she kept pressing the point, especially since she seemed to suspect I had slept with him; did she just assume that's how it went on a set?  Jacky didn't rise to the bait, not even when she mentioned that Inspector Yee had visited a few weeks ago, although she assured both of us that she made sure to mention my carelessness, so that it would be clear that what happened to Father was at worst an accident.

I blew up at her after Jacky left, something that felt like it was a long time coming, wanting to know just why the fuck she would say that to her daughter's boyfriend.  She tutted about how I was so rude these days, that America must be a bad influence on me.  I was tempted to give her the "you have no idea" line, but instead hit back with something about how, maybe, me being over there made her realize just how alone she was always going to be before storming off to my room, trying to calculate the time difference to Montreal to figure out whether I should call René or email.

I wound up emailing to be on the safe side, then heading back into the city.  I tried to phone Jacky on the way but it went straight to voice mail - he can get more tunnel-vision-y than me when gaming - so decide, fuck it, I'll just go dancing myself.

Benjamin thinks I should feel sort of bad about hitting a club solo now that I've got a boyfriend, but for me it's kind of a practical thing more than disloyalty.  I may just be there to dance and drink and show off, but lots of guys don't necessarily see buying me a drink as fair payment for getting to look at me in that dress as opposed to a down payment on getting it off, and even being with a string bean like Jacky or another girl will cut that shit down.  You've also gotta watch your drink like a hawk, because stuff that didn't seem like a big deal when it was my fraternity brothers doing it is not flying with me these days.

Despite all that, I still like getting sexy and flirting; the knowledge that I could fuck any of these guys if I felt like it rather than maybe settling for someone's less-hot friend if I'm lucky is almost as intoxicating as the booze, and sometimes you just want to bounce around to music even if you're by yourself, just as a release.  I probably didn't have that much to get out - who gives a shit what some woman I've seen like four times in the year and a half I've known her thinks just because she gave birth to the original Yuan-wei? - but it felt good, right up until I saw Bingbing inhaling some guy's face and figured, fuck it, might as well force the issue after months of trying to be tactful electronically.

So I downed my drink, put a smile on my face, and was like "Chen Bingbing?  It's been forever!  And who is this kind of decent-looking guy?  I don't recall hearing about you and my brother breaking up!"

Bingbing looked annoyed, but close to match my bitchiness.  "Wow, what a weird thing for an only child to ask, Yuan-wei!  Keep up with these delusions and people will think you're nuts!"

I held my phone up.  "Well, if Max doesn't exist, then I guess this text message and the YouTube link inside it will just get bounced right back to me!"

It was a bluff, but Bingbing didn't seem to know that.  "Fine, let's go have a smoke."  She started walking to the door, telling her dance partner not to wait, even if he really is better than kind of decent-looking.  After a quick stop at the coast check to get her purse, we stood out on the sidewalk.  She quickly lit up, took a long drag, and blew the smoke in my face.  Bitch move, but I coughed a bit anyway.  "So," she said, "what do you know?"

"The real Bingbing says you're Giorgia Wong, and if that's the case, Google says you're 44 years old, come from Chinatown, two time loser, divorced three times, no kids.  Facebook suddenly takes a nosedive and switches entirely to English in 2014.  The person using it now says you've basically abandoned your old life.  Good match for you and your sister pulling the ultimate dick move and convincing René and Romain that going back to the Inn will kill them.  Whose idea was that, you or Carlotta?"

She didn't actually answer, just pointed out that I said "the real Bingbing" when I was just talking about her, but when the changes involved both of us, the people in Montreal were suddenly "René et Romain".  I started to explain, but she cut me off.  "I'm just saying, you did the same thing when you got that hot little bod that I did - you saw a chance for a fresh start way ahead of where you were at Yuan-wei's age and fucking took it.  Sure, Carlotta told you it was okay, but so what?  You chose to be yourself instead of Deirdre when you first went to the Inn, you made a choice, and we choose to have good lives rather than the ones we had which sucked.  And if we have to lie a little to do it without hearing them fucking whine about it for the rest of our lives, so be it!"

