Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-wei: Oops I Did It Again

Okay, "oops" is probably not the right word; to gender-swap one of the more memorable bits from Shane Black's script for The Last Boy Scout, it's not like I was naked in Ernesto's bedroom for no apparent reason only to trip and have my vagina land on his rock-hard dick.  No, it was a mutual decision, one coming from equal parts seeing each other constantly while we worked on each other's short films, deciding we needed to spend a couple hours drinking and arguing after our third time seeing The Last Jedi (he thinks it is perfect despite the casino stuff going on forever and do not mansplain Finn needing to know the real world in order to become a true rebel because I get it and it doesn't make the actual mission less stupid), and me just being sick of my vibrator with a song dash of knowing Chen-ai would never approve of him.  I fucked him because I wanted to and stayed the night because why go outside in this unless you absolutely have to, and there's only one thing that would have dissuaded me.

That, of course, being the knowledge that he had been sleeping with the star of my movie since day three of shooting.

Now, don't get me wrong - I've been enjoying the fuck out of working with Bree.  She's the only woman who really nailed the "not trying to be sexy but every move she makes is boner-inducing" aspect of the main character in the auditions, she's way more comfortable walking around a set in her underwear than I was, and she's genuinely funny.  I thought we were connecting even though, okay, she sometimes acted like she was doing us a favor consenting to work on someone else's movie because she was used to coming up with her own concept and choreography.  And, okay, I'm not paying a whole lot of money, so she can complain a little about it not being her most satisfying experience, I'll magnanimously allow that.  But, like, was being female supposed to give me some sort of sexual ESP so that I know the complete history of everyone that I go to bed with?  That seems unreasonable.

Almost as unreasonable as her fucking walking off the set.

Needless to say, I'm fucking pissed at Ernesto for putting me in this situation, even though there's still a huge part of my brain that also wants to say, yeah, bitches be crazy, and move on like nothing happened.  His comment that I shouldn't worry, because if she'd walked off a day earlier, we'd really be screwed, is annoying despite how accurate it is.

See, somewhere during the writing, I got the idea that the sexbot body our hero had his brain transplanted into wasn't the only one of that model his buddy had lying around, and another one was programmed to act as the nurse, another as the maid, and so on.  Kind of fun, right?  And aside from one scene which I think I can edit around, that's all that was really left - we kind of let Bree play the one character and then would do the others, even if it messed with our shooting schedule a bit, thinking this would get better performances.  So, okay, we just shoot with someone else, and grumble about how it didn't need to be digitally stitched together.

The only problem is, man, this is not a lot of time.  The insane cold of the last couple weeks made everyone late throughout the shoot (and the exterior shots miserable), I've only got the lab set rented until Monday, the costumes are made for Bree and my wardrobe gal is not really available for alterations, even if I found someone similarly curvy at the last minute (and I am burning up the phones and IMs to do so).  Oh, and I'm supposed to have company this weekend, an Inn person I haven't met and who are likely to be all "why are you busting so much ass on something you inherited from Missy?"

Something will come together, I'm sure of it, but, fuck, this has gone from something I feel really confident about to a potential disaster.

-Jordo/"Missy" Yuan-wei

Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-wei: And... Action?

As you might expect, I've gotten pretty damn comfortable with naked (or nearly naked) female bodies by now, both my own and others.  Not that I wasn't before I had my own boobs - I was down for naked chicks any time - but it's different now.  I still feel a level of appreciation that I doubt any girl who has never been a heterosexual man can truly understand when I wake up in the morning and see myself naked in the mirror, and when I'm in a changing room or something (but, like, not in a pervy way).  I've been naked with guys and found that I really like being picked up, squeezed, and given a little taste of a guy's strength - not really rough, but definitely not hesitant.  I don't freak out at guys' dicks, whether they're visible and erect or just a promising bulge, though that admittedly took a while.

And yet, spending two days in my underwear shooting my scenes for Ernesto's sort was weird.  I'm playing some sort of high-end escort, so I actually had to do way more with my hair than I usually do, with a wave and some chestnut coloring, on top of wearing my fanciest matching set of undies that isn't actually sheer enough to let people see my nipples or landing strip.  I also brought a nice dress to just sit in a heap on the floor (I'm half-tempted to send Ernesto the receipt from the cleaners).  The make-up lay not only did my face so that it would look properly lit on camera, but also so my lipstick would look like it had been super-red the night before but just faded enough now.  I have fun getting this body all dolled up, but the whiplash between folks treating me like a prop and then wanting me to show human emotion on a set is not really something I enjoy being on this side of.

Plus, you're half-naked around a bunch of people.  It's a student film, so there aren't a bunch of assistant directors and stuff, and there's only one other cast member in my scenes.  He's a local professional - I suspect that student shorts are a non-trivial part of his income, along with local indies and whatever he can scrounge up in New York - and is odd going from flurry to businesslike and back when Ernesto says "cut!" or "action!", especially since I get the feeling he thinks I've only got this part because Ernesto is fucking me (and correcting him to "no, it's because Ernesto fucked me once" would just undermine someone who is nervous enough).  Even besides him, though,  there's still a lot of people in the room, and that is okay for them to be watching me intently while the camera is recording, but kind of looking away until I've got my robe on while everybody sets up and tasks about what we might try in the next shot, is kind of screwy.

Annette laughs at me feeling weird about that, since she figures is about what I deserve for "I, Fembot" being such a super-sexualized thing, which is rich because she got me to pull a bunch of stuff out as more creepy than sexy.  Maybe she's right; I know the first auditions, before I did that little acting gig, had me really enjoying that I could ask a girl looking for a job to show me her tits, on how sexy she could walk in stiletto heels, that sort of thing.  It's part of the story, sure, but as someone who used to get told to fuck off by hot girls on the regular, it feels really damn good.  And it led to hiring someone who I think is going to kill it, even if she's done way more work as a burlesque dancer than an actress.  If nothing else, I know that nobody is going to watch her scenes in my movie like they might watch mine in Ernesto's and be like "meh, whatever, she's like a six" (probably because they just don't like Asian girls).

And that carried over into casting the other roles (aside - even casting a short film is fucking agonizing, since you've got to do it for every damn person in the foreground and there's like a thousand people and lining up schedules so that people can read together is a pain in the ass and the only thing worse than the idiots who can't figure out what you want from the character are the smart ones who find something you miss that means you might have to adjust everything else...).  Like, I don't need to see the best friend's cleavage or the abs of the guy who gets killed twenty seconds in, but I wanna, especially if I've just been looking at guys to play the nerdy inventor and trying to determine if they're just the right amount of schlubby.

And that's before you take into account all the producer crap I've taken on because, I dunno, it seems like cheating to hire someone to do stuff and I get a certain amount of satisfaction in spending Chen-ai's money.  After haggling with a building owner who should be fucking thankful that I want to rent his lab space for a few days, or putting what seems like too big a deposit down on lights, I deserve a few perks, whether it be checking out a hot girl or seeing if one of the guys would like to discuss his part further over drinks.  I start to understand where Harvey Weinstein was coming from until you remember that he would bend me right the fuck over a table and probably not bother with a condom.

So I'm trying to be better than that, but, honestly, there are days when, after cramming so much of getting ready to make this movie around my actual classes, I honestly wonder how Ernesto manages not to be a dick on set without having to worry about that scenario nearly as much.

Ah, well.  Shooting starts the day after Christmas, which means I've got an excuse not to go back "home".

-Jordo/Missy/Yuan-wei

Annette: Stupid, stupid, stupid!

How did I revert all the way to teenage girl after three years of supposedly being more mature, better at knowing what I wanted, and even ready to commit to being married?  It's like my brain looked at the experiences of my life as Ravi and Benjamin and said, "oh, that's got nothing to do with Annette!"

Maybe I should have just listened to my sorority sisters who were saying it wasn't cool to bail on a fraternity party for something  that was "like, gonna be all Chinese guys anyway, and you know what they say about them" (they aren't all racist, but it just takes one to make you want to book the whole house for a couple weeks at the Inn to get them some perspective, especially if the racist one is also one of the ones looking to marry well, and you might want to land yourself a parachute student, chickie).  But, no disrespect to them, I've been out paying with them three times in the last couple weeks, and while it was the same sort of baseline fun that comes with beer, dancing, and the guys finding as much reason to dress sexy as the girls, it was kind of a drag, because while some girls would be saying things like "they're just guys" when someone was being a creep, I kind of know better.

