Jordan/Missy Lee Yuan-wei: Me, version 3.0

So, still a girl, but Chinese again. That's something, although I'm not sure what yet.

Even for the last year, it's been a weird week and a half, with the prospect of being myself again giving way to letting Benny be "Jordan Chang" and then deciding to be Yuan-wei instead of Benny because I could do it better than Annette. On the one hand, it's like choosing from the playable characters in a game, right up until you realize that it's potentially the rest of your life this time.

And then there's Annette, who up and disappeared on our second day here so that she could try and talk Sandra into returning her life to her, to no avail.  I am, it appears, pretty shitty at being the encouraging shoulder to cry on, which is a pretty rotten deal for her, because she has been great whenever I needed help with girly shit.  She did not really get back as much as she gave out from me.

We killed the after she got back, hanging out on the beach and at the amusement park, making a trip into Portland, and fretting a bit because we just about had the Inn to ourselves until Wednesday when a bus arrived and spewed out a bunch of teenagers. I felt kind of bad for them - I may not be an old pro at this thing compared to some, but it doesn't take much thought to realize that the number of people there to change back drops as the summer goes on.

Then, after they get settled in, one comes out to the back deck where Annette and I are sitting and asks what I'm reading. I hold up my copy of A Dance with Dragons and get told that it's not good to read those kind of books, with all the sinful behavior and sorcery that is a different sort of affront to God. I just look at her and say "man, you are in for a fucking shock." She says there's no need to be crude to her and the other members of the church youth group and goes back inside.

Annette waits until this girl is out of earshot and the bursts out laughing for the first time since we got to the Inn.  "You are terrible!"

"Maybe, but is it too much to hope that a group of horny gay porn stars stayed in their rooms last?"

"They'd probably see that as some sort of divine mission."

"'True. Can the next group be a bunch of sci-fi fans who love taking selfies of their sexy cosplay, though?"

Annette just laughed. So, mission accomplished, at least there.

We spent part of the afternoon trying to surreptitiously count heads, although we knew that there wasn't much point to it; the change would happen or not without much input from us. It gives you a bit of a feeling of control, but it's not real.

Eventually, though, we did feel the sort of low-key electricity that other repeat visitors have described.  Once that kicked in, we decided to stay up and watch. Ronan had helpfully included a sketch of where he and Missy were when they changed so we didn't have to guess which side of the room to be on, which I guess is a small bit of consideration, though Annette obviously would have hoped for more.

Folks, if you ever make this trip a second/third/whatever time, bring one of those mini-projectors so you can watch a movie or fit your favorite board game into your luggage. We had a deck of cards and by 1AM I was fucking sick of losing to Annette at poker. Apparently Deirdre's face is a completely open book.

(My story and I'm sticking to it!)

Finally, at sometime around quarter past two, it was more than a tingle. I could feel a little mass entering my body, but mostly it was rearrangement. There was a pulling in of my belly that seemed to push my upper torso a bit further upward, along with a stretching feeling in my arms and legs. my hair felt like it was being tagged at, and there were a lot of weird sensations underneath my face, and I'm not ashamed to say that the pinching at the corners of my eyes was a relief that only another person who has lost their ethnicity like this could understand.

That said, it was still a bit odd to see Annette grinning as she held out her hands to see her skin get lighter. To really get the effect, she had to close and open her eyes to compare the different hues. We changed fairly quickly - five minutes or so from Deirdre to Yuan-wei in my case (although I gather that has not been the case for every group, but who knows what in the environment may have an effect on a curse) - but not quite quickly enough for it to fit into a TV commercial.  Still, looking from one spot to another, I could see the changes in Annette's face, especially as the mustache withdrew and the hair grew longer and shaggier, and the arms and legs sticking out from her shorts and t-shirt gained more definition.

Oh, and don't forget my tits.

They pushed out, a constant pressure that got more painful as they did so, until I realized that it wasn't actually my body but a too-small bra causing the pain, so I pulled up the back of my shirt, unclasped my bra, and felt it move up, sitting atop my upgraded rack.  When I looked down, I could see my tee going out and down, with my nipples making an impression on it.  I wasn't sure whether to give it my entire attention or look anywhere else.

Eventually it stopped, and while Annette looked at me appraisingly, my thoughts were more on how weird my underwear felt like this.  Yuan-wei's suitcase was between me and the door to the bathroom, and I grabbed a new bra out of it on the way to the bathroom.  The jiggle didn't quite hurt as I half-ran, but it was more than I was used to.  I pushed the door as I entered the bathroom, but not hard enough for it to close completely, as I was moving toward the sink and mirror.  I dropped the new bra on a corner, pulled my shirt and the old one off together, and then saw my reflection.

"Fuck me!"

"Are you okay?"

"Uh, yeah, fine, just gotta--Fuck!"  I yelled as my first attempt to put the bigger bra on had my tits falling out of their cups before I could fasten the back.

"Need some help?"  Without waiting for an answer, Annette started crossing the room, noisy even in bare feet.  I remembered something about putting it on backwards, turning it around, and then getting "them" settled as I pulled the straps up.  I turned around just in time to see Annette enter and raise her eyebrows.  "Whoa."

I looked down, and they seemed even bigger, and then turned to look in the mirror.  Not only was the first bra I grabbed a push-up, but the cotton shorts I usually slept in were a bit tighter on my ass and my finer hair framed the stunned look on my face amazingly.  "Well, shit.  I can't see my brother ever again."

Annette looked surprised and confused.  "Why?  Do you know this girl?  I thought she was from Hong Kong."

"Not specifically, but, damn, this is exactly what Max masturbates to."

"TMI!"

"Tell me about it."

Annette pointed at the mirror.  "Mind if I--"

"Go right ahead."

I stepped back, and Annette looked in the mirror.  "Yep, that's Benny.  This is just weird.  I wonder..."  She stuck her hand in her boxers.

"Hey!"

"What?  I just want to know how big it is from this side, and it's not like you wouldn't understand!"

"Yeah, well, look, I'm just going to give you and little Benny some time to get acquainted, while I, uh, get some sleep, cuz it's late."

Funny thing - as soon as I hit the bed, the fact that it was almost three caught up with me almost immediately, and I dropped.

---

I woke up about four and a half hours later to a banging on the door.  Apparently, Benny's form slept a lot more soundly than Ravi's.  I walked to the door, still in my bra and shorts, and opened it to a couple in their twenties, or at least a couple of church kids in that form.  They both looked away from my chest, the guy pushing a piece of notebook paper at me.

"'Come to Room 6; Jordan and I have been here before and can explain.'  Ugh, did Annette write all these up and slip them under doors after I fell asleep?  Just great--"

"What sort of Satanic--"

"Oh, I, did not fucking sign up for that, chickie."  Apparently a guy before, because she flinched hard at that.  I turned and yelled Annette's name.  Nothing.  "Like a fucking rock.  Shit."

The man stepped forward.  "Look, my friend is, as  you might expect, pretty shocked, so if you could just explain what is happening."

"Let me guess - both boys last night?"  They nodded.  "Look, I can't explain the why of it, but this place is cursed, turning each group of 13 into the last group of 13 that stayed here, or at least, as they were before they changed into the 13 before that, and so on back decades.  No-one knows why or how--"

"How do we change back?"  Apparently not enjoying his first few hours as a girl any more than I did.

"--but, if you'll listen, we do sort of know enough to work the system.  If you're in another group of 13, and the folks who will get your bodies in a couple weeks are in the previous one... or I guess if you hang around long enough to be in the next group, but I've never heard of that working...  And, heck, even making plans doesn't work because this is not what I expected to come back to...  But, anyway, most folks sort of stay who they look like until next summer, because the place is absurdly well-booked for a cursed inn, but you can sort of make a reverse change."

"I'm going to be a woman until next year?"

"Yeah, deal with it, pussy; I've been one for a year and it looks like I'll be a different one for the rest of my fucking life, so shut up and listen!"

Wonder of wonders, they did.  "Look, you just go there, so maybe you didn't notice the luggage left in your rooms, but the clothes should fit, the IDs should work, and the letters should tell you what you're getting into.  If you want - I didn't go live Deirdre's life, and while I'm glad, because it would have meant pretending to be engaged to my jackass roommate in the body of her fiance, her parents did send private eyes after me and while they didn't try and kidnap me or anything, they were a real pain in the ass.

"Anyway, information's all there, although considering that there's been no whoever-you-look-like-now for the past couple weeks, it may be out of date because they've been fired from their jobs or some shit.  So, like, maybe you should get to wherever they're supposed to be and let me sleep."  And I closed the door.

Then I went and sort of pushed at Annette's more muscular abs with my foot until he stirred.  "Hey, I didn't volunteer to brief these brats on everything."

"Sorry, someone's got to, and I didn't fall asleep quite as quickly as you did."  She paused for a second.  "Wow, you're pretty."

That felt a bit weird.  It's not like I didn't get the occasional compliment as Deirdre - and let me just say, for all I wrote about Yuan-wei where all her parts were bigger or smaller as need be, it's not like Deirdre was a bad shape, especially if you like girls who might have been gymnasts when younger - but every time Annette had said it to me before, it was meant to be assuring first and foremost, whereas here I got the impression she was saying it for herself as well.

"So that's how it works; you go from Ravi to Benny and suddenly a switch flips and you're all heterosexual and hot for me?"

