Jonah/Krystle: People Who Have Seen This Body Naked

Given that Krystle used to be a stripper, I guess that's not a small group, but there's a somewhat smaller group for whom the current situation is personal.  Still, I sometimes have a hard time thinking of Krystle as having a life before me; Ashlyn says it's typical of being young, but I don't know about that.

Anyway, I'm past the halfway point of my pregnancy now. I'm not barfing so much, but I'm showing and I've got to pee all the time.  My cravings are weird - I've developed a real fondness for fried clams, for whatever reason, although the ice cream right after gets the taste out of my mouth.  I half-suspect that my breasts getting bigger and softer right now is half down to the ice cream, because I think that's not really supposed to happen until later.

Most of the time, it's so impossible that I almost float through it, like I'm dreaming because this can't possibly be real.  But the last few weeks keep reminding me that it's not just me involved in this.

First was when this pretty blonde came into The Changeling and sat in my area, was really nice, asked about my baby, and then dropped a $300 tip.  Which, don't get me wrong, I appreciate the heck out of, but which I also couldn't help but think must have been a mistake.  I told Moira that she'd left am earring and ran after her, finding her by the nearest bus stop.  I told her it was too much, but she said it wasn't because...  Well, because her boyfriend had put me in this situation.

I gasped, because it's really weird to talk to a stranger and realize you've met them with another face.  She'd been Joseph for about a year, having a ton of fun being a teenage boy, playing sports, and the like.  She says she didn't realize her boyfriend was going to extort me, and what he was going to take as payment.  She should have, she said because of just how uninterested in her he was once she wasn't a pretty girl, but by the time she figured it out, it was too late.

Forgive me for feeling okay with taking the money then.  I didn't find myself hating her, but kind of resenting her - like, this whole thing amounted to a fun vacation for her, and when it was over, she just came away with the knowledge that she should break up with her boyfriend and not date another one like him.  I mean, that's nice, but I'm pregnant here!  That's supposed to be a blessing, I know, but there are a lot of days when I don't feel entirely blessed.

Like the day I met Lamont.

I wonder how much the Inn giving you someone else's body includes giving you their brain, and how much it changes you.  I've met so many people who had who they are attracted to flipped that I can't really start to deny that part, although I don't really think it's happened to me (I didn't really respond that one time I did it).  But as much as I always assumed that Joseph got harsher just because of his environment whole in prison, I wonder how much of it was because the real Lamont was like that.  He scared me.

I didn't recognize him at first when he was waiting around outside the apartment building; Joseph had shaved his head and gave, but while Lamont was smooth up top, he had a beard, and he apparently celebrated getting his real body back by getting some new tattoos.  He'd kept the muscle that Joseph had put on, though, and it hurt when he grabbed my arm, saying something about me being the little freak that was keeping him and his Krystle apart.

I don't know too much about who Krystle and Lamont were while Joseph and I lived their lives; all I've gotten from Krystle was that though neither changed gender, being a couple was out of the question, and getting things back to "normal" with Lamont was not exactly her first priority afterward.  But sometimes it seems like guys don't really recognize this, and Lamont either didn't have any idea Krystle felt that way or couldn't accept it.  I'm no exception; I was furious when my first girlfriend dumped me, and I don't know that I ever really believed the things Mom and Dad said about how acting like some right of mine had been violated until this moment.

I was scared, not really knowing what to say to him, and I wouldn't actually realize until later that I was just as worried about him doing something to hurt the baby in my belly as I was of him hitting me anywhere else.  Is that another girl's-brain thing or does everyone have maternal instinct but not the opportunity for it to play out?  So I just said I was sorry, which I was, although looking back it seems kind of stupid.  Sorry for inconveniencing him?  That's stupid.

He's telling me I had better get back to the Inn the first chance I've got after squeezing that thing out so that he can be with his b---- without there being some sort of f----- in there, making me wonder if he really cares that Krystle specifically be the one with this T&A.  I tell him that nobody wants that more than me and Krystle.  I think he's about to slap me but he backs down.  Karla and her latest boyfriend have come out of the building behind me.

Karla starts screaming at him, asking what he's doing around here, because it's hard to find more concrete proof that I don't want to be tied to his black jailbird a-- than this, going on about how I'm clean and going to church and he needs to step off and find some b---- who isn't familiar with all his b.s.  On the one hand, I'm kind of embarrassed - it's the sort of outburst my real mother always said we can't have last the neighbors think the worst of us - but on the other, being an only child, I've never really seem the full force of "nobody gives my sibling a hard time but me!" before, and it's kind of amazing.