"And Max?"

"Well, at first that was just me being pissed off - Carlotta was going to transfer to NYU at the same time I did so we could be classmates, but she goes and freaks out over Yuan-wei's father, and living in Hong Kong, and, like, how kids in their twenties do all that social media shit and abandons me, and then I meet the brother of the guy who took her place?  Watching you fall all over yourself to hang out with us but having your skin crawl every time Max looked at your tits was just funny! Although, let me tell you, if you ever come around on not being related any more, and want to get close, I wouldn't blame you - he's really sweet and his dick--"

She went on about that subject.

"-- so tell him.  I'll just say I was lonely and sorry and call you a bitch for stabbing me in the back like that.  He'll feel great that I chose him over a lifelong friend and he'll fucking hate you.  Trust me on this, I've known how to get men to do shit longer than you've been alive."  With that, she flicked her cigarette butt into the gutter and smiled.  "God, it felt good to let that all out!  I just never get a chance to do that now that Carlotta is spending all her time being a good 'Sandy' since you outed her.  We've got to hang out more - call me when you figure out your New Year's plans!"

Yeah, like hell.

After that, I decided I really needed to get the hell out of Dodge for a while, even if I had booked a flight and hotel so that René and Romain could visit HK for the first time since they went to the Inn.  I guess I was kind of lucky that they apparently were a little nervous about that themselves, because when I suggested that the for of us (me, them, Jacky) head to Australia instead, they liked the idea.  Jacky thought it was kind of weird, since I don't get much time at "home", what with going to school in America, but how to explain how little it was feeling like home that week?

I booked René and Romain a round trip that would basically fit in between their flights from Montreal, so we met at the airport, but didn't have a lot of time to talk; owing to the last-minute nature of the reservations, we wound up scattered throughout the first-class cabin, and then a crowded bus for our ride from the airport and hotel in Melbourne, then...  Well, by then it was evening and Jacky and I opted to take advantage of not having mothers or roommates nearby.

One side effect of going to Melbourne instead of staying in Hong Kong was that there was a lot less time for chatting with René and Romain about how to handle actually knowing about each other; if we'd stayed in HK, there would have been times when Jacky was just of doing his own thing or at home, but making it a couples' vacation meant he was always around.  Normally, pretty nice, but it meant I didn't really have a moment alone with either of the other Inn people until the third day, when we're sitting on a beach and Jacky & René run off to fetch us some ice cream.  Romain and I are both in swimsuits, but I don't really feel like that's rude or anything until he says I'm looking good.

"Well, I did inherit some good genes."

"You don't have to say that."

"It's true!  I watched the guy living my life drop a hundred pounds, and by the time I was done being Deirdre, I'd gotten kind of soft.  It's different this time.  Maybe I'm still enough of a guy that I like the sight of a naked hottie in the mirror every morning, but that can't be all of it."

"Mm."  Way he looked at me was different, and not just because he's gay.  He was studying me the way I do Benny and wondering.

"Look, if you really want--"

"Of course I want that!  I mourned that body when Carlotta said there was no going back, and ever since meeting you, I wake up every morning trying to figure out how to arrange it, and if it were just me...  Have you ever been in love with your best friend?"

"I've, uh, had a crush."

"Me and René is crazy - we were kind of disgusted that the Inn made us into a gay couple, but we had no-one else, and, like, now I can't be without him, and I've spent the last few months coming up with ways we could go back, but even if you don't back out, only I can, and then, what, we hope he lucks into becoming a straight guy where the fact that his English isn't nearly as good as his French, Mandarin, or Cantonese isn't a problem?"

"You guys could probably make something work--"

"We're making this work, but I know what I could have had, and been, and I kind of hate that you and René get along, because what if he actually kind of likes girls a little?  What if that's why he was so supportive those months I was doing the drag thing...  Then I think of my Dad and how the police are still poking around even though the case is closed, and I think about getting my life back and going to jail..."