But, anyway, I squeeze myself into my Sexy Nurse costume, throw a peacoat on, and avoid the Red Line by taking the 47 to Missy's neighborhood.  She's really done a pretty good job with the place for basically working by herself between a dozen other things, and she's bought way better beer than the fraternity probably did.  I'm a little amused watching her and Ernesto together, because while I don't think that they'd end up together even if such a thought wouldn't cause Chen-ai to completely blow a gasket, but they give each other shit like people who are together.  Minus Chen-ai, maybe we'd be joking about when they finally get together, or maybe not; maybe the one time they had sex was enough to let them figure out they're not really compatible that way.

Anyway, the apartment filed up quickly enough, and I kind of get pressed into helper duty with Ernesto.  Still, I spotted Max as soon as he arrived, and ran up to say hi to him in his doctor costume, only to be stopped a little short to see that Bingbing was with him, also dressed in a nurse outfit, but opting for solid white stockings and flats rather than the fishnets and heels I'd gone for.  No cleavage, either.  Kind of to be expected, since we're all pretty sure she used to be a guy, but even though the were folks all around the apartment less covered than me, I sure felt kind of tacky in that moment.  Then she does a "hi, Annette, right?" and it irritates me, because even though I know I technically haven't met this Bingbing, it feels a bit put-on.  That's when Missy comes over, looks a little surprised at our matching costumes, but laughs, saying is not like we've got the Wonder Women outnumbered.  I drop back toward a keg, get myself another cup of Sam Adams, and let a short theater major be really obvious about talking to my boobs for a bit.

Soon enough, Missy finds me, and comments on our costumes matching, saying that's a fun coincidence.  I say it's no coincidence, that Max had told me he was going to come as a doctor, so I ran out and got this slutty thing, thinking that maybe I could tempt him into trying it out this way once, and if he liked it, then maybe we could go from there.

She got real quiet all of a sudden.  "What do you mean 'this way'?"  She knew, though, and started heading toward the corner where Max and Bingbing were standing, away from the rest of the guests.  "You and Annette?"  She had her fist up like she was going to do something stupid, so a grabbed her from behind.

Max looked at me.  "You didn't tell hi--her?"

"You said you were going to, that you were her brother and she deserved to hear it from you, and if I'd been born a guy I'd understand."

"I... may have said that.  Uh, sorry Jordo, I should have told you."

"That you fucked my best friend?  I'm letting you stay at my place, trying to help you adjust, and you fuck my best friend behind my back?"

"It wasn't like that!"

"No?  What was it like?"

"It was like I fucked him."  I felt Missy go kind of limp in my arms as I hissed this into her ear, not really wanting to broadcast the next part.  "Aside from how I was the guy at the time, not that that matters, there's no way sleeping with a dude was going to be his idea.  I was the one that wanted one last hurrah, and convinced Max it wouldn't be as weird for him later if it was someone who had started out as a girl and would be one again by the time he got his dick back."

She got enough feeling back in her legs to turn around and step away from me.  "And it just had to be him, huh?  Well, sure, I guess that makes sense."  She straightened her costume, suddenly noticed something needing a refill, and went to the other side of the room.

Me, I avoided looking at the guy I'd been planning to seduce, thinking that someone else who knew what the whole Inn thing did to your head, and instead started banging on my temple with a balled up fist.  "Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

"No, it's on me.  You don't sleep with the girl your brother's for a crush on, no matter how drink and curious you are, even if she's only gonna be a guy for a little while longer and he's committed to being a girl for the long haul.  You just don't do it."

Wait, what?  "You're being silly; Missy never had a crush on me!"

"Are you kidding?  I've read all your entries on the blog, and I was there for some of 'em.  She kissed you at that ballgame!"

"That's--"

"And you know how stubborn Jordan is.  No way 'Deirdre' puts on her first bra or dress if he's not trying to impress you."

"I was, like, gay!"

"Like that matters for a crush!  And then - oh, wow, you know what?  I bet he was okay with giving up his life and potentially becoming Benny because he knew you were attracted to the original as yourself!  That makes so much more sense than Jordan just giving his life up because of Benny and Kareena!"

"Dude, that's your brother you're talking shit about!  Be nice!  Besides, our bodies and orientations were in line after that, and one kiss she immediately walked back aside, she never made a move!"

He started counting things off on his fingers.  "Maybe she wasn't really confident enough as a girl yet, maybe she figured you wouldn't want to jump into something so fast after having your life stolen, maybe she figured it was up to you to make the first move.  Then, when all that's out of the way, you're dating Marybeth and she's seeing Jacky."

"There.  She was going out with Jacky.  No crush."

"C'mon, Annette, she totally would have left Jacky for Benjamin."

"Bullshit."  I down my nearly-full Solo cup, turn around, and clack away on my fuck-me heels.  I think I'm going into the bathroom, but wind up in Missy's bedroom instead, and flop down on her bed.  I can just reach the door with my toes and kick it closed.

Pretty soon, Missy's in there.  "Hey, can I apologize?"

"For what?  Acting like you've got any right to tell me and Max who to sleep with or not asking me out when we were single and not both women?"

"Someone's got a high opinion of herself."

"Hey, that would be having a high opinion of who I used to be.  But Max makes sense.  Why didn't you ever, you know...?"

"I dunno.  Probably afraid of fucking it up.  I mean, badass bitch I may be, but how do I get through life as a chick without you?  It doesn't happen."  She turned around and flopped down on her back next to me.  "Besides, I liked Marybeth, you seemed happy, and if it's anyone else but Max and you..."

I was about to say something but someone opened the door and was about to say they were low on vodka, only to pull back and try to look up our skirts, leading us to both plant a hand between our legs and yell "in a minute, asshole!" in unison.  He quickly backed away and shit the door, and we looked at each other and laughed.

I sat up, a little dizzy - I hadn't really drank like that since being a girl and half Benny's weight, and it always hits me worse when I move after sitting still, no matter what I look like.  "Whoa.  Well, that's that.  No Chang boys for me."

"Hey, if you want to go after Max, don't let me stand in your way.  You're seeing your sights low, but it's not like he can do better.  Just be aware, he probably fed you all that because he knows he's not half the man you were."  She reached a hand out and I pulled her up.  "Whoa, I think all that missing vodka is in my brain.  Okay if I give you some cash and you make the liquor run?"

"No problem."  We went back into the kitchen, did a quick inventory, and then she gave me a couple hundred from her purse.  Ernesto came along to help me carry it, and the night air cleared my head a bit.  Ernesto and I talked about his and Missy's projects, and he had a lot of nice things to say about my contributions.  He's really a sweet guy, but I think I'm going to need a bit time before I can really consider guys where I'd have to hide the whole Inn thing.  Maybe when I've been just Annette long enough for my time Ravi and Benjamin to be a weird thing I did when I was younger than such a big part of who I am.

I didn't immediately see Missy when I got in, so I started to go into her bedroom to return the change, but only had the door open a crack when I saw it wasn't Missy in there, but Max, with Bingbing on top of him, sucking out his tonsils while his hands caressed her butt under her dress.

I closed the door and bumped into Missy coming out of the bathroom.  "Hey, here's your money, and I'm just going to go home before the T stops running, okay?"

"Uh, sure.  We still on for the spooky scavenger hunt?"  Some guy Missy knew from some Asian students thing had roped her into some MIT thing for Halloween night, and then me so there'd be two guys and two girls.

"Wouldn't miss it.  Beats the heck out of whatever sorority stuff I'd be doing otherwise."

And with that, I left, taking a huge breath or five outside the door.  We're gonna have some stuff to tali about tomorrow!

-Annette

Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-Wei: Baring It All

I told myself I wasn't going to be doing the acting part of this film/television major I'm working on now anymore, but Ernesto came to me begging, saying the script he had for his senior project had something that was perfect for me, and while I think there are probably plenty of Asian-American actresses he could find, it's fun to be asked, and I'm almost certainly going to need some of his help in making my own short film.  I may have changed my major because I felt more drawn to this than the original Yuan-wei did, and I certainly like acting less, but I've got so much less experience than guys like Ernesto who have been picking up cameras and making homemade movies since they were ten that I'm way behind in practical terms even if I do sometimes breeze through class like someone who's five years older and had some real-world experience with things the rest don't.

It's a good distraction, though - as much as I'm not really thinking of fucking Ernesto again, it's weirdly enjoyable to be working on something with a guy I have slept with right now.  The boyfriend-shaped hole in my life that I probably won't be allowed to fill until Chen-ai finds some advantageous fuerdai to marry me off to isn't completely filled with Ernesto, but the fact that I know he likes me and probably would be my boyfriend if I made the right move is something to lean on, as is just keeping busy on my own short film project and other stuff.