"What - no, that was envy!  Like, it would almost be worth going to a country where I can't speak the language and probably have people suspect brain damage because of it to look like that.  Although, I suppose that considering what happened, 'Missy' and 'Benny' have compatible pheromones or something, which is why everyone's going to think we're a couple."

"So, about that--"

"Yeah, it's going to be tricky.  We'll have to convince everybody that we decided to just be friends, but who knows how our bodies will undermine it.  But I do want to be friends; you've sort of grown on me, Jordo."

That was blunter than expected, but I rolled with it.  "Yeah, it would be weird to get to close.  That's why I'm going to Hong Kong."

Annette blinked a couple times at that.  "Oh, right, Missy's birthday party.  Well, a girl does only turn twenty once."

"Except it would be my second time."  We laughed.  "No, because it's important to to get to know the important people in our new lives, rather than just depending on each other and getting weirdly close."

She nodded.  "Yeah, that makes sense.  Isn't the plane ticket for today?"

"Yeah, and the party's Sunday, and with the international date line and stuff, it'll be tight.  I should actually probably get showered and dressed, and they check the train and bus schedules to see how to get to the Boston airport--"

"Logan."

"Right, Logan."  I looked at her, a handsome guy with more than a hint of a girl who had hit pause in some respects right after high school.  "Don't worry, Annette, Benny's friends and roommates are going to think you've suddenly become ten times as awesome in the past couple weeks."

"Damn right they will.  Although...  Could you call me 'Benjamin' from now on?  I've never been one for nicknames, and I'm afraid if you keep calling me Annette, it'll be harder to let go and I might do something stupid."

"Do you want me to call you 'he' on the blog, too?"

"Well, only after this moment riiiiiiight.... now.  It would read funny otherwise."  He shrugged.  "It's important to me.  I was going to be a writer."

"Hey, you still can, you'll have the kind of experience no other novelist does.  And you might as well call me Yuan-wei, and she, or else I might do something even stupider to Benny, er, Jordan."

"Nah, you won't.  Now, c'mon, get dressed and get gone.  Those kids are no reason to miss a party in Hong Kong!"

---

I left the Inn pretty soon after that, and I've been on trains, buses and then in planes and airports since then.  I'm over the Pacific right now, but apparently "Missy" Lee Yuan-wei flies the kind of first class where you've got wi-fi in the middle of the ocean.

Hell of a perk, and she said I could have it and everything else so she could be a suburban housewife.   But if I can't be me, this isn't bad.

-Yuan-wei (though I still call myself "Jordan" in my head)

Jordan: You try to do something nice, and where does it get you?

Annette frets about not writing enough or well enough on this blog like it shows her lack of commitment or ability to be a professional writer someday, but she needs to give herself more credit: Reading that last entry, I was almost convinced that more crying went on over the last couple of weeks than I remember.

Even without the histrionics she put in there, though, I'd be lying if I said our plan didn't scare me some; every moment from waking up to getting off the train in Old Orchard yesterday seemed to present a good reason to turn back, and I'm still not sure now that I shouldn't still go back to New York and tell Benny that the deal is off. Especially since it's not exactly what I expected.

Every time I seemed about to go back, though, Annette would give my hand a squeeze, and I felt a little more like I could do it if (s)he was going to make sure I wasn't going to do it entirely alone. Besides, backing out now would really fuck things up for Deirdre and Gary, who are making new plans to stagger their visits to the Inn to get back to normal.

Or at least try. We got off the train, picked up the keys to our room from the other place (because even if the locals don't realize that the place is fucking cursed, nobody actually wants to work there, apparently), and went back in for the first time in a year. It was eerily the same - after a certain point I guess people just stop trying to improve cursed places - although we were in a different room this time around. We knew that there would be a break in our "chain" because someone wanted to finish their school year, but we didn't really think about that.

As nice as Annette was to me, she was anticipating the exact opposite of me, getting her life back rather than than giving it away, so she dropped her "Ravi" suitcase in the middle of the floor and dashed to the closet. She recognized Benny's and shoved it toward me, the pulled the other one out, commenting that other-Annette must have been shopping, because the one she had checked in with had been a beat-up hand-me-down and this one was nice.

"Isn't this a little like opening your presents before Christmas?"

She shrugged, pulling out the letter that was on top as she opened it. "It's not like I'm ruining some sort of surprise, and besides, there might be stuff we need to do to get ready!" Then she started looking at the letter and the blood drained from her/Ravi's face, and she started reading her letter very intently. Sensing something wasn't right, I opened Benny's suitcase and took out my letter.

Dear Benny,

I'm pleased to present you with your body more or less as you left it, another year of mileage on it but otherwise in pretty good shape. It's been so good to be young again that I almost considered not coming back, but I figured we had done enough damage and you, at least, should be able to come out of this unscathed.

I'm afraid me and Sandra haven't been completely honest with you and Annette about how our lives were going in your bodies, in large part because what we didn't want to talk about was "our lives" as opposed to "your bodies". As you know. we came to the Inn for our tenth anniversary, and though the changes shocked us, we figured it would be kind of fun, like dating again. What we had apparently forgotten was that dating can be a minefield, and her living in a Harvard dorm while I wound up sharing an apartment in Allston with three other young men after a dozen years of living together also did a number on our relationship.

And then, I met Missy.

The exact details don't matter; the point is that I was feeling 32 more than usual that night, and when a 19-year-old that hot shows interest - and your wife is back "home" with her "mom", you respond. And when she stays interested...

Sandra found out, of course. We tried to get past it, but everything we did just made things worse, and Missy is not only determined but also a genuinely great girl. And it's not like she could have known she was destroying a marriage. Or would it be more accurate to say that she was the way I did so?

Sandra and I still planned to meet up here, and figure out what to do afterward. But somehow Missy saw my printed-out reservation, figured I was planning to surprise her with a trip up the coast, and wound up coming along.  When Sandra arrived and saw Missy helping to unload the rental car, there was a screaming match, and Sandra stomped away, saying I was welcome to her.

Maybe if the change didn't happen that first night, we could have fixed things, but it did, and now Missy is Sandra and Sandra looks like she's going to be Annette indefinitely.

Amazingly, Missy seems happy to be Sandra and my wife. I hope that Sandra and Annette can work out some kind of arrangement to make things work out for them soon, but in the meantime, please give Annette all the support she needs. I won't insult her by saying that becoming Missy rather than herself should make her happy, but much worse could have happened to her, and I hope you can help her through it.

Yours Truly,

Ronan

I looked up at a shell-shocked Annette. "Those fucking bastards, not even giving you a heads-up while you've been emailing back and forth.  Sure, at least you'll get to be a girl again, and I guess still from New England so it'll be an easier adjustment--"

She did a double take.  "I don't think Ronan told you everything." Then she handed me her letter.

Dear Annette,

I guess I should get this out of the way before the signature - I'm not Sandra, so you won't be able to become yourself again right away. My name is Lee Yuan-wei, although I use "Missy" as a Western name. As you might guess, I'm not from around here. Hong Kong is my home, or at least it was.

How did I get here? Well, first I decided to go to college overseas - I always wanted to be an actress in both Hong Kong and Hollywood when I grew up, so I figured that going to school here would be good for my English - and it has been! Nobody thinks I speak with a weird accent!

So I enrolled in Boston University; they've got a nice film and theatre program. It's also not that far from the Landsdowne Street clubs, and that's where I met "Benny".

It probably sounds funny to you that his apparent maturity is part of what attracted me to him - little did I know! -but from what I gather, you can understand how I found him hot, too. But he was great, and even though it didn't take me too long to learn that he was "dating Annette", I didn't let that stop me.

That makes me sound horrible, I guess. It's more explanation than justification to say that I was always told to go after what I wanted growing up, and I've always had a leg up in being able to get it; my family does have money and I was quite pretty, which helps if what you want is a guy.

So I did, and "won", or at least "didn't lose", if you figure that Ronan and Sandra were done but I would have wound up with the original Benny after the dust settled.  I don't think that's in any way malicious or uncaring on Ronan's part - he was just trying to make things right as best he could - but I guess it explains a few things about the last few weeks; he didn't think it was going to last much longer.

But then fate stepped in - I saw the reservation at this Inn and assumed it was a surprise trip for the both of us, so I rented a limousine to set us there in style. "Annette" was there, we yelled at each other, and then one last night of great sex later, I woke up a 31-year-old American woman named Sandra - and Ronan's wife!

And I love it!

I guess it's not that strange - everyone tells me I take after my grandmother, who is a big part of the reason why I wanted to be an actress. You might have seen her in some old Shaw Brothers horror movies, but not that many, because she retired when she married my grandfather. I used to think that was crazy, but now, looking at a life with Ronan, feeling that weight of a ring you don't take off on my finger... It just feels right, and when you look at all the strange things that fate has done to get me here, it seems even more meant to be.

So, until and unless you can work something out with Sandra, enjoy my life. It's a good one, just not the one I was meant to live.

Good luck!

Sandra (formerly " Missy" Lee Yuan-Wei)

P.S. Don't worry about the airplane tickets if Hong Kong seems a bit daunting at first; my friends and family will understand even if it is my birthday.

"Holy shit."

''I know! I'm not ready to to China next week! I probably won't be ready next year! I mean, it's one thing to be second-generation Indian-American, mostly in situations where nobody said boo if I only spoke English or didn't celebrate some holiday or something, but she probably hangs out with other Chinese kids at school and there's probably a big birthday party for her in Hong Kong, and that's before getting into how Sandra just decided to keep my life because she was mad at Ronan..."