He stopped there, and we looked at each other, both kind of thinking that we weren't getting what we wanted it off this conversation.  Like, we were going to sit down, talk, and he was either going to say "oh, I'm too in love with René and settled into this life to ever think about getting the life I was born with back, enjoy fucking Jacky and spending my money with a clear conscience!" or him making an argument that has me saying "ah, well, easy come, easy go".  No, instead the situation is still complicated and we both know it.

At least Romain's face seemed to legitimately light up when René got back, and is weirdly cute to watch two guys whose bodies are in their mid-twenties goofing around with their ice cream like they were actually what I look like.  Jacky started getting a bit uncomfortable when it became kissing, to the point of asking me whether all that time in America got me used to that, and I kind of wanted to say, dude, I grew up in New York, but, obviously, I can't.  It at least got him feeling kind of competitive, though, and while we didn't quite wind up making out on the beach, he did pick me up and toss me in the water.  It involved a little huffing and puffing and promising to work out a bit more,  even if I wouldn't see the results until Spring Break.

Anyway, the rest of vacation was cool - there's lots of signs in Chinese around Melbourne, so Jacky and René could keep up with Romain and I without a whole lot of trouble, we all did little girly squeals meeting koala and kangaroos and penguins (okay, maybe not Jacky), and we got to celebrate the New Year before anyone else, practically.  There's a ton of good food and streetcars and museums and stuff, too.  I highly recommend the trip.  Heck, I won't lie; I might start thinking about it long-term after graduation, depending what my Hong Kong and American situations are.

It was a bummer that it ended; knowing I'd only talk to Jacky, René, and Romain online during the spring semester sucked, although I've been kept busy enough for that not to be a huge problem.

-Jordo/Yuan-wei/"Missy"

Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-wei: Hong Kong girl

It's been a while since I wrote here, to a certain extent because I worry about the Great Firewall of China, but seeing other people mention me makes me feel like I should check in.  Part of it is that I really want to do something in fucking English - as much as my Cantonese now kicks ass and my Mandarin is just disappointing (it's a damn difficult language to pick up, but a girl with Yuan-wei's background is expected to be fluent), a couple of months in Hong Kong had me sometimes losing touch with the American half of my Chinese-American upbringing.  There are plenty of Hollywood movies to see, but I'm always seeing them with friends, and any salve they may be top my homesickness ends add soon as the credits roll and we're talking about them as outsiders.  Not completely, as even young HK folks feel a connection with the West as well as China, but whenever I start talking about New York or Boston as places I'm familiar with, I get a few odd looks.

I should probably start off by mentioning that the spring semester was kind of bumpy, academically, but productively so. I was in another play, not quite so tiny a part, but small enough with what my advisor told me was an "undistinguished" performance. It was no fun, not nearly as much as the short we made earlier, and it really crystallized for me that, while my first school-year as Yuan-Wei has shown me that I do enjoy creating stuff, I hate and fucking suck at pretending to be someone I'm not.

It's not exactly a ground-shaking discovery, but it does sort of run counter to my feelings at the start of all this, that since us folks who've been to the Inn are pretending to be someone else all the time, acting should be a snap. But that initial assumption was way the fuck off. We're all at our best when we just be ourselves, and the trick is knowing that what we define as "ourselves" has changed. We're not just minds riding in our bodies; the meat matters, and it affects how the "mind" makes its decisions. I was miserable as Deirdre in part because I had a hard time accepting that I was a petite heterosexual white girl with this sort of metabolism and that kind of physical endurance. Knowing that Yuan-wei's form isn't something I'm in but what I am hasn't made periods suck less, but does give me the right outlook toward them.