Some of that "other stuff" involved a quick weekend trip to Montreal so that the new Bingbing and I could talk to René and Romain in person.  I met her in the airport and still have a hard time getting a handle on her.  I'm pretty sure she was a guy before, just from the effort to dress plain and avoid makeup and stuff, but the secrecy is weird.  Most of us are so glad to have people with whom we can be ourselves that we're giving out life stories before someone else finishes mentioning the Trading Post, but she knows Chen-ai put her in this position, and probably figures we won't trust her completely anyway.  Still, I invited her along because she and René deserve the chance to meet, and if she is any sort of representative of Chen-ai, then the guys deserve a chance to ask her a lot of questions.

There isn't really a good spot to do this sort of thing - not their apartment, not our hotel room, not a restaurant, not a park.  We choose one of the last in the list, where we could be away from other people if things got a little heated, but I did wonder as we met there if the hotel had conference rooms we could rent.  I mean, I guess you could call this a meeting, as it's kind of a formal discussion even if it's not business.  But I didn't think to ask that while making the reservation.

So we met.  René have me a hug, while Romain offered a handshake.  René also leaned in to stare closely at the new Bingbing, appraising what he would look like if he hadn't been to the Inn three years ago.  We sat on the grass, and I related everything Chen-ai had told me.  René and Romain both looked shocked when they found out that Chen-ai had sent them to the Inn deliberately, and René took Romain's hand when I told them about how Chen-ai had been someone else when he was born, then started crying when I said it looked like his father had been killed.

Then he took a deep breath and let it out shaking.  "I guess that's good to know."

René kissed him on the cheek.  "I'm so sorry."

"No, it is good.  I mean, it's a hell of a thing to hear that the woman you thought was your mother resents you and your actual mother just abandoned you, and the person who stole your life may have murdered the parent who did love you, but it's kind of freeing to know that all you'd really have to go back to is money, and Mom is probably after that, too.  I mean, this life isn't perfect, and I'm not sure I'm really happy to tell Jordan here 'good luck with that', but...  I do like Romain's folks, this is a pretty nice city, and...  It's not like I've forgotten being a Chinese girl, but this is like my whole adult life."

I tried not to look too happy about him saying that, because it would be really inappropriate, but it was kind of a relief not to be worrying about pressure from that side, even if it was a shitty way for it to happen.

Bingbing looked at René.  "And what about you?  I'm not planning on making the rest of my life."

René shrugged.  "Nous sommes unis.  We're together."

"Oh. Okay."

We took early flights home on Sunday, with Bingbing apologizing that she would have liked to get to know them better, but she had homework and she was still having a bit of a challenge working in English since it wasn't her first language like it was for the Wongs and me.  René said he got that - he had to get used to English and French when the Inn dumped him in Quebec - but that it would get easier.  And that next time we'd have to meet in a fun way, maybe finally making that trip back home to Hong Kong.

I finally opened Ernesto's screenplay on the flight home - I'd kind of saved it during the trip so I could give everyone the attention they were due - and immediately noticed that my character was in the opening scene, in bed with the hero, and the stage directions had her putting a bra on with her back to the camera but not actually finishing getting dressed until after their conversation.

It wasn't the makings of a bad movie, but I kind of snickered reading it, not calling Ernesto that night.  He was in my first class Monday, after all, so I just sat down next to him and leaned in.  "You know," I said just loud enough that he'd be afraid of other people hearing it,  "most people who want to see me naked just send me gross messages on Facebook."

He went red.  "It's not like that, I just thought, you know, that it would really let you show that you're smart and funny as well as pretty."

"That's sweet, but, come on, you know I'm a shitty actor.  You just want to get me in a bed and see what happens now that I'm single again."

"Wait, you broke up with Jacky?  What happened?"

"Thing with my mother.  Be really glad you've never met her."

"Oh.  I'm sorry, if faking that sort of intimacy is going to be hard or awkward--"

Suddenly it hit me.  "Oh my God!  You don't want me for this because you're attracted to me, but because you're not!  You can just have me take off my clothes and it's like my tits are just props and you won't be thinking about fucking me at all!  Holy shit, I didn't think chicks could get put in the friend zone!"

"Sssssshhhhhh!!!"  Other people had started to come in and pretend not to take an ingest in our conversation.  "No, it's not...  Look, it's not that I don't like you like that - trust me, there's a good chance I'm going to spend the rest of the month obsessing over whether you just happened to mention you were single on purpose to send me a signal - but I got really nervous just writing that scene, and this movie is going to be a huge part of my grade, and the student films are the first thing anybody looks at when we go in for interviews, so, like, I don't want to blow it and I know I can work with you!"

"That's... really sweet."  I honestly couldn't think of anyone saying that to me before Chen-ai, and having Ernesto say it made me feel a hell of a lot better.  "Fine."  I gave him a peck on the cheek.  "I'll get naked for you.  But you're helping me make a brain for my film!"

He tried to shrink into his chair at that,  so he didn't ask me when he'd get to see my script.

Which was good, cuz it fucking sucked.

Naturally, I didn't realize it sucked until I showed it to Annette over pizza at my place, and she asked if she was allowed to be honest.  I said sure, and she immediately printed it out, got out a pen, and started crossing shit out, circling the occasional thing, and making a shit-ton of notes.  "So, I get that you want to do a guy-turned-into-a-girl thing while it's still relatively fresh in your mind and all, but, dude, come on, look at this thing.  It's all gay-panic bits and transphobic stereotypes, and, c'mon, folks like us really should be able to do something smarter than that, and even if we didn't have our unique point of view, the people who will be grading this probably won't be into something that's just broad gross-out comedy.  But there's an idea here..."

So we've spent the lady couple of weeks rewriting, kind if changing the script from "this guy has his brain implanted into the body of a female sexbot and isn't that gross?" to "not only is his brain in a sexbot body, but its operating system pops up a bunch of augmented reality stuff that basically hit him with all the messages a woman absorbs about how to dress and behave to please men at once".  We've had to cut a lot of stuff I liked out of it, even some of the stuff that Annette didn't think was trash, but it's probably a better script because of it.

Now I've just got to find a cast, locations, a crew, and equipment; shoot the thing; edit it; and then do a bunch of special effects because, like Ernesto says, this is the first thing people will look at on our résumés and I'm not sure whether I'm going to actually want to manage a shoot after this but will probably always like rendering VFX, so I should have s bunch of that in there even if mousy of my classmates are trying to be realistic.

No problem, right?

-Jordan/Yuan-wei

Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-wei: Montreal Meet-Ups

Well, here I am, back for another year of college, refocused and really feeling like I can make Yuan-wei's life mine.  There's some ironic foreshadowing going on here, but even with what I'd learn later, I still feel weirdly confident.  It tales a bit more than time to make a new life yours, but don't underestimate the power of a few decisions combined with the world just getting used to you.

I can't say that Hong Kong completely feels like "home" yet, though I have enjoyed the last few months there. I've spent enough time hanging out with Yuan-wei's friends that I don't really have much trouble calling them my friends, especially since Jacky is all mine.  We go out a lot, both because Jacky and Bingbing are both a lot of fun in their own different ways and because I don't know if I'll ever fit into Yuan-wei's childhood home.

See, as much as it's fun having a lot of room and a staff and all, it's very much Chen-ai's place, and from what I gather, she and the original Yuan-wei weren't really close.  Ideally, I'd seize on that as a thing I could improve, but it's like when Benjamin goes to see Benny's family on holidays and stuff - I just wind up missing my own folks more and not wanting to substitute her.  I've also always been a city kid, and this place is on the outskirts.  I've been biking a lot more, so that's probably a good thing, but there are times I want to ask about maybe renting an apartment downtown.  It's stupid, since I'd only use it a few months out of the year (not that this had stopped other bananas actions in the HK real estate market), but going back to live with parent(s) is something I never figured on and which occasionally seems less right than all the other weird stuff the Inn has forced on me.

So, even though it meant an insanely quick round trip that involved a lot of time on am airplane, I was really excited to fly out to Montreal for the film festival where our short film was playing.  Well, Cesar's, because the director gets to be the author as far as the world is concerned, but Ernesto and I played the two main roles and I had a lot of input into Ernesto's script (with Benjamin's help) and did a lot of the makeup and effects, so I feel like it belongs to all of us.  It would have been a lot different if they'd hired another actress, at least.  

What that meant, practically, was that when we had our premiere as the short playing before the main feature which itself was playing in the smaller of two theaters devoted to the festival on a Monday afternoon, Cesar got called up to say a couple words and mentioned that the cast was in the audience, and Ernesto and I waved.  I knew it wasn't really going to be a big-time thing, but it was a little less than I was expecting.  I mean, shit, why wear a nice dress and heels for that?  Well, I guess it did help me make a good impression on the festival programmers and stuff we talked to right before, so hopefully they'll remember me in a couple of years when I've got my own movies to submit.