Our sizes and sexes were not right for her to curl up in a ball and lay her head on my lap, crying, but that's where it went. It was weird, really - I've actually never seen her as a girl, nor she me as a guy, but we still fit our roles, even after a year.

I sighed. "Look, if neither of us are going to be ourselves anyway..."

She looked up. "I can't ask you that."

"Yeah, but, c'mon.  I speak Cantonese - my grandma never totally mastered English and my Dad imported lots of movies from Hong Kong - maybe even some with Missy's grandmother.  You and Benny are both from Maine. It's not like it doesn't make sense. Besides, I've realized that dicks are totally fucking over-rated."

She laid her head back down but didn't look at me. "No, having a dick is awesome. I love being able to use urinals and being on top."

Her and me both, but... "Well, then you keep doing that, then." One of Missy's bras had fallen on the floor, and I gave it a look. "Besides, it looks like Missy has bigger tits than Deirdre. These bug bites were a real letdown."

She laughed, bitterly, and then looked up. ''You are a terrible liar, and kind of a jerk, but you're okay otherwise."

She sat back up, a sad but relieved look on her face. "Well, I guess I'll go wash up, and then, 'Missy', how about I buy you a beer or two while they'll still serve you? I need about five, I think."

"Best offer I've had all day, 'Benny'."

And so we did. It wasn't a huge farewell party, but it left me with a pretty serious hangover. I hope Missy's form holds it better.

-Judo, who can't believe he'll be answering to "Missy" soon.

Annette/Ravi: Should have seen this coming, but, yikes

So Jordan has basically left it to me to catch everyone up on what's happened up to now, and I can't say I blame him.  As much as I sometimes think there's a decent guy under there - for all he'll bitch about a lot of things, and doesn't like being a girl, he's never really treated it as a step down, and I kind of appreciate that - he's not one for introspection, and that last post probably pushed his limits.  And, besides, what has happened since isn't all about him.

Though "since" isn't particularly right.  "Since" is just what we saw, so how it's filed in our heads.  That's not accurate.

Anyway, a few days after our dinner with Deirdre and Gary, the manager at work had screwed up and overbooked staff, so I decided to do some of the silly tourist stuff that guys who have lived here all their lives like Jordan and Ravi probably haven't bothered with since elementary school field trips (Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, that sort of thing), putting me downtown at different hours than usual and thirsty for a smoothie.  I popped into a favorite spot.

Thus, I was a bit out of place when I saw Benny and Kareena seated on the other side of the shop. I started to raise my hand to get their attention, thinking nothing of it - we're all friends, after all - when Benny said something, Kareena blushed, and then they both leaned in and kissed!

I stopped right in my tracks, and barely had time to register that I had opened the Camera app on my phone and was getting a picture of it before backing out of the shop, running half a block away and around a corner before calling Jordan. It went straight to voicemail, even though I knew damn well that he was just playing Xbox. I left a message to call back right away and then started peeking around the corner to see if they were leaving the shop yet, not caring how ridiculous a six-foot Hindu man might look doing so.

After a few minutes, I got antsy and called again. I lasted another couple before sending a text to pick up your damn phone, a minute at best before sending one that said "it's important", and then seconds before sending the picture.

That got a response, with the phone ringing and Jordan yelling "what the fuck?" practically before I could get the phone to my ear, just like Gretchen did the time I got a picture of my boyfriend cheating on me, and for a minute I was back in high school again.

''I know! It's..." I stopped for a moment, trying to come up with an appropriately appalled adjective but instead allowing my brain time to think. "It's something we should have seen coming. She's not getting anything from me-slash-Ravi, and Benny's got you looking pretty good, and we all hang out together..."

"Yeah, but-"

I shushed him. "They're coming out now!"

''Are you going to follow them?"

"Obviously!"

Fortunately, I didn't have to play detective for very long as they went into a nearby gym.  Which made sense, as they're both workout fiends.  Who both love volleyball, and come to think of it, they were both reading the same book...

Jordan groaned when I started listing that staff out. "I cannot fucking talk about this on the phone like this.  Let's get a drink."

"Jordan, it's like eleven-thirty in the morning."

''Then we should be very glad you didn't see them kissing after Benny's morning run."

I could not argue with that logic.

---

Four hours later I was holding back Jordan's hair as he puked in our apartment's toilet. I stepped away for a moment to get him a glass of water, and when I turned back, he was crying.  I don't think I'd ever seen him do that before, and it was like there was no wiseass guy inside the petite girl at all for a second.

"I can't remember the last time I overdid something like that.  I'm not usually one of those pussies on the blog who can't handle periods and I think I've done pretty fucking well not doing anything outside my new capacity - I mean, this girl's taste buds seem to be designed for appreciating good chocolate - but now with just a few weeks left I've drunk myself sick, in front of you, and why? Because Benny might have put me in a position to be with the awesome girlfriend that Ravi doesn't deserve!  What the fuck is wrong with me?"

I almost said it might be something cycle-related, but didn't, and stifled a laugh. Sure, I've been a man for a year, but I still think of myself as a woman, and have had moments of being pissed because men think that explains everything. Instead, I told him that it was just creepy. "You're a dick, but you've done a pretty good job of avoiding the creepy stuff."

"Thanks, I think."

We didn't have time to talk about whether I was calling him a dick affectionately or not. That was when we heard the door open, and Jordan grabbed a towel, wiped his face, and nodded. I thought about how it was a good thing that he didn't wear make-up and followed him to the living room.  He was telling Benny that we had to talk.

"'Bout what?"

Jordan didn't say anything, but just shoved his phone in Benny's face with the picture I'd sent him on the screen.

"Oh. I can explain..."

"What's to explain? I get it."

"Okay, I should have told you, but I thought it was just going to be one time..."

Having heard that from a cheating boyfriend before, I interrupted. "Even if it was just one time, don't you think Jordan should have known? We're going to be going back to our real lives soon-"

"I would have broken it off and then put it in the letter..."

"Oh, and that would have made everything all right!"

"No, but..."

"Do you love her?"

That shut both of us up and had us looking at Jordan. Of all the ways he could have steered the conversation, that was the one I least expected.

He continued. "Look, I'm pissed about being in this situation, but it's the situation we're in, so the question is, what do we do going forward?  But if we're going to get the best possible result, that's the thing we're going to have to know. Do you love her, and does she love you?"

Benny just sat there, seemingly stunned by what Jordan was implying.

I let out the breath I was holding. "Well," I said, "we've got a couple of weeks to find out."

---

I did my part the next night, which was already scheduled as a date with Kareena.

I switched things up and opted for takeout instead of a restaurant, so that we could find some neutral ground and not have people feel trapped with us if things got ugly. Once we found a sparsely-populated spot in a local park, I just came out with it.

''Kareena, I've got something to tell you. I'm gay."

Just like that. No pause to make her wonder, the first part just so she'd know I was talking and I wouldn't have to repeat it.

She stopped working the latch on her styrofoam box.  "What?"

I launched into what I'd planned to say, a mix of what I had been feeling and what I figured had been going on in Ravi's head. I said I'd never wanted to deceive anyone but had wound up deceiving myself, that I'd only found out myself when my defenses were lowered and I found someone irresistibly attractive, and I wasn't seeing anyone or trying to make a fool of her. I left out any mention of finding out at her friend's New Year's Eve party or anything like doubting it because of how much I liked her; this was not a time to be putting any sort feeling of responsibility on her.

For a while, she just stared at me, not seeming to know what to think.  Then I could almost see her desire to be a modern, liberal woman wrestle a somewhat conservative upbringing down. "I guess that makes sense... We've never... I thought it might have been me..." She paused. "Our parents are going to be so angry."

"Just with me. I think I can take it." I thought of Ravi. "But if I can't, and I come back and tell you it was all a big mistake..."

"It won't matter whether I believe you or not."

I figure that's a fair reaction.

We tried to engage in small talk as we ate our curry after that, but it wasn't really happening. The movie was canceled. I went home to email Ravi; I hope Kareena  wound up crying less than me.

Ravi was furious, saying I had no right, that things were fine with Kareena before I screwed things up, and what if she told her parents who told his...? He made noises like he was going to drive up and sort things out until I pointed out that "Gary" had no standing in this situation and hid come across as some sort of weird ex-lover. He made a vague comment about maybe just keeping this life if I was going to destroy his like this, but I forwarded that to the real Gary and while I don't know what he said, that was the end of that.

I kind of feel like I did the right thing for the wrong reason here; I'm pretty sure that Ravi will be better off after facing the facts about his life, and that he'll be mostly able to do it at his own rate. What little interaction I've had with his family in the last few weeks doesn't seem much different, and Kareena doesn't seem like she'd out someone out of anger. If she's even angry.

That's the "wrong reason" part; we did this so that there wouldn't be anything holding her back with Benny/Jordan, and that's more than a bit creepy. I look back at the older entries in the blog and wonder if this is how the "Pygmalion" who was manipulating Ashlyn got his/her start, giving folks little pushes before really going all-in on arranging people's lives. Jordan and I tell each other that we were helping her, pushing her out of a relationship that wasn't giving her all she wanted and never would, while also giving her the chance to take another seriously in a way she might not have otherwise, and we might have done something similar in other circumstances, but wire doing it based on information she doesn't have and won't, and that's not really cool.

Also not cool: I haven't spoken to her since. I knew I was going to miss her, but this was weeks early.

---

Benny got to see her, though, and those last few weeks were hard on him; I don't think he'd given any sort of thought to what he was doing until Jordan made him. He's a pretty good guy, but lets not forget he's here because of a one-night stand with me, after all.