Being onstage is just doubling up on that. I'm not this character, and I'm not the person who wanted to play characters so much that she decided to make a life out of it.  I'm glad she did, because it gave me a chance to discover that making movies is fun and rewarding even if it is a lot of hard work. It stimulates both sides of my brain in ways just writing code didn't. So, while I'm still going to be studying film and television, it's going to be in the area of direction, production, and visual effects rather than being in front of the camera.

Or on stage. Fuck the stage.

My advisor probably hasn't heard somebody planning to stay in this program say ''fuck the stage" very often, but given that my core grades are pretty good and I'm doing well in the classes that will transfer to my new major (and I'm not on any sort of scholarship), the fact that he spent most of his pre-academic career there couldn't exert enough influence to kick my perfect ass out, especially when I pointed out that the short I made with Ernesto and his friends got into a big damn film festival.

The news that I was changing focus got some interesting reactions when I got back "home" to Hong Kong. I'd kind of worried about breaking it to "Grandmother" Yu-ling, since she had been the inspiration for the original Yuan-wei to pursue a career in acting, but it turned out not to be a big deal. She had, after all, retired without a lot of regrets when she married, and though she admitted that she had been looking forward to following my career, she could still do that, though she worried that she couldn't name a lot of female A-list directors, whether in Hong Kong, China, or Hollywood.

Chen-ai, my inherited mother, was a little bit more pointed about that. Acting, she pointed out, may not be the most respectable career, but they needed to hire women for roughly half the jobs, and maybe I didn't quite realize that this wasn't the case most of the time. That did sting a bit; as much as I had noticed it was kind of a sausage party, I've got what I figure is an understandable tendency to think of myself as one of the guys in that sort of group.  Once most of the guys who are going to hit on me get shot down and we start doing what we got together to accomplish, I tend not to think about being the only girl there, though I should probably start.

Bingbing was probably the most surprised, saying it's a pretty long-haul decision to drop something you've been talking about since childhood.  I actually had a little trouble figuring out the right way to put it; I may not be that much older than the real Yuan-wei in reality, but I kind of wondered if a twenty-year-old kid would have the wisdom to recognize that things can stop being fun when you have to be really good at them, so maybe you should pivot to something similar which you find satisfying. I tried saying that while really saying "I'm a rich kid who has never had to push through something I didn't enjoy so I quit", but who knows what sort of performance I gave to the person who maybe knew the original Yuan-wei best. Acting. Ugh.

I tried not to be too curious about her and Max, especially when we went out partying and she had zero problem flirting with guys who aren't really my brother. She said they had a lot of fun, but New York was a long ways away and as much as he wanted to be a real Chinese boy, he didn't subscribe to any of the local social networks so what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.  Besides, she says, it's not like he's going to be her forever guy; she doesn't see herself staying in America after school and while Max would probably love being an expat in Hong Kong, who knows if that will be an option? And even if he does, she figures on trying her luck in Beijing, and Max probably wouldn't be down with that.

Fair enough, I guess, although I kind of hate the idea that this girl I really enjoy hanging out with is basically waiting for the right time to break my kids brother's heart, even if he always was a pain in the ass.  And, since I do figure to find some way to stay in America after my student visa express, I wonder what that means for me and Jacky.

Yeah, I somehow managed to pick up a boyfriend, or at least something with the potential to be more than "guy I've fucked more than once".  His name is Jacky Lau, and, yes, I've told him that is a stupid Engorged name because no English-speaking man has gone by "Jackie" in at least fifty years, but, whatever.  Gotta folks were big Jackie Chan fans and I can't exactly talk, since I'm ten years, max, from being too old to go by "Missy".

We actually met in Tokyo, because I can afford weekend trips to Tokyo, which is amazing.  I've never traveled that much except for family trips, but I was having a day of being pissed off at people saying that there were things a pretty young woman shouldn't do alone, and having a gold card makes me all the more likely to go "oh yeah? fucking watch me!"