I didn't have time to ask Ernesto why he was dragging a suitcase until after the show, when I was scanning the lobby for someone else. He said that he and Cesar got kicked out of their AirBNB; apparently the real tenant had not been paying his rent, and "I'm not him, I just sublet it on a site that does nothing to check on if this is allowed" does not fly with a landlord looking to evict. He was naturally pretty upset, since he and Cesar had plans to attend the last few days of the festival and then see the city, but cash was tight enough that they would just barely be able to afford switching their flight back to Florida unless their money was refunded right away.

That's ridiculous, I said, and got out my phone and my check-in receipt, saying I'd handle it. Cesar grabbed the phone out of my hand and said no. I said that was ridiculous, but he just turned and walked away. Ernesto ran a couple steps toward him, looked back at the suitcase I was holding, then said "wait a minute" while coming back to get it, only Cesar didn't.  Ernesto looked a bit frustrated, but also sort of glad he now had a moment to apologize and explain. "Sorry, Missy, but you know how he is. Whatever happened with you and him freshman year still has him pretty upset."

Ah, shit. I didn't even think that there might be some inherited reason why Cesar didn't like me. "Not much I can do about that now, but... can I at least get you a room? You were so looking forward to this!"

"I couldn't..."

I tried not to roll my eyes. It's a weird thing, just suddenly having money; you try to use it to help out and folks act like it diminishes them somehow, even though you feel like an asshole when you just sit on it. Still, I had another idea, and pulled the second keycard the hotel gave me from my purse. "Look, I've got a suite. The couch doesn't fold out, but maybe being a little uncomfortable will counter any shit you feel about accepting charity."

"I couldn't..."

"Of course you could. If Cesar gives you any shit, tell him that I wouldn't stop talking about my boyfriend and how he's the best fuck I ever had."

He laughed, said Cesar would totally buy that, took the key, and pecked me on the cheek before heading down into the Metro. I found a wall to lean against and sighed, not noticing the woman who had been keeping a bit of distance but then walked up once the drama was over. "Boys, right?"

I laughed, recognizing her from her picture and so knowing she recognized me.  "Don't make me go to old-lady jokes, because I am not above that at all."

She doesn't look like someone past sixty, of course, but rather about half that age.  She's Marie Desjardins, née Louisa Torrence, someone who Benjamin met at The Changeling a couple months back and a one-time fixture on this blog, and Benjamin said I had to meet her while I was up here.

I give her a sort of abridged version of what all that was about as we walk to a nearby restaurant.  She nods, saying that moving "back" to Montreal has been a minefield for her, because both the original Marie and Elizabeth Kim got to know a fair amount of people, some kind of unpleasant, back in the day, but it's been worth it, because it's hard to live without some kind of roots, even if they're not actually your own.

We get to the restaurant and get seated on an outdoor patio.  I get this brief feeling of nervousness sitting down because of my dress; despite having been a woman for two years now and embracing it for one, I still tend to sit by sliding down the back of a chair, and in a dress as short as the one I was wearing that day, I have to catch myself doing it pretty fucking fast in order to avoid giving a panty show.  That at least reminds me to cross my legs, I guess, although I'm still crazy paranoid when wearing something strapless, feeling like I've got to be Watt more attentive to avoid a boob popping out than I really do.

We had a nice chat, although I have to admit that meeting new people who have been to the Inn isn't nearly as cool for me as it is for, say, Benjamin.  I don't know what I'd do without keeping up with Benjamin or Benny on an everyday basis, and Jonah is okay, but I really like being Yuan-wei right now, and I don't exactly want to define myself as not being her.

Not that I said that to Louisa at any point, especially since that's not an absolute thing; I do like having friends that call me Jordan.  I was kind of surprised that she resisted the urge to mother-hen me (see what happens when I think of her mainly as "actually old" rather than the life she's living?), and instead talked about the movie.  I could tell that it wasn't really her thing, but she let me go on about doing special effects and how we shot it.  It was her first time at this festival, although she says she cuts out of work early a lot during the jazz festival.

We had a pretty leisurely lunch, enough so that when I got back to the hotel room and kicked off my heels and ditched that dress, I forgot that Ernesto might be there,  so of course he waddled out of the bathroom in time to see me just in my panties.  I jumped back and squeaked a little but resisted the urge to Cover My Nipples At All Costs.  It's not like he hadn't seen me naked or close to; we've done quick costume changes backstage, he applied prosthetic makeup to me while shooting that sort, and, oh yeah, we've had sex.  I also just don't feel like my body is something to be ashamed of.  My tits are awesome and I don't want to get in the habit of pretending otherwise.

I didn't wait around to grab a bra out of my luggage, though, and threw a t-shirt and some shorts on pretty quick rather than parading around topless to mess with him.  I asked what was up with Cesar, and he said that Cesar was upset that he was sticking around with me but not really angry.  Maybe I should have acted more surprised by how the two weren't going to let a girl get in between them, but Ernesto doesn't expect me to be a feminine stereotype.

We spent the next few days hanging out, with me keeping a running tally of how many times as many minutes our "Cast & Crew" badges were showing us to see compared to our eight-minute short.  Looked at that way, we got a pretty good return on investment, although that doesn't exactly factor in travel, accommodations, and the time we spent actually making the thing.  It's also amazing how useful just standing in line between screenings can be - the badge-holders line has press, other filmmakers, and programmers at other festivals, several of whom said they saw our short and might want to program it.  Not a bad situation for a few college kids, and since they met me and Ernesto rather than Cesar, we're the ones they'll remember in the future.  Might have been worth letting me pay for a goddamn hotel room, that.

Seeing all those festival movies didn't leave a whole lot of time to just explore the city, unfortunately, which is too bad, because even if it's no New York or Hong Kong, the folks at the festival who don't live there seem to love visiting and Louisa obviously likes it enough to move here even when it could be a minefield.  We basically got to spend a morning in the Old Port and a couple late nights hanging out with the folks we met during the day at St. Catherine's Street bars.  Fun, and if we do this again, I'm definitely springing for a longer stay, even if it means I've got to fight the urge to eat all the poutine (someday I'm going to have to write about what a fucking challenge it is trying to stay skinny, but today's not that day).

Instead, we stuck with the original plan of heading back Thursday morning - he to Florida, me to Hong Kong.  The first leg of that was just the Berri-UQAM station, since that's where the bus to the airport (amusingly numbered "747") starts.  We were just about to get on when a guy rushed up and grabbed my shoulder.  I jumped, and Ernesto got between us, asking this guy what he wanted.

"I just need to talk with Yuan-wei..."  It was pretty clear that English want this guy's first language, although most of the French-Canadians we meet during our stay spoke it pretty well.  He seemed a little embarrassed by it, but the way he compensated surprised me, rattling words off in Cantonese more fluent than my own.

Ernesto didn't understand, of course, but I was taken aback, and not just because he didn't look like he'd know that language.  I stammered something about how maybe we should talk after all.  Ernesto acted kind of protective, asking if he should join us and take a later flight, but I said, no, it wasn't dangerous or anything.  I couldn't be sure of that, but given that he said "I know we decided to just live our new lives, but I really want to know how things are back home"...  Well, that's not the sort of thing you can walk away from.  So I told Ernesto I'd be okay, let him hug me, and waved as he got on the bus.

Then I turned to this guy and asked him who he was.  He looked really confused.  "You know this; we exchanged pictures a couple years ago.  I'm René, but I used to be Bingbing!"

My jaw dropped, as a ton of ramifications suddenly went through my head.  "That's not possible - she hasn't been to the Inn, unless you don't mean CHEN Bingbing?"

The confusion deepened for a moment, and then he figured it out.  "You're not Carlotta.  Oh, shit, why would she--"  I started to explain, but he held up a finger.  "Not yet.  Romain - Yuan-wei - should hear it first."

He pulled a phone out and hit the first number on the list, and started speaking in French.  I couldn't catch much, but he seemed to be arguing with the person on the other end.  The call ended, and he let out a sigh.  "Sorry, he's got a new job and he didn't want me talking to you in the first place, but I convinced him to meet us at Place des Arts for a bit."

Place des Arts is the spot showdown that serves as the hub for many of the festivals in a city that has dozens every summer, but it's also just a nice spot to grab some take-out, eat, and talk.  We'd just arrived when another young man joined us.  Though both were white and looked about the same age - somewhere midway between the 21 I appear to be and the 26 I actually am - their styles were different, with René wearing beat-up jeans and a t-shirt and probably not having shaved in a couple of days while Romain was in khakis and a logo-free polo shirt, with a nice new haircut.  They kissed, although Romain was upset enough not to really be into it, and then René started to make introductions despite a lack of information:  "So, uh, this is..."