The tension spread through the apartment, which never felt smaller. It wasn't much of a relief when we gathered in the living room Sunday night, though.

"So... Me and Kareena...  We haven't... I haven't... I just couldn't be the one to break her heart for the second time in a month! I'm sorry, Jordan, but you'll have to do it."

Jordan forced a pretty powerful stare out of Deirdre's pixie face."So you're saying it would break her heart."

"Well, maybe not break her heart, but it would hurt her."

"And you can't stand to be the one to do that."

"No, but someone has to, unless you just intend to pick up where I left off!"

Jordan took a deep breath, tried looking down, but eventually looked Benny in the eyes.  "What if you didn't have to leave off? What if I took over your life and you kept mine?"

For all that we'd been thinking about it over the previous weeks, as Jordan had implied it pretty strongly when we found out about Benny and Kareena, I don't think any of us expected Jordan to put the actual offer out there.

Benny started to sputter.  "C'mon, that's crazy! I can't just be you on my own! What about your job, your family-"

"He's right," I interjected, "I mean, you still go down to the comic shop every week, pick up staff from a folder that says 'Jordan Chang', and argue about them online as'JordoNYC'!  You've kept a claim on your real life like few others have!"

Jordan looked at Benny first. "Last job's been done for months, and you can make a career change. You get along with my brother better than I did, to be honest.  I'll miss the hell out of Mom and Dad - I can't guarantee that your friend Benny from Maine won't need a place to stay during the holidays - and you'll have to learn Cantonese sooner than later, but I didn't say it would be easy.  "Then he turned to me. ''And where did trying to stay me get me? Nowhere; just more pissed off at what I couldn't do, feeling like you guys trying new things were stupid. And then..."

He stopped looting at me, got up, and walked toward the kitchen area so that he could address both of us. "Do you have any idea what it's like to see yourself get your shit together from the outside - to see yourself get into shape, make real-world friends, and finally be with a great girl - and then feel like there's a really good chance that putting me back in that life would lead to me fucking it up? I'm not saying that I don't want what Benny's made of Jordan Chang, but it also fucking terrifies me!"

I didn't knew what to say to that, and I think it started to scare Benny as well. "Dude, you're smart, you'll figure it out. And I can't just take your life forever for a girl!"

For a minute, I thought Jordan was going to reply, but I guess he'd kind of exhausted what he had to say, and was trying to find something else. I considered holding back, because this was so totally not about me, but...

"Benny, look at the others who have had this happen to them. A whole lot have wound up stuck in bad situations for reasons not nearly as good as Kareena."

The room got really quiet, and then Benny got up, walked over to Jordan, and practically smothered that petite body in a bear hug.  "If you ever change your mind, man. I'll be on the next train to Maine if you say so, don't care who I become. But thank you for however much more time I've got with her!"

We all started hugging and crying after that, and then spent the next couple of days going to Jordan's favorite NYC places, packing, and then having a big blowout bash last night. I wish Kareena could have been part of it, but making it just for us Inn folks made more sense.

---

It ran late enough that Jordan barely had time to get to the train station before conking back out on the train. I've written this in a sprint, occasionally looking up to see him asleep, looking strangely peaceful.

I wonder what kind of Benny he'll be.

-Annette/Ravi

Jordan: Friday night with Gary and Deirdre

Annette has been spending the past couple of months trying to reconcile the way she has chosen to live Ravi's life with having to hand it back over to him, and that's sort of sucked for her. I, meanwhile, have spent last week worrying about being judged, and I've probably done way worse than using a closet case's dick to fuck a few guys (no, I don't think Ravi and I will stay roommates after this, so why not tell it like it is?).  I just ignored Deirdre's life entirely, so when she called up at the end of June, I didn't know what to expect.

On average, I probably keep in contact with the folks before and after me on the Inn's chain-of-change as much as anyone, but it's a distorted average - while Annette has regular emails and text exchanges with both Ravi and the person living her life, I live with Benny (sometimes even sharing a room when he and Annette bunking together would look weird) and seldom talk to Deirdre. At first it was defiance - I probably blamed her for me being stuck as a girl - and then it was just having nothing to talk about. I didn't need to know anything about her life, and we didn't really share any common interests. so why try and force some sort of friendship? She would ask me how things were going every once in a while, but that was it.  Even then, I mostly ignored her.

A few weeks ago, though, they had decided that they would take a trip to New York, and wanted to meet up. My first instinct was to say hell, no, but I made the mistake of telling Annette, and she said we had to (she can make "you" into "we" without much trouble at all).  I said I didn't see the point, and she replied that there needn't be one - it can just be a thing you do. She says I'm lucky to have been able to interact with Benny as he tried to live my life, as most of the other "guests" just get a letter and only see the results of what happened after-the-fact, so I should give Deirdre this one evening.

So, plans were made.  Dinner with Benny & Annette, a walk along the High Line, meeting up with Kareena for ice cream later.  Annette gears up for a "gay best friend" day, but I tell her, no, these people know who I really am and I'm not looking to impress them with how girly I can be or anything.  Just shorts, a t-shirt, and a ponytail for me, because New York can get fucking hot.

We met at around six o'clock, and it must have looked kind of odd to anybody who hadn't been to the Inn - the three of us with our apparent various ethnicities get approached by this couple in their late forties, sort of simultaneously aged a bit prematurely and kind of robust-looking because they have spent their lives working for a living.  They still register as being our age if you've been to the Inn and know that everything is not necessarily as it seems; you don't see that many people pushing fifty simultaneously texting and talking with each other, or stopping to look at certain posters on the walls with interest rather than surprised curiosity. Then again, it is New York, and we do get all kinds.

It takes a while for them to spot me, as I'm easily the shortest and thus most difficult to find in a crowd. They do, though, hustling over and introducing, themselves. The real Deirdre starts to embrace me, but backs off. "A little too weird for me," she says, "and I kind of get the impression you aren't really a hugger." She's not wrong, so we settle for a somewhat awkward handshake.

Annette and Benny introduce themselves, and then we're seated.  There's a sort of prolonged staring-not-staring thing going on with me, Deirdre, and Gary, and I crack first.  "Look, I'm not going to apologize for trying to live my life instead of yours.  I had stuff that needed to be done that Benny here wasn't going to handle and playing the part of Ravi's girlfriend was just not happening.  If that's what you're here for..."

Deirdre bit the side of her lip, something that might have been cuter coming from me, the way appearances were arranged. "It would have been kind of nice, but I kind of get it. It kind of never occurred to us, but maybe if we were going to be separated or something... Anyway, I think Gary is just looking for a peek at your boobs without me knowing."

"I'm not looking at her boobs!"

"Nah, it's okay. They're really my boobs, after all-"

"Actually, they're my tits and only look like yours right now." We had a laugh, but I soon pointed out that I was kind of serious. "It's like everyone who goes to the Inn just automatically thinks it makes sense to abandon their lives to other people, or vice versa, even talking like their body isn't their own any more. It's just, I don't know..."

Annette said something about this experience making a feminist out of me. I snorted.

Deirdre seemed to think it over, though she changed the mood by elbowing Gary and pointing to Benny. "She's got a point, but then again, if I get to stay with him..."

"So long as you're cool with him being me!"

We all laughed, but it had an edge to it.  We've all, to some extent or other, spent a lot of time thinking about lives as pieces to be arranged and reassembled, and assessing the potential combination of that body and that mind is a path that can get you into trouble. Like, if I could get some non-bitch into Tina Chen's life..?

"Well," I said, "you might want to do it for a while, stage a breakup and reconciliation."

"Ugh." Gary cradled his head in his hands. "I set the feeling I'm already going to have to dump Kristina again, and that takes a fair amount of time and effort."

Deirdre sighed, but didn't look as pained by it as Gary. "I'm telling him that we should just go. Find a new place in a new city where I can finish school and he can start studying for the bar again. If there is one thing we've learned from this, it's that we work no matter what our surroundings are."

"And that not being near our families can be for the best."

I fidgeted a bit hearing that. I didn't stay in New York because I was afraid of doing something outside my comfort zone, but I do wonder about what it would have been like to try something a little different. What if I'd gone to Baltimore but broke up with Ravi/Gary for the duration? Sitting at that table, looking at how these two had learned something, Benny had done things to make my life better, and Annette seemed to have found some new knowledge about Ravi and herself, I got the feeling that I had just hidden, and that doing so wasn't much different than how I had lived my own life.

Then Kareena arrived and everybody started doing it.

Annette is naturally the one who talks about Kareena the most, but I found it interesting (at the time) that we all tried to keep the weird Inn stuff away from her. I mean, fuck, I don't ever recall feeling angry about her bailing on the trip and getting me stuck in this situation, and Annette will tell you that a lot of stuff pisses me off. It's an indication of just how much people like her immediately, and even though we know that she wouldn't believe us if we told her the truth, the whole thing would upset her.

It made for the occasional weird moment, though, like when we introduced our guests as the people whose luggage we found left in our room at the Inn and she laughed, saying that she really wished she could have gone on that trip if it was cool enough for "Jordan" to find a girlfriend and make big changes in his life or even to want to hang out with folks that "he" and Ravi had barely met. That drew a big, semi-fake laugh all around.

It also sort of killed the blog-worthy conversation until the end of the night (especially since "blog-worthy" becomes a much higher target a month later; this thing has been sitting in "Drafts" since then). The rest of the night was pleasant but mostly uneventful, at least until I went to the ladies' room and got backed into a corner by Deirdre.