And, okay, going to a really crowded city where I don't speak the language but can read the signage well enough unless it breaks out the kana isn't the world's greatest idea, especially some of the places I wanted to visit.  But I had fun, and ended Friday night in a huge arcade, where I felt more like myself than I had in weeks or months - standing at a fighting game, mashing buttons, trash-talking, I felt like Jordan Chang, doing things that just don't fit into Lee Yuan-wei's life very often. For good reason, at times, because when she soundly defeats someone and yells "suck it, bitch!", she's not six feet tall and bulky enough that she doesn't get messed with.

Apparently, "bitch" was all the a English the guys around me knew, and they knew even less Cantonese, so the screaming would have probably gone to a physical place I couldn't handle if Jacky hadn't rub in and broke it up and coaxed apologies out of each of us.  We called it a night, he bought me an ice cream, and then we hung out together the next day.  He'd never seen baseball, and is never seen baseball like they do it in Japan, so we did that after shopping in Akihabara and checking out a few other tourist things (the game's the same, but the festivities are amazing!).  I didn't realize I was asking for it when I mentioned that at least the stadium didn't do the "kiss cam" thing they do in Shea, but apparently I was.

We were on the same plane back on Sunday, and he was kind of surprised to see me boarding with the first class passengers, since I hadn't fit his "I'll take one of everything" stereotype of trust-fund girls when shopping.  I was kind of surprised when he met a gorgeous girl at the gate (I got through Customs a lot faster than he did, probably because I didn't buy a bunch of manga with sexy teenage heroines), because he is kind of nerdy and I thought he should be pretty psyched about getting my attention, quite honestly.  So I walked off and was surprised when he texted me the next day about not being able to find me and introduce me to his sister.

It's been three weeks since then, and while we haven't been inseparable since then - he does have to work for a living between semesters, the poor bastard - we have hung out a lot.   It's been a lot of weird feeling each other out at times, because I'm kind of a weird girl as a result of the two paths that got me here.  He doesn't see how I fit in with girls like Bingbing other than hotness and social class, and while he's not bad-looking at all, their boyfriends intimidate him a bit.

Still, we have fun, and I'm going to miss him when I had back to Boston via a somewhat scenic route.  But I do wonder about the long-term thing.  Even though this summer has given me the chance to get to know the original Yuan-wei's friends for more than the novelty of seeing pictures on screens in the flesh, and I've been able develop routines and even a bit of a rapport with Chen-ai (I get the impression she was closer to her dad than her mother), I do still feel more Chinese-American than Chinese, still, and while I certainly don't need anyone to tell me how much can change in two years, I feel a little dishonest forming new attachments here, no matter how good they feel.

-Jordan/Yuan-wei

Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-wei: Play-acting Part II : There

It's amazing how quickly the memory of long school breaks goes. It hasn't been that long since my first college graduation, but looking at the school calendar and seeing three whole weeks between the end of fall term and the start of spring term kind of blew my mind. I mean, sure, it's not all that time without any responsibilities for a lot of folks at school - they've got jobs and the like - but it still seems like an absurdly long amount of unscheduled time.

Of course, it wasn't completely mine. Even if I wasn't a little prepared for a change of scenery after that play and finals, it was probably past time to really get to know "my" family and friends. The only ones who really made an impression on me back in August and September were my mother Chen-ai and grandmother Yu-ling, with everything else kind of a jet-lagged blur.

This time would be different, sort of like meeting people that one has become friends with online in person for the first time. It was literally that in a lot of cases for me, or very close to it, considering how many words I might have exchanged with people at the birthday party. I've been keeping up with most of Yuan-wei's old friends on-line and spent a lot of time digging deep into their online histories in my last week at Boston University before break - it was actually kind of a good way to take a break from studying for a certain subject but not totally putting my brain into another gear - and felt pretty good about it.

And with reason! Without "must get to party right fucking now!" going on, and just being generally more relaxed in this less-unfamiliar skin, I was able to panic less and just deal with situations at my own speed. It was still weird shifting into Cantonese-mode - binge-watching John Woo movies on the flights only helped so much - but I wasn't a complete deer in the headlights. I'm doing better with Mandarin, too - weekly classes and new movies from Beijing playing in Boston have helped.