No, I said, you don't.  Nervously, I reached out my hand.  "I'm Jordan Chang, although I became the new Missy Lee Yuan-wei about a year ago."

Romain looked horrified.  "Why would Carlotta go back to the Inn?"

I shrugged.  "I'm not exactly sure - I'd always assumed that she was, well, you.  That's how her letter made it sound, and she said she'd fallen in love with the person she went to the Inn with, who was going back to his old life.  I think now that it might have had something to do with your father--"  I stopped short, not sure how much these two had been keeping up with their old lives.  "You did hear about that, right?"  I did not want to be breaking the news of his father's death on top of everything else, but he nodded.  "Anyway, after the police asked to talk to me earlier this year, I wondered if maybe she, who I thought was you, felt guilty and decided to stay someone else because of that.  Maybe she still had a hard time living with it."

"Maybe I would have," said Romain, "but Carlotta never struck me as the suicidal type."

"What do you mean suicidal?"

René looked at me like I was completely ignorant.  "Going to the Trading Post Inn multiple times is dangerous!  Your body becomes unstable after the first time, so doing it a second time is just too much - Carlotta and Giorgia said someone in their group who said he had been there before just melted and they only found this smelly goo in his room!"

"What?  That's bullshit!  I've been there twice, I've met people who have been there even more often, nobody's just fucking liquefied!  Most people keep in touch so that they can arrange visits the next year in reverse order so they can get back to normal."

I said that like I was wrong on the Internet, just intent on correcting some obviously wrong people, not prepared for the gut punch it was to them.  Romain actually dropped to his knees, René catching him.  It was René who seemed to recover the power of speech first.

"Those. Bitches."

We all saw what seemed to have happened - two people suddenly become young, attractive girls with money and their whole futures ahead of them, and the idea of going back becomes unbearable.  Sure, there's not much that can force them to go back to the Inn, but if you're an asshole, you assume everyone else is, so you might as well pull some big-time asshole shit to nip it in the bud.

"Not just them - us!  We told other people about the melting!  All the other people we met at the Inn - they might have been able to get back to normal, but..."  Romain looked like he was going to throw up, but held it in.  He looked at me strangely.  "You're happy as me, right?"

Not where I expected the conversation to go.  "It's fun, I've got my first boyfriend, we did that movie and came here, but, like, easy come, easy go, right?  I mean, if you wanted, you could probably go back to acting as well as producing, though you might need a new faculty advisor..."

He didn't even seem to hear the last part, just saying that was good, and telling René he needed to go back to work.  René said he was in no state, but Romain just kissed him and said he'd be fine, and shook my hand, saying it seemed his life was in good hands, and started walking.

René dropped into a bench.  "I shouldn't have said anything, but I thought, if he had seen Giorgia during one of his shifts volunteering at the festival rather than vice versa, he'd have told me, and now he knows all this.  Damn it!"

I felt like I was expected to say I was sorry, but also like I hadn't done anything wrong.  So I just fidgeted.

He forced a smile.  "So, what about me?  How's Chen Bingbing doing?  I haven't heard from her in ages!"

"She's...  She's good, I guess.  Going to school in New York.  Dating my little brother.  Not sure how the fuck I feel about that now!"

"He cute?  Maybe I should take the train down and check it out."

"I, uh, don't look at him that way, even if, you know, I have started liking boys and we're not biologically relatives any more.  Him looking at me just creeps me out."

He nodded, trying to imagine that, then clapped me on the back.  "Well, this had been interesting.  You wouldn't mind unblocking us on Facebook, would you?"

I didn't even realize the profile is inherited had certain people blocked, but I said yes, and asked if I could send his contact info to Louisa, since she had been through the Inn and was local to them.   He said he'd like that.

I offered to stick around, but he said he knew his boyfriend and that he'd need some time to think.  So we said goodbye, with more huffing than strictly necessary, and I stewed about that all the way back to Hong Kong.

Coincidence that "Bingbing" had to leave for New York early enough that I didn't catch up with her in Hong Kong?  Probably.  But maybe that's okay; I'm not sure what I'll say to her when I do see her.  I've asked Benny to watch her like a hawk, though.

As to me...  Well, until I hear back from "Romain", I guess nothing's changing.  I'm just glad I'm old enough to drink in America now; this whole situation is going t to require a lot of drinks at The Changeling.

-Jordo/Yuan-wei/Missy

Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-wei: We made a movie!

It's not a feature or anything, and I don't really know what it will look like when all the past-production stuff is done, but that thing Ernesto asked me to work on was actually a ton of fun!

I have to admit, I was kind of thinking of backing out.  Ernesto is the first guy I've fucked where I would be seeing him again whether I liked it or not, and based upon how hook-ups with people I know went for me in my original life - usually terrible, both during and after - I want sure that spending that much time with him was something I wanted to do, especially since that last week or two of fall term was uncomfortable.  That time in Hong Kong was a good reset, though - the fun pays were crazy and intense enough to make me certain that I could handle anything friggin' Boston could throw at me, and the scary parts...  Well, shit, what's hanging out with a guy you've had sex with compared to that?

It was a fun thing to bring to life. Ernesto had written a script about a guy and a girl on a date that's not going well, so as things go on, Ernesto (he played the leading man) starts to see me as some sort of vampire succubus and I start to see him as a zombie.  Something seemed a bit off about it to me at first, so I asked Benjamin to take a look at it, and he said that the cynicism was too simple, that we should still see each other as tempting and desirable. We could still wind up fighting, but it would be more interesting.

Ernesto wound up liking the idea, although the director took some convincing, telling him something about not letting his little head do the thinking. Ernesto and Cesar have been friends since they were kids and I get the impression that I'm not the first girl whose opinions he's dismissed, especially when they arrived via Ernesto. That this advice was coming from a girl who used to be a man after consulting with a man who used to be a girl would probably melt his brain.

Once we got Cesar onboard, it was a lot of fun. Really hard work, though in a completely different way from the play:  Where that was a nerve-wracking marathon for me even though my part was tiny, this was an often-frustrating series of long nights and weekends and afternoons when enough of us didn't have class, doing the same thing until Cesar thought it was good enough, then doing it from another angle. Then, the next day, we do it with one or both of us wearing prosthetic makeup, then switch it up. There are folks on set making sure that all the little details match from day to day, right down to how tight the corset I had stupidly agreed to wear when I was supposed to be a complete sex demon by the end was.

I kind of loved it.

I fucking get the whole deal where you run something, get the bugs out when it fails, and then run it again. And the tech was so much damn fun - one of the producers somehow got a Red camera on loan, and while that made the shoot really tight - along with basically only being able to shoot the restaurant scenes from nine to midnight and the other restrictions - We could only shoot the restaurant scenes from nine to midnight along with other restrictions - it was amazing how good everything looked.

There's still a lot more work to do - Cesar and Ernesto are still editing a month or so later, someone's writing a score, and I've used some of Yuan-wei's money to buy a pretty killer graphics workstation so that we can add some more blood to a few scenes. I usually hate CGI blood, but it's kind of fun to work on, and apparently restaurant owners' charity only goes so far, and they don't like arterial spray all over the place.

Hopefully I can get that finished soon - Cesar was kind of upset that I didn't get it done by spring break, and now Ernesto is already teasing me about how Cesar's going to want to oversee the rest of the effects work personally, and use my new machine to work on the editing, saying he'd have to keep an eye on me to make sure I didn't fuck my way into a bigger role.  Not really bitter, but kind of poking at me to see just how much my brain runs in that direction.

Or maybe jealous.  Kind of neat, that.

-Jordo/Missy/Yuan-wei

Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-Wei: Play-acting Part I: Here

I wasn't really inclined to write much about the play I was in because it was kind of anticlimactic at the end.  You spend weeks getting together with a bunch of people, reading, rehearsing building shit, working on costumes, and for what?  For three nights, you go out on stage, say your line, run backstage and get into another costume, stand around in the background, maybe say another line, and so on, and then you're just done and the whole thing is gone.  Maybe someone has mounted a camera in the back of the audience area, but it's one hell of a lot of work to just vanish into the ether.

So I was just going to skip ahead, but Benjamin told me I had to blog about it.  If you're going to live Missy's life and be a movie star, she says, you're going to have to learn how stories work, and you can't keep mentioning something like this play and then not have it pay off.

So, fine.  I was in a play, even if it was a tiny part.  And, okay, that didn't make it any less stressful.  In fact, the first time I went our on stage, I nearly pissed myself, because for all that the rehearsal and shit is supposed to make everything second nature, standing in the wings and seeing that there's a fucking audience out there made me suddenly realize that while the original Yuan-wei had probably been doing this all her life, I hadn't done anything like it since, I don't know, junior high?