She stared at me hard for what seemed like along time but was probably only about twenty seconds before hissing "you selfish bitch." Then her shoulders slumped, and she continued. "There, that's out. I've wanted to say that for almost a year."

I untensed a bit too; I didn't realize that I was preparing for a woman who kind of had fucking reason to do so to hit me until the moment had passed. "I--I'm sorry." It was a little weird. "It was just - my job, the thought of being Ravi's girlfriend..."

"No, I get it now - Gary and I didn't have it easy, but we were kind of the best-case scenario, relationship-wise - still with each other, no sex-change stuff; maybe I would have done the same thing in your situation.

"But I don't forgive you. I want you to know that, even if we're polite, even if we understand, even if Gary does. You made our lives harder when almost everyone else we connected with during this whole thing has at least tried to help, and I want you to think about that."

I had an impulse to tell her to fuck herself, but didn't. Not sure why. Anyway, that's what's been hard to actually set down in the last month for me.

I'll let Annette tell the rest.

-"Jordo"

Jordan /"Deirdre": Beach Day

If you had told me a year ago that I would ever wind up in a bikini, I would have called you a damn liar, but that happened Sunday. It was weird.

I blame Benny and my brother Max equally. When we showed up at my house with Benny looking more fit than I usually am, Max decided to put a call in to the coach of his 9-man team to see if they had any openings.  There were, although he was skeptical that I would be much of an addition. Then Max called "me" and Benny, feeling kind of bored after the seasonal job he picked up for December ended, decided that it sounded like fun, and when the coach saw how Benny had not only remade my body but apparently picked up some pretty decent volleyball skills while no-one was looking, he started thinking that maybe "Jordan" could play.

At first I didn't give it much thought - as you can maybe tell from how he never posted here, Benny hangs out with us but also pretty much does his own thing; I half suspected I'd get my life back and find out I've got a girlfriend that I'd somehow never seen before. I find that a little less likely to be the case now, because a few days ago he came home from practice and said that since we've all made our back-to-normal reservations at the Inn (August can't come soon enough!), maybe I should get to know the guys.

I didn't really want to, since I was figuring that it would make the most sense to have "Jordan" quit the team before Benny left for the Inn, but even in that case, those guys would think they knew me, and I didn't really want some chunk of New York's Chinese-American community to think I was a flake when I "forgot" them. Besides, now that my contract job is done, I've got a bunch of free time on my hands too, and there really is a limit to how much Xbox you can play, especially when you have a girl's voice.

Of course, his next day with the team is at the beach, rather than on asphalt, so a swimsuit is in order.  At least, it is according to Annette, who overhears the conversation and makes sure that she pitches the idea while his still there and can say that, well all the other girlfriends will probably be wearing one, like he knows and like I'm really his fucking girlfriend.  Annette sees me about to say that more or less verbatim and takes a different tack, saying that if I'm at the beach, I might actually feel like going swimming, so why not be ready?

Dumb reason, I guess, but as this whole year spent as someone other than ourselves winds down, Annette starts to talk about learning something from the experience, not necessarily in terms of a moral lesson, but just practical stuff like "the guys who say they need to spread their legs out on the bus or crush their junk are full of shit" or that it does take longer for women to get in and out of the bathroom.  Maybe knowing what it's like ("it" covering a lot of territory) might be useful someday!

It sounds a lot better when she says it, I guess.

So, on Friday, I headed out to the shopping center where she works at Ravi's dead-end job and we stopped in a department store before her shift. They had a brand-new display of ladies' swimwear up, and having one-pieces with Marvel characters and Mets branding made me look through them for longer than I probably would otherwise. I didn't go with any of them - but got a simple yellow one, along with a blue two-piece. I didn't really want that one, but Annette somehow talked me into a pair of short-shorts using the "you don't want 'your' girlfriend to look like some sort of frump, do you?" logic and then pointed out that the one-piece would look kind of weird sticking out of them.

Trying them on wasn't as stressful as girls make it out to be - they're not sized as precisely as bras and I'm not fucking worried about guys thinking I'm fat. I have put on a little weight since this happened, but not a lot - that time I got sick didn't really seem like something to fight through, and though I still really like ice cream, the main effect seems to be that I'm softer all over, with a less bony ass and something approaching a real B cup up top.

As if a shopping bag full of girls' beach stuff wasn't enough, Annette also suggested that maybe it was hairdo time, though she left me to my own devices there.

---

All that in hand, I got to experience making a guy late on Sunday. Anybody who wants to snicker at that without ever having shaved his or her legs can bite me.

At the time, putting the swimsuit on wasn't a big deal; it was just like putting on underwear, and actually kind of more comfortable; since I hadn't gone for just triangles, it was a little looser than usual. Almost more like guys' underwear, in a way; when I took a step, I didn't feel a "covered/uncovered" line across my cheek.  Once I had shirt, shorts, and sandals on, I didn't think much about it.

Benny did have a little fun making the "bae made me late" explanation when we got to the beach, but it's not like anybody there got why it was supposed to be funny. His team wasn't even in the first match, so it didn't really matter.

They were in the second, and I must admit, I enjoyed seeing that "I'' was playing but Max was on the bench to start the day. All of you who don't have little brothers and think I'm terrible for that can bite me.  I was starting to get into it when Annette and Kareena showed up.

"Just had to get a look, huh?"

Kareena apparently thought I was grunting at her instead of "Ravi", and while she didn't seem to understand my tone, she didn't show much sign that it made a difference. "Are you kidding? Ravi said 'secret Chinese volleyball' and I couldn't resist."

Now, 9-man isn't exactly secret, but we don't go around telling folks who aren't Chinese-American about it. It's basically volleyball, only with nine-man teams that don't rotate positions. You also get one bounce, although that doesn't mean as much on sand as asphalt. In organized leagues, the bulk of the team is required to be of Chinese descent, and the rest should be at least part-Asian. Benny really loves it, saying it's better than regular volleyball, but it's never been a big deal to me.

The ethnicity thing did make it kind of weird, at least for me that day. Benny-slash-Jordan is a pretty good looking guy, so a lot of the Chinese girls were looking at him, and then at me, only there was resentment during the latter.  Tina Chen, in particular, cheered really loud whenever Benny did something good, and if I wasn't as loud, would give me dirty looks for not being quite so enthusiastic, until finally she started walking toward me saying something about a "ginger slut". I wasn't thinking about getting into a catfight much - though the thought of adding that to my "experience list" had a little appeal - but I must have stepped the wrong way because Kareena pushed Tina back and Annette led me the other way. "Trust me," she said, "this is not as sexy as it looks."

I shrugged. "Tina never gave me the time of day in high school," I said. "but I am going to fuck that bitch so hard when I've got my life back!"

"It's not like she'll know."

"Like I'll be defending Deirdre's honor."

Annette sort of rolled her eyes, but didn't say much after Tina "accidentally" spilled two whole large iced coffees on me, drenching all my clothes, just as the match was ending. Benny came over to apologize, saying he didn't know what was with that chick, asking if we were ready to go home. I started to say yes, but Kareena asked Benny how long he'd been playing. He looked at me, but I just sort of gave him a "what do you think" look, and he said just a few months for 9-man, but he'd always played volleyball. Kareena said she never would have guessed, then asked how good he was. He shrugged, and then she grabbed the ball, found a net that was still up, and asked them to leave it up. Then she pulled her dress over her head to reveal a pretty serious one-piece, the kind which you associate with professional athletes became it just looks fucking frictionless, and somehow makes a girl look sexier even though it's covering everything up and holding it in place rather than showing off the goods.  I knew Kareena was too good for Ravi before, but, damn, I was feeling some severe envy of Ravi here, and Annette revealing that he is gay just made it seem like even more of a waste.

I was staring enough that I almost missed her asking the rest of us for a game. "There is no way that you got that good in just a few months, and I want to see what's up for myself. You guys too-"she pointed at me and Annette. "If you guys have been holding out on me..."

It sounds threatening written down, but she was smiling huge while she said it.  Ravi was never a never a really physical person, and Annette probably only a minor upgrade on that account, so I wouldn't be shouted if this was the first outing they had gone on where the athletic part of her really got to come out.

Annette and I gave each other a "you arguing?" look and started walking to the court, sort of pairing up boyfriend/girlfriend, and just as I was getting in place, Tina Chen decides to plow into me with a couple iced coffees, spilling them all over us.

"What the fuck was that for?"

"You don't think I did that on purpose , do you?" Then she proceded to take her shirt off and look at it with a fake pout. "It's ruined!" Addressing Benny much more than me.

My sane first impression was just to say "what-the-fuck-ever" and let it go, but Kareena and Annette were both giving me "bitch should not be allowed to get away with that" looks and I figured I should take my cues from them, but that wasn't it. Tina had been like this her whole damn life, and I didn't really want people thinking that "Jordan" wasn't worth fighting for.  So I took my own shirt off, threw it in her face, and said she could wear it. For added emphasis, I dropped my shorts, shoved them off to the side, and then turned to Benny. "Are we going to play or what?"

Tina may have made some sort of remark about my-shash-Deirdre's breasts, but I tuned it out because my head was full of "you're practically naked on the beach where everyone can see and set at you are you insane?!?"