I could sort of feel how it had grown easier as certain parts of the trip repeated - get off the plane, not strain so much listening to announcements, smile and maybe even flirt a little going through immigration, recognize the driver and engage in more authentic small talk on the way "home". There's something really assuring about the second time through; "they're gonna catch me" is still in the back of your head, but you can tell that voice to shut up, because the Inn doesn't work that way.

The fancy parts of the city looked fucking amazing as I rode by; though there are a fair number of foreigners and Christians there, Christmas blends into winter solstice celebrations and nobody gets too worked up about religious authenticity or whether things are too commercial, so decorations can be ridiculous and ostentatious and nobody cares. "My" family home had a monster-sized tree, and it was decorated with the careful balance and symmetry that says someone was hired to do it, but, hey, it's not like I need to be worried about some lost family tradition.

Chen-ai seemed a bit warmer this time around, although it's still kind of a weird relationship, maybe. Only having a brother, I don't know what sort of things mothers and daughters do together, but she seemed more curious about my life in America than anything, asking if I'd met any nice boys, being kind of teasingly naughty about how attractive they were. Maybe I should have been grossed out, but I wasn't, at least no more than when when I thought about how much I enjoyed being on the receiving end these days.

Not that I really get attracted to guys yet - I met one of the original Yuan-wei's high school boyfriends, and I liked the guy for hanging out with, but his twin sister was the one where my brain said ''that's attractive", though not with the "I want to fuck her" kick to it. which is good, because Bingbing is one of the best friends I inherited, and I'm guessing she wouldn't be down for that.

I wound up spending a lot of time with Chen Bingbing, both because she thinks we've been besties since the age of six and because she is transferring to an American college for this semester and wanted to practice her English. It's really good - she and Yuan-wei, along with the other friends I spent time hanging out with, went to English-language schools, although their good English isn't my good English.

We partied a lot - Bingbing seemed kind of horrified to hear that most places in America have a minimum drinking age of 21, so we kind of made up for that in advance. I highly recommend a weekend in Macau at one of the big hotel/casino luxury suites if you're ever young, Chinese, and of means.

That would have been a great New Year's Eve, but I felt a bit weird about partying big that night. We'd had a ceremony to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the death of Lee Siu-wong, Chen-ai's husband, who I guess would be my biological father now, the previous night, and it would have been weird to go nuts the next day.

That memorial was a bit strange, one of the times I really tried to act outside of school stuff. I mostly try to just be myself in day-to-day life, because even if I'm not much like the original Yuan-wei in certain respects, folks are going to have to get used to the new me because I'm not going to spend the rest of my life pretending to like things I don't or shit like that. This, though, was really specific and unavoidable, and as much as I don't really miss "Daddy", I don't think I'm quite such a jackass to disrupt things by acting that way.

So I tried to do what they teach in class, reaching into myself for something that brings out the same kind of feelings. I don't know whether I'd say it was hard or easy, because I spend enough time trying not to think about how I'm not likely to see my own Dad again except by some sort of co-incidence where he won't fucking know who I am that it takes a bit of effort to let that out, even without considering how much it's going to hurt. I guess I did all right - I was crying as I lit the joss-sticks and bowed toward Siu-Wong's picture - but it did make me question the idea of making a living doing this, even if the movie-star part looks awesome.

And then... well, fuck, it's why I took a break from writing this for a bit.

It was a few days later. I had stayed the night at one of Yuan-wei's high- school boy-friends' when I got a call asking me to come down to the police station. I had no idea what to expect - had Chen-ai been pulled over or had I inherited parking tickets of some kind? - until they took me to see a detective named Yee who made a little small-talk and then showed me a video.