I mean, shit, was this the reason she decided to give up all of this and stay with Ronan?  Wanting something all your life and realizing that not only does it mean standing in front of a whole bunch of strangers and trying not to screw up, but knowing that even if you completely kick ass, you'll still be judged in large part based upon what a while bunch of other people do?  I didn't quite freeze like I thought I was going to, but even though there was a lot to do backstage, I did have just enough time to wonder if I was going to make it through.

I did, three times, and I probably got better as I went.  The thing that kind of sucks about acting is that you almost always feel the same way no matter how you actually do.  Even as I was nervous, I was still kind of like, yeah, I fucking did that, whereas some of the other folks were sure they sucked even when those of us in the wings could see that the audience was just goddamned living it.  It's not like working with computers, where you can tell whether the routine you built was giving the right output or whether the change you made ran faster or used fewer resources.  Your feedback is mostly subjective and sometimes kind of indirect.

Not always.  What my adviser said at the end of term was pretty direct - that most of my instructors said I was performing a bit below the standards the original Yuan-wei had established the previous academic year, and what she saw from me during the play kind of confirmed it. Heck, she said, the very fact that I had such a small role was disappointing; someone with my talent and ambition should really be winning leads or at least strong supporting roles in auditions. This is a very competitive program, she pointed out, and a lot of my follow students who had to rely on financial aid might be looking at moving to a new school or major after two semesters like the one I just had.

Of course, this wasn't entirely news to me; I'd heard a lot of the same shit whispered at the wrap party. Sure, it was mostly dancing, drinking, laughing about how disaster had nearly been averted or stuff like that. But every once in a while, I'd be walking by a group and they'd stop talking. For most of the night I tried to put it out of my head, all too aware of how a pretty girl who thinks everybody is talking about her behind the back they're planning to stab is a cliche and even when it wasn't, I'd always hated those bitches.  But eventually there comes a point where it gets just quiet enough to overhear conversations, and I heard one about how for someone who wants to be a Pan-Pacific movie star, I had better start showing something, then another joked that even that wouldn't help, because they blur your boobs out in China.  Then Amelia, the one who helped me with my Halloween costumes, called me a helpless princess who didn't know how to do anything, and it was a kick in the gut, especially since I didn't think it was like I started ignoring her once I'd gotten what I needed, but clearly she felt that way or was just trying to make nice with one or another of the others, figuring that other Americans are going to be able to do more for her in the future than a woman in China (we'll see about that), but it soured the evening pretty well, and I headed to the bedroom to retrieve my coat. I was rooting through the pile on the bed when Ernesto found me and said he'd been trying to get me alone.

I asked why, and he said it was because everything had finally clicked into place for the short film, which would be shooting in late January if I was still interested. I'd have to work on makeup and effects as well as play the lead...

It was just what I wanted to hear without knowing it, and I hugged him. Shocked the hell out of me; I know is done something similar at that ballgame with Benjamin, and wondered if like it was some hormonal thing with Yuan-wei's body or if I might have been like that if I ever got drunk enough as a guy.  All that bulk maybe made me not react so demonstratively to alcohol, or something.

Especially since I didn't feel that drunk, although I did start acting a bit again, letting myself go weak in the knees. "Ooh," I said, "I think it might be a good idea if you walked me home."

I kind of want the order of events clear: I got the part, and then I led Ernesto to my place and asked him if he wanted to come up.  I suppose he may have been hoping for this response, but apparently I'm not exactly noted for my gratitude. Anyway, he got nervous when he saw just how nice my place was, initially not following me into the bedroom until I said I needed help getting my boots off.

That wasn't entirely a lie; I fumble with tiny zippers under seams even though I now have fingers more suited to them.  It gave me a chance shuffle forward on the bed and let my dress ride way up and then, when he had gotten the second one off but hadn't yet stood, I could fall forward so that I was straddling him on my knees while he fell back.

He knew what to do with that situation, unzipping my dress and helping me pull it over my head and off, then doing the same with my bra.  He then did some of the bra's work, spring my breasts and then going after my nipple with thumb and forefinger, which felt pretty great.  I decided to do my part, not-quite-sitting and sort of trading him with my ass, making contact right around his waist, just above the groin.  It seemed kind of silly, but he apparently liked it, because I could feel him getting hard.  I slid down his body, pulled down his pants, and then kind of stopped four a moment because his dick was right there.

It would have been stupid to chicken out at this point - I was wet and knew what I was in for - but with David and Sam, it had all been happening "down there"; I wasn't ever positioned so as to have the fact of some guy's unit right in my face, as it were, and though it's been over a year since I've had one, the "dude, what do you want with another man's cock?" reaction is still there.  That's when he tossed me the condom.

What am I supposed to do there, kill the mood by telling him to do it, or back off?  So I put it on, as fast as possible, and then moved up so he could put it in my pussy and I could just think of it as kind of an abstract good feeling, although it was kind of harder, since Ernesto is a much hairier guy than the others and I could feel his beard as he was kissing me.  It was kind of unnerving, really, and when he asked me to see if I could get him up for another, I decided to be the hot girl who sets the terms and tell him I was ready to knock off for the night.

And he was cool about that, but I couldn't fucking sleep at all that night, and was on edge for the next couple of weeks all through finals, since he's in a few of my classes, and while he hasn't acted like it was more than some really physical fun,  It certainly made spending the holidays on another continent more appealing, although it's going to be kind of weird when we start shooting his short film in a couple of weeks.

-Jordan/Yuan-wei

Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-wei: Halloween #HotGirlProblems

I mentioned how much more social going to school as Yuan-wei in this major than my first go-around in college, but what I kind of held back on is just how many people she knows. Even if I ignore Weibo and other Chinese social networks, it seems like the Facebook page I inherited is always updating, I'm getting calls all the time, and folks just walk up to me after class or in Starbucks or wherever, because they know " me" from somewhere despite Yuan-Wei only arriving here around 14 months or so ago.

It could be more extreme; there's this tall blonde in my play who always seems to be swarmed, but there's a fair supply of white guys that just wouldn't consider Asian girls, and a weird group of nerds that lose interest when they realize I'm not fucking Japanese. Still, the upshot is that I am expected to know a lot of people, there's a fair amount more that want to know me, and it can be overwhelming for the fat kid who spent her first year as a girl hiding out.

On the other hand, it means that I am never wanting for a distraction when something is bugging me, with Halloween being a perfect case in point. As I think I mentioned last year, Halloween was always a big deal in my family - as my dad would put it, the guys who called him "Chinky" all year would let up because on that day, he could be Bruce Lee - and even when they didn't, he still felt awesome.  That's why our family always gave out the biggest candy bars on the block, why we had a big party, why we made elaborate costumes that at least tried to celebrate our Chinese heritage a little. We fucking love Halloween, and now I was missing out for the second year in a row, and chances of having another one like that are slim, since Benny seems to be doing better each time I check in.

So it's kind of a relief when my "Missy"/"Yuan-wei" email and Facebook accounts started getting chock-full of invitations to Halloween parties. No, they wouldn't be my family's, but they would be parties, I'd get to have some fun being in costume, and it would be really time-consuming in a fun way. It would actually be the first time I could show my handiwork off to folks aside from my family and friends in a few years, too!

It was crazy at first - I think I had invitations to a dozen different parties, but a lot of them had conflicting dates. In a lot of cases, I felt like I was choosing among them almost randomly - while other Inn people might contact their predecessors to figure out which ones were more important to them, I'm trying to make this life mine, and figure out which group would be throwing the best parties versus people who would really hold a grudge if I said no. I'd like a bit more info before making those decisions.

Still, I think I did okay choosing five, and when I heard Blondie talking about how she was going to need so many costumes this year, I was kind of excited. As much as that was multiple times as much work as I'd been anticipating, it was also making up for last year and keeping that energy redirected. I figured I could get away with three, and had fun sketching ideas, only to be confronted right away with how becoming a girl doesn't mean you can do everything you need to.

For instance, although my drawings didn't outright suck, it quickly hit me that I didn't know how to sew at all. That's not entirely a not-prepared-to-be-a-girl thing, because I kind of doubt that Yuan-wei knew how to sew any better than I did - I've got the money to just replace things in her life and haven't found a sewing kit in her apartment - but it's something I always relied on my mom or other women to do, and everybody treated that as natural. Doing it as Yuan-wei, on the other hand, is privilege.