It may seem hard to believe after a year, but I haven't been undressed this much outside the bathroom very often.  At first, I'd look in the mirror and want to put something asexual on, then I was sharing an apartment with Benny and Annette, and who knew how they would react to me being a tempting target right in front of them? But now here I was, looking like the sort of girl who just whipped them out in front of everyone, a quick breeze reminding me that my ass wasn't entirely covered and I was showing some cleavage, after a longtime wearing loose swim trunks and a t-shirt at the beach.

Annette and Benny looked shocked, but Annette recovered quietly, telling Benny to serve the ball. He did, we started playing, and I maybe couldn't quite put it out of my head, but soon enough Annette and I were expending a lot of energy just trying to keep up with Benny and Kareena, who are good at this and barely seemed to sweat despite it being about eighty.

I think Benny and I won - the scoring got a little fuzzy - and that was pretty impressive, because Annette at least has some size on her side as Ravi and I was having occasional "what if my boobs pop out?" thoughts, even though Annette had assured me that it wasn't an issue with that sort of bikini.

Kareena was impressed by "the new Jordan", which I guess is probably better than the same assessment from the likes of Tina Chen. It still kind of sucked to hear, as I was on the subway with them while Benny went to meet up with Max and the rest of the team, so I was hearing it as "no offense, Deirdre, but I never thought your boyfriend could be bothered to get healthy and do something that didn't involve a keyboard." So that part sucked.

Still, if it means I've got a shot at even the Tina Chens of the world, I kind of can't wait to look like that in a few weeks.

-Jordo

Jordan/"Deirdre": No avoiding family at the holidays

Don't give me any shit in the comments for not writing this up at the time; I wouldn't be doing it now except that my project for work is done, I don't know what I'm going to do until we go back to the Inn - and that won't be until later in the summer than we'd like, because someone down the line from us wants to finish a school year, like it's their fucking academic career.

Anyway, I don't want the crap that would come from waking Benny and Annette up by playing Xbox, so I might as well do some catching up.  (Yeah, I started this in the morning!)  In some ways, the holiday I missed most was Halloween; it has always been a big thing in our family. Mostly my Dad; the way he tells it, he could be Bruce Lee then and all the kids in his class who gave the Chinese kid shit most of the time would find him cool. It stuck with him, and our family would always host the best Halloween parties. I wanted to go, but I didn't want to dress up in a girl's costume, among other things. Besides, Benny's first idea for a costume was a samurai, and then after that was Jackie Chan, and that would have kicked off an argument with my brother that he wouldn't have understood, and not just because it was in Cantonese. So we skipped it, and then did the same on Thanksgiving, telling my parents that we would be at Deirdre's family, and Deirdre's that we were at mine, which didn't surprise them.

By Christmas, though, it was too much - skipping that many holidays was driving us nuts, and I don't know if I've got some female genes that are pushing to make me like shopping or something, but I was finding things that might make cool gifts for my family and buying them, not necessarily thinking about the actual giving. Eventually, it became obvious that Benny and I were going to have to show up, and I got this weird sort of insecurity because I would be going as my own girlfriend.

That's fucking weird, folks. Most of the time, I don't give a shit how I look; I did all my work on the computer and even when I went out, I would dress in loose outfits because who needs the shit that comes from guys noticing you?  But while I am perfectly content to be that sort of girl for as long as I've got to be any sort of girl, I'd rather not have my family think that I've got to settle for Deirdre if she's like that. It's fucked up, but I needed to look a bit nicer.

Enter Annette. She had probably been waiting for me to ask for some more help ever since convincing me that yeah, even with these little things, a bra helps, but she is thankfully not one to gloat.  Instead, she helped me pick out a green dress that complemented this body's reddish hair well and looked Christmas-y, but which wasn't really that come-hither, at least from inside. She helped out with hair and make-up, too.

Not that anyone noticed, what with Benny looking all sexy.

I should have expected that, but somehow I didn't. Benny hadn't entirely spent the previous few months in the gym, or running, or whatever else has filled his time with the employment situation kind of tricky.  Point being, he'd gotten results, and it's not a "he did it so gradually that I barely even noticed" thing. I fucking noticed!  I noticed when he bought new pants on my credit cards, I noticed when a girl who never would have walked up to talk to me introduced herself to him, and, yeah, I noticed when he came out of the shower with just a towel around his waist and I felt the need to excuse myself and spend some alone time. Getting turned on by someone else looking like you is WEIRD!

Not quite as weird as my mom seeing him and showering him with compliments, though.  I don't think Benny really had any idea of just how weird it was, because the first salvo would be in Cantonese, and when he said ''English, ma, don't be rude to Deirdre", she would tone it down a little. I didn't quite get the impression that "Deirdre" suddenly wasn't good enough for "Jordan", but his physical transformation was the talk of the day, not the first girl that "I'' had brought home for a holiday since college.

It bugged me at first, but I got over it. Part of it was that Benny didn't let me get shuffled off to the side, keeping a tight grip on my hand so that he wouldn't be stranded in the middle of some Cantonese conversation that was over his head, or even an English-language one without me there to interject "oh, he told me about that!" Unlike a lot ofpeople changed by the Inn, he hasn't had to spend a lot of time living my life specifically, so he needed a lot of help there.

Plus, hey, it was Christmas! Everyone liked the gifts I got them, Dad made eggnog, and even if I was seeing it from a new vantage point, it looked good. Better than "real", maybe, because Benny and my brother didn't get into any arguments, Mom couldn't go on about me needing to eat healthier or dropping dead before I gave her any grandchildren, and for a wonder, Max hadn't done anything to piss our parents off either.

Oh, and Max didn't leer at me or anything.I wasn't really worried about it - he generally only goes for Chinese girls - but I was having a hard time thinking of a worse nightmare scenario than "kid brother finds me hot and tries to steal me away from guy he thinks is me."  Did not even come close to happening; I guess his own last breakup was too recent.

It wound up one of the better days since I got back from the Inn, even if I was damn ready to take the shoes off when I got home. I could see that Annette was really envious, too - Ravi's family exchanges presents on Christmas but it's not as big a deal as Diwali, and on top of that, it was her first holiday away from home and she missed her mom something fierce.

Things got pretty quiet for Benny and me after that, but Annette sure made up for it. But that's her story to tell.

-Jordo

Jordan/"Deirdre": Anyone seen Annette this morning?

It's probably nothing, but Kareena called this morning saying that she lost track of "Ravi" at the party last night and he hasn't been answering his phone. Benny said he/she never came home, and now he's gone off with Kareena to look for him/her.

Again, it's probably nothing. Kareena said he was drinking a lot, and while Annette may occasionally overdo it - as much as she looks like someone in his mid-twenties, she is still a kid away from home for the first time underneath - what seems like overdoing it to her is something her body can currently absorb. And despite being young, she's pretty together.

But, hey, if she decided to get on a train or plane last night and visit one of the other Inn people, could you guys have her to call? The roommates are worried.

-Jordo

Annette/Ravi: Kareena

I've got a huge crush on my girlfriend.

Weird thing to write, no? I laughed out loud when I said it to Benny, but I think that's good. The week when I don't find myself saying something that sounds ridiculous is the one where I get genuinely worried, because that means that being a 25-year-old Hindu-American man is in some way normal for me.

Getting back on point - Ravi mentioned Kareena Milothra once or twice in his posts, mostly to say that she was originally the one he was going to be at the Trading Post with, but for her grandmother falling ill back in Mumbai. She wound up staying there until her classes began anew - she's a helpful person and wanted to be with family after the funeral, as one does - and was so busy after she got back to New York that we initially didn't get a whole lot of time to see each other.

Still, she makes an impression. The first time she stopped in to say hi, both Benny and I stumbled a bit. She's tall, lean, a smidge or two lighter-skinned than I am, though not close to Jordan's current paleness, and she speaks English with this accent that is half Mumbai and half English boarding school and all to die for. If she ever wears makeup, then I kind of resent how good she is at making it invisible versus just envying her being gorgeous. Benny and I have come up with a new way to drive Jordan nuts, which is to have long, sexy talks about how an evening would have gone if she had stayed at the Inn, and differing positions or something meant I wound up turned into her and he into Ravi - almost a required condition of the game,as he tends not to give the idea that he could have become a girl much thought. It got a bit uncomfortable when I acted one out by kissing him on the lips, although he said Jordan's freak-out watching almost made it worth it.

I'm kind of glad it didn't work out that way, though, because then I likely wouldn't really have met her beyond just exchanging useful information via email. She finds my "new" interest in Doctor Who a bit surprising, but it's fun because she really likes Peter Capaldi - he reminds her more of the old-school version that her dad introduced her to - even though I don't think the old guy is a patch on Tennant & Smith. She's really sporty - apparently I have picked up right where Ravi left off in her ongoing quest to educate her fiancé on the greatness of soccer and cricket (i.e., nowhere), but she's also become a big Knicks fan. And since our busy schedules don't intersect much (side note: I would make a terrible med student, and I'm not sure whether "gross stuff" or "sixteen-hour days" would be what does me in), there hasn't really been that much time for her to notice I'm acting weird.

Or to do much in the way of fooling around.

Ravi assured me via email that I wouldn't have to do that much anyway; apparently she comes from a fairly conservative family, enough so that if an arranged wedding raises the hundred feminist flags in her head that it does in mine, she doesn't show much outward sign of it. It's still kind of weird, though - we'll wind up holding hands on the subway, and it doesn't feel quite right to have the larger one, or she'll give me a quick peck and I feel kind of awful about not being the guy who she means to kiss. It feels nice to cuddle on the couch, though.