It was taken on a phone - I've apparently been taking enough film & television classes that the vertical aspect ratio was the first thing that bothered me - and it showed the original Yuan-wei (or me, as far as the cops were concerned) going into some sort of sweet shop and telling the other person (the voice was distorted enough that I couldn't tell if it was male or female) all about the sort of candies and stuff they had in America that this store imported. At first, it was just weird - I kind of felt like a guy again, watching some girl who would never actually talk to me be knowingly cute in a YouTube video, and I kept having to remind myself that I shouldn't feel angry or turned on because I could do all that now.

Until she got to the Fluff.

Marshmallow Fluff is a pretty solidly northeastern thing. I think. It's what it sounds like, a gooey marshmallow paste that you can spread on bread. The Yuan-Wei in the video was talking about how one of her local classmates had dragged her to Somerville's ''Fluff Festival" in the fall, and the most popular use of the stuff was the "Fluffernutter", a dead simple sandwich of Fluff and peanut butter on white bread. She was saying that it's the most bland-but-too-sweet and thus the most American thing you can imagine - "but so good!"

Then the off-screen voice said that was too bad, because it meant I couldn't have one in the house because of my dad, and "I" joked that at least he would die happy. Then the Yuan-wei on the screen bought a jar of the stuff and some Reese's Cups which she said she would have to finish before she got home, and it was the end of the video.

I didn't really need Inspector Yee to do the "obviously, you knew that your father had a severe peanut allergy" exposition straight out of a fucking episode of Law & Order to see what was coming. And let me tell you, I didn't need to draw on any other sort of scary experience to be terrified.

"Inspector Yee, I would never-" I actually found myself stumbling for the right Cantonese words for what I would never do, but he seemed to be able to infer it.

"Not even by accident, just forgetting something was in your purse?"

I yelled "no!", but then something started rolling around in my brain. What if this was the wrong answer, and Yee was asking the question just so that I'd trip up?  Cops do that, right? What if anything I said contradicted anything else they had learned, or even what Yuan-wei had said during any original investigation of Siu-wong's death?

So I went on the offensive. "Who sent you this?"

"Don't you remember?"

I was able to think quick. "No! I hung out with a lot of folks after coming back from my first semester abroad last year, and probably showed weird American things to most of them!"

I guess you could say I successfully sold the performance, because Inspector Yee did back off a bit. I pressed a little, saying that the only reason that somebody would send them this is because they wanted to hurt me, and I deserve to know who is trying to stab me in the back.

The law doesn't exactly look at it this way, of course, and even though the family I've become a part of is pretty well-off, it doesn't appear that we're quite so connected that the cops' first thought when things look suspicious is to try to sweep it under the rug.

Or maybe it is and I just haven't learned how to pick up signals that a public official is fishing for a bribe like I can recognize a guy being interested in me.  There's a fucking one-percenter problem.

It put a bit of a pall over the rest of the trip, as you might imagine, as my brain went into overdrive looking for any sign that the people I hung out with didn't really like "me". I felt a little relief when I saw Bingbing hold her phone horizontally when taking a video a few days later, but worried about Chin when she didn't. It's a really stupid thing to try to parse, but there you go.

I'm not even really sure I should be writing about this now.  I denied having anything to do with Siu-wong's death, but I can't help but wonder - what if that's not the case?  What if the original Yuan-wei made a mistake and that's why she's so willing to live out a life that is such a step down from all this?  I may just be speculating about this, but if Inspector Yee or someone else at the HKPD stumbles over me saying that, it reads like some sort of confession from a girl who has had some sort of fucking breakdown.

Still...  The video.  I went to The Changeling a few days ago and mentioned this to Ashlyn, and she told me about her own stalker/"influencer", the one they called Pygmalion.  She says it's been a few years since she felt she could chalk up anything happening in her life to that, but that he isn't the only one out there who likes fucking with us.  So this is just a question - does it sound like anybody any of you know, or do I just have some sort of enemy on the other side of the world?

- Jordo / Yuan-wei