My first instinct was to ask Benjamin, even if I do sometimes feel weird about asking for his help with the life that should have been his.  Fortunately,  while I was worrying about this, one of the folks doing tech stuff on the play asked me about my Halloween plans while we were painting scenery (when you've got four lines, you're expected to pitch in other ways) and she mentioned she had a sewing machine and would show me some of the ropes. I wound up picking up the tab for parts of her costume at The Garment District, but I can afford it and one of the costumes was trickier than I originally thought. Of the others, one was just putting pieces together and the other I could do myself, with her looking over my shoulder.

So, with three costumes prepared, I was ready for the gauntlet!

October 23rd -Superheroes at the old roommate's

So, uh, I guess Cissy was just being polite and didn't really expect me to RSVP, and having RSVPed, didn't expect me to come. She didn't say that, but when her boyfriend opened the door with "Oh... Missy", I kind of got the idea that Yuan-wei would probably have never had much more contact with them even if she hadn't magically been replaced by someone else. Freshman roommates, after all - you're matched up pretty randomly, you don't have much in common in the way of interests, you drift apart.

Especially if you're a nice Southern girl like Cissy and your roommate is not just Chinese-American, but Chinese, which means you can't understand her music, her calls home are at annoying hours, and she just doesn't care about stuff that's a big deal to you. I also got the impression that her boyfriend was maybe a little prejudiced or something. It's something I didn't necessarily stop worrying about looking like Deirdre - I kind of swapped racism for sexism there - but which manifests itself in even more ways now that I've got a Hong Kong passport. Now I'm an "other" who isn't even sort of like them since I grew up here.

Which, apparently, even made my costume worse. I made a pretty damn good Jubilee (from the X-Men) out of stuff I found at Garment District. Maybe not win a prize at a comic convention good, but not bad at all. The guys who liked comics all seemed pretty impressed even if it was the least sexy of the three, but, man, did Cissy's boyfriend take it as a personal affront when I said that Marvel and DC weren't exactly supplying me with a bunch of options.  I guess original Yuan-wei wasn't into comics and this was me and by extension China trying to try steal America's place at the top of something.

So, I left that one early, and probably won't have a lot of contact with Cissy again. Maybe that's for the best.

October 24th - Chinese Students' Association

If wasn't quite whiplash going to the next evening's party, but it was certainly different.

This one was thrown by an organization of Chinese people at various Boston-area colleges, and served as a decent way to see how much my Mandarin had improved from Saturday morning classes and watching a bunch of movies - that a new Mandarin-language movie opens in regular American theaters every week, at least in New York and Boston, is some sort of indicator of how the 21st will likely be the Chinese Century by the time it's all said and done - although the inspiration for my costume was pretty thoroughly Hong Kong.

This was the trickiest costume in some ways - I had a pretty specific idea, and while it looked simple enough, there were several pieces that had to be altered and sewn together.  This is shit I've got to learn to do myself, but I was so glad Amelia was willing to help me with it this time.  I looked so cool and cute in the mirror, and it was kind of exciting to put a long coat on over the costume and take the T into Cambridge with just the headdress and shoes peeking out, like the rest of the world had no idea how awesome I was right at that moment.

That made it pretty gratifying when I checked my coat outside the hotel function room that the Association had booked and got some appreciative looks from both guys and girls.  One of the former, dressed as a pirate, walked up and asked me who I was.

I smiled.  "You like it?  It's from The Cave of the Silken Web, a Shaw Brothers movie my grandmother was in.  She wasn't the main spider-woman trying to seduce Tripitaki, but I think she was the sexiest.  Do I measure up?"

I did a little turn.  The basis of the costume was a bodysuit with fringes covering my panties and butt, straps a lot closer to my neck than the usual, and some decoration on the chest which I had briefly considered replacing with a scoop to show some cleavage, and Amelia did an amazing job of adding shoulders and sleeves made from sheer material with a spiderweb design, attached to a slightly more opaque cape.  The rest of the costume from the movie was a headdress that put a bunch of my hair up and dangled a jewel on my forehead, some earrings, and a pair of sandals with one-inch heels.  Here's a still from the movie to give you an idea:

I added some spider-web pantyhose because Boston in late October is somewhat chillier than a Shaw Brothers soundstage in Hong Kong.  It maybe looked a little less authentic, either in terms of ancient China or late-1960s Hong Kong movies, but I dug it, and so did my new friend.

His name was David Chang, he goes to Harvard Medical School and maybe wasn't a big Shaw Brothers fan beforehand but was at least curious about the Hong Kong film industry and "my" grandmother after that.  It's a weird subject, because I only met Yuan-wei's grandmother for a few hours during my trip to Hong Kong, but I liked her; she had nifty stories about her few years in the movie business but didn't sound particularly wistful about it; I could sort of see why Yuan-wei v1.0 might have had doubts about film as a career versus family with that as an example, even as I could also see her being inspired to become an actress.  But her movie career was at least something I could research; she only did a few movies and only one lead role before marrying and retiring.  She's probably the part of this life that I can feel I can talk about easiest.

Which was good, because I got to repeat that story a lot over the course of the evening, to the point where I memorized bits of it in Mandarin.  This is, apparently, a big difference between me and Original Yuan-wei; while she may mostly have been comfortable with Cantonese speakers, her ambitions had her hanging out with people from the Mainland a lot, so these were a lot of people at the party who greeted me in Mandarin and wanted to catch up.

And of that group, I get the distinct impression that at least Tsang Chan-Sam knows what I look like naked.

I guess that's kind of to be expected. His young. good-looking, and the son of one of the tap dogs at a Beijing film studio. He is probably a damn good fuck-buddy for me to have.  Still, while I don't think I'm particularly hypocritical about guys looking me over - I've done enough time looking at girls like me wishing they were wearing less that I have a hard time objecting to others doing so - it's kind of gross to do it with another girl, wearing less and probably starting the evening with actual thoughts of staking some claim to fuerdai dick, hanging off one's arm.

("Fuerdai" was my new Mandarin word for the night; it translates roughly to "asshole with rich parents". Well, "second-generation entrepreneur", but the first is what people who aren't fuerdai mean when they say it.)

Truth be told, "Sam" didn't really come off that badly to me at first; I wasn't necessarily looking to get picked up but I was wearing a "look-at-me" outfit and not feeling picky about whether the compliments were for the clothes or the bod underneath.  Guy rubbed David the wrong way, and by the end of the evening the type was certainly starting to get to me.

Got a bunch of numbers, though.

October 29th - "Dress sexy"

The next Thursday night, though, was number-collecting craziness. You know that scene in The Social Network where a van drives into Harvard Square and basically drops off a cargo of townies looking to score themselves a Harvard man and dressed to sell them on the idea? That's a real thing. I wasn't quite part of the bulk delivery, but once inside the party, it was tough to tell, especially since my English doesn't have the sort of accent you might expect a foreign student - I don't have much of one anyway, although at parties a little more Queens comes out because I'm yelling or drinking, and that sort of sounds like I'm a local to people who are also drinking and trying to be heard above the din.

It was fun, though.  Back when I first got turned into a woman, there was no way I would have accepted an invitation that had some variant of the work "sexy" in it a dozen times, but I was eager this year.  As much fun as it is going out in the nice clothes I inherited, that wasn't what really got to me as a man - it was the stuff that said I have something you want and I'm going to put it right where you can almost touch it, daring you to take it.  The chance to feel that power in an outfit that makes the inner Jordan crazy was one of the things I most wanted to get out of Halloween.

So, for this one, I did the "sexy schoolgirl" thing - skirt that barely covers my ass, half-shirt and cardigan that shows off a lot of midriff and cleavage (which, yeah, I pushed up and enhanced), white stockings, and four-inch heels.  I took a selfie before heading out because if for some reason I ever wind up changing again, this was something I wanted to remember.

The party itself was almost exactly what I'd imagined the cool college parties were like when I was a freshman - they'd hired a DJ, there were tons of girls in sexy costumes, guys who were trying to be just as sexy but were still kind of dorky but charming for it, and an almost never-ending supply of beer.  I haven't had much to drink since changing the second time - not only does my ID say I'm below the legal drinking age, but Massachusetts can make it damn difficult to buy beer without anything but their license.  Not necessarily a big deal, but I have no idea how easy it would be to be sent away based upon my student visa - I've heard people say you have to really watch out, but there are also tons of stories of students with wealthy parents skating because people will wind up looking the other way.  I don't want to test it most nights, but at a party where I'm sure a lot of other folks drinking more than I am are under 21?  Sure, why the fuck not?

I did kind of find myself wondering what it would have been like to do this last year while I was white, though.  I got plenty of attention, including some that was way more touchy than I was used to, but there are some folks out there that don't even seem to see you if you're not the same race.  There was this one guy, talking to some other girls about movies and being pretty funny, and not being the sort of jackass that just wants to hold forth and not actually let the girls show they know their Star Wars trivia as well,  But, man, it was like he couldn't even register that I was there.  His loss, but in some ways it was worse than the guy who squeezed my tit and then fell over, drunk, almost taking my top with him.