Bedtime gets weird, on the other hand. As much as I've gotten used to being out in the city by myself and not being scared, she's been staying over a lot, and the first time she saw Benny's sleeping bag she wanted to know what was up. I think I stammered something about winning it in a contest at work, but even though she's apparently modern enough to share a bed with her husband-to-be when her family is thousands of miles away, she probably wouldn't have been cool with Benny being there too. After the first time he barged in and freaked Kareena out (I think some excuse was made about him being drunk), I started leaving the sleeping bag in the living room unless she wasn't in. That's the signal for him to bunk with Jordan, which made him kind of throw a fit. As you might expect, he doesn't give one good small damn about whether Kareena wonders why "Jordan" has the couch and "his girlfriend Deirdre" has the bedroom. That hasn't happened in the last couple of weeks, though, after the night that it just didn't make sense to put on an act after the four of us stayed up until two-thirty playing Yahtzee (we are exciting!). I'm not sure what their arrangement is those nights, but I guess they can live with it.

She's been a fun addition to everything going on here, at least, even if it does mean that we're spending way more time pretending to be who we look like than we used to. Here's hoping we don't get lost in it!

-Annette

Jordan/"Deirdre " - Can we never talk about my tits again?

It's been hot in the city for the past couple of weeks, and cramming three human beings into my apartment with its shitty air conditioning hasn't been the best, so we've all been a little on edge. I think we've all looked for some sort of excuse to get out of it as much as we could, which is why I was at an afternoon movie a couple days back, only to emerge into a thunderstorm, the sort that doesn't even do anything to get the temperature down. I was able to run to the subway easy enough, but it was still raining and I had a bit of a walk at the other end.

At first, it just ticked me off a little, especially since I haven't gotten a haircut since changing - I inherited a sort of pixie-ish style from Dierdre, but that was almost two months ago, so it's had time to grow out, and nobody tells girls that they're looking kind of shaggy when they don't get a trim every few weeks. I eventually got to my apartment, where Benny and Annette were playing Kinect Sports, although that went off the rails when Benny just started staring at me. I pushed some of that stringy hair out of my face and asked something along the lines of what the fuck are you staring at, perv?

Benny mumbled nothing started playing the game again, but kept looking my direction as I went to get a soda out of the fridge. That's when Annette hit pause, put her controller down, and said "fine, I'll be the one to ask! Jordan, do you even own a bra?"

I looked down, and, okay, my t-shirt was clinging right to my skin, and even if it wasn't particularly stretched, my nipples were making an impression on it. It was just light enough that maybe you could see the dark patch around it, but not really. "For these little things? What's the point?"

Annette started to roll her eyes - his eyes, I guess, because she looks like Ravi - and starts saying that she is not gong to rise to that bait when Benny brings his hands up to his chest, says that he gets it, that I'm used to going without despite having more, but if he could have some support for these "moobs", he would certainly appreciate it.

I threw the soda at him and went to my room. I heard Annette smack the back of Benny head more than saw it, and then a couple of minutes later she knocked on my door. "Hey, can I apologize to your face?" I open, and she steps in.

"I'm sorry for blurting that out. It's just that we all know guys look at any boobs available, and while you may not think you're carrying a lot around up top for one reason or another..." She looked up at some of the comics posters on the wall, and I kind of got the implication. "... you do have enough to get someone's attention. Besides, when mine were that size, I was pretty glad to have a bra on. Heck, as soon as you can wear a training bra, it's kind of nice. I miss mine."

"Bullshit."

"For real! It made me feel grown up, just as much as... Well, you know." Yeah, I knew. "I mean, I'm bigger and have the other thing and need to shave, but part of me and my routine is missing."

I was a bit skeptical, but the weird thing about Annette is that this really annoyingly optimistic kid comes through even using Ravi's face and voice. "Fine," I said, "we'll go bra shopping."

---

I bet you'd like a whole lot of talk about going into Victoria's Secret and changing rooms and stuff like that, but it wasn't that exciting. Annette got a ruler and some string and figured out a rough guess at my size, and then we went to the department store and I tried some on. I will say that "vanity sizing" is a real pain in the butt - I'm apparently right on the border between A and B cups, with the more honest brands calling me an A and others saying I'm a B.

Then there was the whole style thing; Annette mostly talked me out of ones that squeezed everything down, saying that it got pretty uncomfortable after a few hours. Eventually, I found a few that were pretty comfortable. Annette insisted I got at least one that traded a bit of comfort for some lift, which was kind of weird. It wasn't that much more of a pinch, but looking in the mirror in the changing room, it was the first time I really saw myself having cleavage without pushing my breasts together with my hands. I noticed the bra was there a bit more, but it didn't really feel like someone squeezing me.

I tried to say no, and Annette tried to talk me out of it. That's when some of the folks in the store who had been kind of amused by this Hindu guy explaining about bras to his petite Irish-looking girlfriend started giving her disapproving looks, which was weird in its own way. As much as I wanted her to back off, it sucks to have people look at me like I needed protecting from some predatory guy who was pressuring me to look sexy. I think I eventually relented more to piss them and their idea that I was some sort of helpless girl off.

The funny thing is, that one hasn't become my favorite bra or anything - I've only been wearing them for a few days, and I do like the ones that I notice the least the most - but the other one does do a bit to make me look less like a kid. I suppose it'll help with not getting carded in bars or something.

But, man, I hope this is the last time we have this conversation in my apartment. You really have no idea what it's like having someone with your proper face talking about your tits that way.

-Jordo

Annette/Ravi: Crowded House

You'd think that I would be finding more time to blog about all this, but it's harder than I expected.

Part of it is just time - I'm not just doing Ravi's job, but learning it. I've spent a fair amount of his money on "____ for Dummies" books, which has gotten me through about 85% of the cases people bring into "Buy More" (check out me sort of hiding where I actually work and making a pop culture reference that marks you as cool for getting it!). By and large, people aren't asking you to set up a major network or something, they just want to connect to the internet, and I've done that for Mom and myself a time or two. And you can fix a lot of phones by taking off the back plate, removing the battery for a minute, and restarting it.

The other time factor is - I live in New York now! There are something like four thousand places with live music every night, and since I look about seven or eight years older than I am, none of them card me. I think I've tried a dozen different beers in the past couple weeks, and that can have me sleeping in the next morning, cutting into my time to study. That's on two fronts - the woman living my life and I send a lot of emails back and forth, and I'm kind of shadowing the assignments she's receiving at school and writing papers, some for her to turn in and some so that when I get my life back and go go to class, I won't be hopelessly behind in terms of what I've actually done. It's a lot, but I can't see how Jordan can just stay in the apartment all the time with all this right outside his door.

And, yeah, then there's Jordan.

I gather from texting with Ravi-slash-Gary that even before all of this, Jordan was sometimes kind of a difficult guy to live with. Paid his part of the rent every month, eventually held up his end of the bargain keeping the place tidy enough not to get kicked out, but spending a couple of weeks on vacation together was a major aberration. This is my first apartment, so I don't know if it's always like this, but it's not like there's really my room, Jordan's room, and the common area - he/she has sort of colonized the living room and kitchen area, with perrennial first dibs on the TV, always shoving my food to the back of the fridge, and setting up his home office on the kitchen table. So Benny and I are kind of crammed into the smaller bedroom, and as much as I like the guy, it's not comfortable, and the one time Benny tried to sleep on the couch, Jordan decided he needed to play Xbox at seven the next morning.

It's been building for the past couple of weeks, but even if I'd had time to blog in general since arriving here, I wasn't going to. I just got out of high school without quite having avoided that sort of petty bullshit sniping as much as I wanted to, and I did not want to start a thing where I come and write on the blog about something rather than talking to Jordan directly, and then he does the same rather than confront me or Benny, and so on. Fortunately, we kind of had this out a couple of days ago when one of Ravi's friends from work went to a show near this place with me, and while we were going to have some Chinese take-out beforehand, there was no place to sit and my co-worker couldn't understand why "Jordan's girlfriend" (the easiest explanation for who the new girl is) was bossing me around so much and leaving me no place to eat in my own place.

So now this fight isn't all immature and bratty, and he's at least acknowledging our presence a little, although I suspect that this sort of thing is going to be short-lived.

Jordan/"Deirdre " - New Roommates

I had some warning that Benny and Annette were on their way, although I mostly ignored it. The first time was because my phone said "Ravi" and I'd had enough of him calling and saying I should come to Baltimore and share a bed with him, and since it was late i didn't even think about how those calls usually come in on Deirdre's phone and always as "Gary". The next time, I realized who it was, and deliberately ignored it, because who wants to get into all this shit? But then Annette sent a text saying they'd be in at around nine, and there was no ignoring it. I suppose I could have gone to see a movie or something, but then they could just come in and make themselves at home.

It was closer to 9:30 when they actually arrived, although I was playing Xbox with headphones on and didn't hear them knocking on the door until Annette finally gave up and used the key, calling that they were coming in and to please not be naked, like I just sit around playing with my pussy all day. It was kind of weird, because she sounded just like Ravi but not - like he was impersonating someone. Then they came in, and...

Benny was me. It was the most messed-up thing I've ever felt, seeing myself standing there, seven or eight inches taller than me and kind of large. He reached out a hand and I folded my arms, not wanting to take it. "Yeah", he said, " this must be weird for you."

I didn't say anything. Annette/Ravi looked around the front room, said it was crowded, and then asked where Ravi's room was. I pointed and then she wheeled her suitcase over, opened the door, and then called back, saying it was a petty tight fit. Benny walked over agreed, looked at her, then back at me. I didn't say anything.