Maybe not the greatest idea for Thursday night, though - I was there until 2am, had to take an Uber home, and then go to class hungover.  Maybe not the best Yuan-wei I can be Friday morning.

October 30th - Cast Party

I almost bailed on that night's party, but it was being thrown by the cast of the play and I kind of get the impression that even if you've only got a few lines, you don't want to be seen as letting the team down.  I was never really a group person - I was pretty damn comfortable working independently enough that nobody knew I had turned into a white girl after my trip trip to the Inn - but this me trying to absorb what's good about Yuan-wei's life, and that's part of it.

In a lot of ways, it worked as a nice contrast to the night before and the rest of them.  There was beer, and music, and hanging-out, but this one was with people I already knew - maybe not as well they think I do, but I have been spending time with them for a few weeks, so seeing Rachelle dressed like a Ghostbuster or Ernesto like Batman actually sort of says something to me, another part of them rather than the first clue that I'm trying to figure out.

It was kind of nice to deflect compliments about my costume back to Amelia - I wore the spider-woman outfit again - and talking about her decision to walk away from acting to be a wife and mother.  There was a kind of funny irony to it, in that they couldn't imagine "Missy" doing the same, whether based upon knowing her from last year or just this play.  The original Yuan-wei did, after all, while I walked into it and don't know how super-attached I am to acting yet.

There are some pretty dedicated matchmakers in the group, raising eyebrows every time I danced with somebody, saying it was time for me to get back on the horse after breaking up with "Benny".  And when they heard that Ernesto and I were both going to the same party the next night...

Well, they're good people, but I think I'll enjoy a little less time with them once the play's over.  Everything just gets so drawn together.

October 31st - Zombies!

That last party was zombie-themed, which meant I spent a fair chunk of time Saturday afternoon working on make-up.

I don't know how much my family really loving Halloween, and thus me learning about how to do special-effects makeup, helped me as a girl.  If anything, it's been the other way around; actually having to spend time learning how to make what I put on my face inconspicuous probably helped me with the costume stuff - instead of just a pus-filled blob on my face, I had a pus-filed blob that blended in with the skin around it.  I layered a little foundation over the veins I drew on my arms, legs, and boobs, so they looked like they were under my skin rather than on top of it.  That sort of thing.

It took a while, though, because I had decided to pair it with the schoolgirl costume, which meant that, despite not having as much skin as I did before, I had way more exposed.  I was never going to create a gash across my gut with intestines hanging out before, but it seemed like a great idea this time around.

And, don't get me wrong, it was kind of a hit.  Looking back through "my" Facebook account, Yuan-wei didn't really do much like this last year, and I don't think anybody at the party expected it, especially considering how much help I needed with the cloth part of the costumes.  I wasn't the girl with the sluttiest costume, but I was right up there with the best at both sex appeal and gore.

I get the impression that the folks at this party were the closest to Yuan-wei's real friends from last year; there was a lot more talk about not seeing me around and questions about "Benny" than at the other parties, and one time I was dragged out from the kitchen when some Taylor Swift song popped up, it apparently being a thing for Yuan-wei and the girl who grabbed me.

About two beers into the night, Ernesto found me between conversations and said he really liked my costume.  I smiled, and said I bet he said that to all the half-naked girls.

He laughed.  "Oh, I like that part, but I didn't really see you as a blood and guts sort of gal.  You're such the fashion plate--"

"Not everyone is always like they seem."  It is fun to say things that imply the Inn, folks.

"Oh, I know.  Anyway, I was wondering if you might like to do a little more."

Maybe it was the booze, but I felt just a little bit more in my spine than when a guy typically hits on me.  "A little bit of what?"

"Acting, and make-up - some friends and I are going to be shooting a short horror film I wrote in about a month, but the director broke up with our lead actress and half the make-up guys got hired by a Hollywood production, and even though I didn't conceive the character as Asian--"

"Oh."  Not what I was expecting, but on the other hand.  "That sounds... interesting."

"I know it's kind of short notice, and you'll probably be cramming for finals and stuff, but you'd be saving our lives.  Although--" he pulled out his phone. "--I should probably send some pictures to the director and other producers."  He got a shot of me and then hit send before stumbling a bit back into the party.  "We'll be in touch!"

It was a weird little come-down to hear that.  As much as I think I'd kind of be ready for a real first date, I haven't made it happen yet, and having it held out and then taken away, and then realizing that the short-film thing would probably disappear after he got sober, made me feel a little dejected.  I grabbed another beer and kind of made sure I circulated away from him.

People were going in and out all night, some going to and from other parties, and I was close to being ready to tap out myself when I heard a song I liked, so I came out to the living room/dance floor, shaking it for all of ten seconds before a zombie nurse yelled "you bitch!" and punched me in the face.

Between the alcohol, the three-inch heels, and weighing about half of what I did the last time I figured I might get punched for something, I went down quick.  I put my hand on my nose to check that, yeah, it was bleeding.  I looked up so that I could actually see the face of this girl, and even though her make-up wasn't nearly as elaborate as mine, it took a second because...  Well, at first I wasn't terribly interested in who Benjamin used to be, and lately he hasn't been much into looking at old pictures of himself.  Seeing that face in the flesh was new, and I'd sort of expected it to be his problem.

"What the fuck, Sandra?"

That didn't go over well, as the friends she brought with her started asking if I was such a fucking slut that I couldn't remember the names of all the girls whose boyfriends I stole.  One of them actually tried to stomp me, but I rolled out of the way before the heel of her shoe did some damage.  Ruined my intestines, though.  Still, I was clear-headed enough to scrape my shoes off, stand, and get in a stance I remembered from my wushu classes as a kid, hoping like hell that these girls would assume that any Chinese person holding her hands out like that was a kung fu expert who could fuck them up, because otherwise I was going to get my ass kicked.

Or not; as much as there was probably a good crowd that would have liked to see a couple of chicks in skimpy costumes fight, a lot of people got in between us and suggested it was time to leave.  I said something about not doing anything wrong, but fuck it, and grabbed my coat and shoes and walked to the T.  Of course, it was late enough that the Orange Line was only coming every fifteen minutes or so, which meant I had time to sit, stew, and peel off my makeup while sobering up a little with some coffee.  When it finally did come, I grabbed a seat and closed my eyes for a second, tilting my head back so that the washcloth I had on my nose could hopefully do its job a bit better, thus missing an arm being jammed into the doorway and then the person attached stumbling in and crashing down onto the seat next to me.

Sandra, of course.

She had been well ahead of me in terms of drinking, thus thinking all of the previous half hour was a good idea, so her voice was kind of strange.  "I'm so sorry...  Jordan, right?  I was just looking at pictures of a Halloween party in our house and I got so sad seeing them so that when I saw you I was pissed, even though it makes no sense because it was seeing her as me that set me off and that means I've got no argument with you..."

Okay, so I had been doing this party gauntlet in part as a way to keep busy enough that I wasn't tempted to see what my family was doing on social media, but...  "Fine, whatever, just leave me the fuck alone."

"But why?  She made a mess of both our lives, and ever since Ronan left, there's nobody who understands what it's like.  Folks like us should stick together!"

"Are you serious?"  I was starting to raise my voice, gaining some notice from the folks around us, but I don't know as I was that much louder than the guy on his cell phone on the other side of the car.  "What, you think we're going to come together as some sort of Boston-based cursed-inn support group?  Why don't you ask Benjamin - you know, the real Annette Grayson - how she feels about that idea?  You know, the great person whose life you made a conscious decision to fuck up?  So that while you're suffering by being, what, fifteen years younger and at the country's top university on scholarship, I'm still dealing with periods and language classes and now crazy bitches who think I stole their husband when they're drunk and he's trying to figure out what he can do with his life!  So, no, I don't think I'm going to start hanging around with the person who fucked up my best friend's life!"

With that, I stood up and moved to the other end of the car with as much dignity as is possible while holding a cloth to your nose.  I kept an eye out to see if she was going to try and make a second attempt, but I think she was passed out when I got off at Downtown Crossing to transfer to the Green Line at Park Street.


Kind of a shame that the whole Halloween thing ended like that, because it was, for the most part, fun; if nothing else, it was a concentrated look at the life I have been living for the past few months, or at least the American side of it.  And while I don't want to give Sandra too much credit, I do have to admit that I'd much rather be annoyed by guys grabbing my ass than the way I felt a week later, when Benny finally got around to putting pictures of himself, Kareena, and everyone at the family party on Facebook.

-Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-wei