Annette shrugged, said it had been a long day and then found the bathroom herself. That left me with Benny, who looked at the TV, Xbox, and stereo. "Pretty nice setup."

I didn't like the way he said it. "Don't get any ideas."

"What do you mean? Oh! Hey, don't worry bout that, I was just, you know...". He looked around. "So, is there, like, a sleeping bag or something?"

"Do I look like I camp?"

"You never know; I dated this little spitfire once who-- Oh, you mean do I look like you camp? I guess not, but, again, you never know." The bathroom door opened and Annette came out, asking about towels and whether they were shared or if Ravi had his own. I said we each had our own, but it was no big deal.

"Cool! Mom's been on me about stuff like this all summer, saying to keep things separate...". She talked off and then came up with a very un-Ravi-like grin. "Huh, looks like I skipped right over dorms and this is my first apartment. Not exactly what I was expecting, or when!" She took out Ravi's phone, backed into the doorway, and took a picture. Then it was "c'mon, one of all of us together!"

I said I was not fuckin' dealing with that right then and went into my bedroom.

---

I rated in there until I heard the outside door close the next morning, then crawled out to the living area only to be confronted with the crazy sight of myself eating breakfast.

Just like with Annette, Benny didn't sound quite right to me. Part was just how hearing a recording of your voice is different than when you speak it, because of it arriving via the air rather than your jaw or some shit, but part was that he spoke too slow and sort of had a Maine accent, although he says a real one is way thicker. A different accent, although I don't know if anyone who didn't know about body-morphing hotels would pick up on it.

"Hey."

"Uh, hey." I wasn't sure what to say.

"So, Annette's weirdly excited, but she's a really good kid. Eighteen, but crazy smart and with her act together."

"And what about you?"

"Twenty-three, and I don't think I'm a screw-up. I won't get you in any sort of mess for when we change back."

"Speaking of..."

"Yeah, I'm probably going to need your driver's license. I mean, you can't really use it, and since this apartment really isn't big enough for two Jordan Changs, I might need it to find my own place, unless you want to keep me around."

"And why would I want that? You creep me the fuck out."

"Personal trainer, bro. Annette figures we can get our old lives back if we make reservations in backwards order next year, and wouldn't you like to come back to being a guy in better shape?"

"Are you calling me a fatass?"

"Dude, I'm the one carrying it around, so I think it's okay to say maybe you could afford to lose a few pounds. Besides, look at you now. Put the whole girl thing aside, and don't you just feel better?"

"No, I don't feel fucking better as a girl!"

"Hey, my bad. I just figured you're trim and seem to be moving around pretty well. Anyway, I also figured you might be ducking phone calls or something, and it might be handy to have me around when that happens. Unless they're in Chinese, in which case I can't help."

That made a certain amount of sense. I'd been able to keep work stuff on Lync, but I supposed that I had been kind of lucky there. "Fine. You can have my license, and I guess we can find a cot or sleeping bag or something." I found my wallet, extracted that card, and then swallowed deep as I also pulled out my debut card and told him the PIN. "I'm going to be checking the balance every day."

"Totally fair. Annette is getting a new set of keys, but if you've got a spare, I'd like to go for a run. Gotta get back into the habit."

---

He was back fifteen minutes later, asking about the shower, saying something about how he meant no disrespect but that this was going to be a challenge.

-Jordo

Jordan Chang - Urban Anonymity

As insane as the whole deal of having everything about your body changed by a cursed inn is, everybody else seems to make everything much harder on themselves than they have to.  They parachute into jobs they don't know how to do, surround themselves with people who expect them to behave a certain way, and in the name of making sure that things stay the same, either screw things up so much that even if things go back to normal, someone has to put their life back together, or they go so native that getting back to their own life is stranger than staying who they are.

I figure that even if I didn't have an apartment to come back to, I still would have come to New York or a place like it after the Inn changed me.  Nobody in my building batted an eye when they saw a white girl going in and out of an apartment formerly occupied by Chinese and Hindu guys, and the turnover in this neighborhood is so constant that they probably assumed I'd come in with someone else's moving van.  If I go to the Chinese place on the corner and order in Mandarin, it's maybe not something that the guy behind the counter sees all the time, but it's not something he hasn't seen before, either.  And I don't have to come up with some explanation when some nosy son of a bitch is all "hey, Deirdre, when did you learn Chinese?" that also has to take into account that she won't know it when she gets her own face back.

That said, I was still a little nervous about this afternoon.  I've spent most of the week in the apartment, working on my contract and then eating takeout and watching Netflix or doing stuff online, but eventually I got frustrated with skipping comic book message board threads out of fear of spoilers.  I pondered going to Comixology to get what I'd missed and catch up right then, but I looked across the room at the long boxes stacked up against the wall and decided that there was no fucking way I was going to let this body change my habits, and resolved to pick the two weeks of comics is missed the next day.

It was a little nerve-wracking; I spent a little more time in the shower than usual and stated at my reflection in the bathroom mirror even longer.  Looking for what, I don't know.  Having someone else's skin gives you this weird feeling that you're going to get caught even when you're not trying to hide.  I wound up deciding my face was clean, putting on a Hulk T-shirt and the only pair of cargo shorts if been able to find in my size on Sunday, and walled to the subway.

There are plenty of decent comic shops in the Bronx and the north end of Manhattan, but I've been going to the same one near Chinatown since I was a kid, and that's where everything  in my subscription had been pulled.  It meant taking the subway quite a ways, which itself was kind of a weird experience - I'm usually able to steady myself pretty well, but even if I've got nothing up top, I've also got skinny legs now, and I'm too damn short to lean in and grab a bar or a strap if someone's in the seat in front of me.  When the car went around a turn, I would have fallen straight to the floor if there weren't people to fall into.  The woman I landed on started to chew me out and I was about to be all "excuse me, bitch" when the guy is been standing in front of stood up and offered me his seat.  He kept looking at me after I sat down, and I thought he was going to try and get my phone number or something, but we were passing through Harlem, and when a woman got on showing more tit than I have (and high heels hallway to my knees), I was forgotten.

Eventually we got to Lower Manhattan, and I went with the crowd that was going my direction.  Being so short made it seem to take longer, but I eventually got there.  The crowd was probably about average for a Saturday afternoon - I'm usually a Wednesday night guy myself - and though I wasn't the only girl in the store, I got some looks.  Nobody went so far as to approach me as I got my stuff out of my folder, at least.  Two weeks' worth was a fair amount for these short arms, though, and somehow corners kept poking my left boob as I looked around the racks for anything I might have missed.  There were one or two.

I was a little nervous as I brought my stuff to the counter; the guy there didn't usually work Wednesday nights, but I'd seen him often enough to remember his name.  I was therefore a little nervous when he asked me the name on the sub and I answered "Jordan Chang", but he just entered it into the system and have me my discount.  I figured he must have thought I was picking it up for "me" or something, but he didn't blink when I handed him a debit card with that name.  He barely looked at it, giving more attention to my chest - weird, because he was on a platform and my T-shirt showed no cleavage, so he was looking straight down at nothing - so I don't know whether the incongruity between my name and appearance made any impression.

It was kind of a relief as I walked out of the shop and read my first couple issues over an ice cream from a nearby place, but it started to kind of piss me off a bit on the subway.  I could think of two or three reasons why someone who looks like I do now might be named Jordan Chang, but those only apply when you don't recognize the name.  Shouldn't he have found something weird about it?

Fuck it.  Time to read Batman.

-Jordo

Jordan Chang - Damn you, Trading Post Inn!

It's three-thirty in the morning and I almost wish I was dying.

I usually sleep pretty soundly through the night once I have fallen asleep, but twenty minutes ago I woke up in total fucking pain.  I thought - hoped - at first that it was my body going back to normal, that maybe despite what everyone says about the inn's curse following certain kinds of rules, my time as a girl was only going to last the weekend.  I pulled my pantries off so that my cock and balls wouldn't get crushed, but that moving around just suited things up and made the real problem obvious, and I barely made it to the bathroom in time to puke my guts out.

I'm not pregnant, smart-asses, but it looks like I should probably start ordering the small pizza instead of the medium for the duration.  Maybe I should have figured that out from how many times I had to piss yesterday (can't code without Pepsi Max), but I'm just not used to leaving any pizza in the box.  Besides, when some magical force has changed your body, you kind of don't want to give in.  Those last couple slices just look at you like "can't handle us? why don't you just give in and get a salad, bitch?", and down they go even if it won't be clear that your new tiny girl stomach doesn't have the room for a few hours.

There's other parts of this tiny girl crap that are ridiculous, too.  Because I left all Deirdre's stuff on the train with Ravi, the only clothes I had that really fit me now were the sweats some nameless perv pulled onto me while I was unconscious, and given the shitty A/C in this apartment, they weren't going to be enough, even before you started to consider the underwear situation.  My boxers just weren't going to stay up any more, although I can use my t-shirts as nightshirts now.  Just running into a department store to grab some t-shirts, shorts, and (ugh) panties didn't write get the job done at first, though - I had to go back a second time when I somehow managed to find the one package of panties too small for this ass, and the tees practically covered the pair of shorts that felt like they were groping me.  I was almost afraid I was going to have to buy something from the children's section before finding the extra-small sizes.

At least all of that was able to fade away somewhat during work yesterday.  It's a crappy job that expects miracles, but it let's me do my thing without worrying about how I look.

-Jordo