Plus, there's her new boyfriend.  Lamont is a big guy, but this one looks like he could play in the NFL.  He's really a giant teddy bear - he's really amazing with Karla's kids, and was a total gentleman the time he found out I needed a ride to a doctor's appointment - but I've seen him at work (he's a cop) able to be pleasant and funny with five people and treat one of them just different enough that is clear that, if he gets angry, his rage will be focused.

So Lamont lets go, tossing one last insult, and Karla yells two more.  We look at my arm, decide it's not going to bruise, and Karla once again tells me that I really should get my baby-daddy to do something for me, because it's hard enough as is.  I say it's complicated, she says it always is, and she's able to walk away back to thinking I'm a fool, like nothing has changed.

I'm off to work, and I don't want to being this up with Moira, so I don't get much of a chance to bring this up with the real Krystle before I get "home".  When I do, there's already an email waiting for me from her.  It starts out with stories that are half-complaining and half-funny about my friends and how they are trying to help her out even while dealing with what other people living their lives for a year has left them, and some bits about how my parents are crazy and there's nothing to do in our small town.

Then she puts down a whole bunch of links to adoption agencies.

It's another thing I shouldn't be surprised about, but I am, because I still think like a guy and I've just be assuming that when we change back, she'll just take care of the baby.  It's a stupid thing to assume - it may technically be her own flesh and blood (and mine, too, though I don't think of it that way, just that I should probably be some part of the kid's life without really imagining how), but it would be something just dropped on her that she had nothing to do with.  Why shouldn't she be looking for the best way to get her real life back?

It still seems kind of cold to me, like she should have said she had an idea, asked me, and then done the research, rather than just getting three quarters of the way there and pointing out that I'd have to go the rest of the way because I'm the actual pregnant one.

I've got to think on it, I guess.  My grandfather preached a lot about how men have a responsibility, which is certainly important, although I have to start thinking right now about how possible it is to make some of these decisions with such strong beliefs and desires motivating them, even if you're more sure about who you are and will be to a child.

-Jonah/Krystle

Jonah/Krystle: The past four months

Most guests start writing way before now, but I never liked writing in school, and I've just been so embarrassed.  I wouldn't do it now, but Benjamin and that author lady say it really helps.  And with Christmas coming up, I feel like I'm going to need a lot of help to feel normal, so, hi.  I'm Krystle Kamen, and have been since August.

I'm really Jonah Glass.  I was part of the youth group that was at the Inn at the same time as Jordan/Deirdre/Missy and Annette/Ravi/Benjamin, although I don't think they ever referred to me specifically aside from being one of the guys that got turned into couples.  Which was fine, I guess; I didn't exactly want people Googling me and finding that then.  But, I don't know, maybe knowing what I'm going through, even if they don't believe it, will help.  Somehow.

Anyway, like I said, I'm Jonah Glass, and I came to the Trading Post Inn as part of a church youth group from New Hampshire.  We had all sorts of activities planned, but on the very first night, the Inn did its thing.  I went to bed as sixteen-year-old Jonah Glass, male, the only African-American in the group.  And when I woke up, I was older, very female, and no longer the only black person - my roommate Joseph now had dark skin as well, as given that he looked like he was in his late twenties and kind of there by a rough road, I was pretty scared to wake up and see him leaning over my bed, shrieking even before I realized how different my voice sounded and what my body was like.  Fortunately, he turned away when I sat up, which is when I looked down, saw how much I'd changed, and lifted a sheet up to cover my chest, as much from myself as from this other man.  He at least seemed to have some idea what was going on, asking if I was Jonah and then slowly turning around when I said I was and that I was covered up.  He hands me the paper Annette - Benjamin, now - had slipped under the door, and we go look for her - him - and get the lowdown.  That's when we learn our situation.   I had become Krystle, Joseph had become Lamont (you'll excuse me for not using anybody else's last names), and judging from the letters that they left us, the thing we most had in common was not graduating from high school.

Fortunately, they lived in the Boston area, so we weren't stuck traveling too far.  It seemed to take me forever to get dressed before catching the train, though - undressing made me feel really nervous - I nearly threw up a couple times - and it is really hard to put that very-much-needed brassiere on the first time when you can't handle looking at or touching your own body.  It was even more strange when we took the train down to Boston - some of the female members of the group tried to tell me I shouldn't worry, others seemed kind of disgusted that I had this shape, and the guys seemed really conflicted looking at me, like feeling any sort of lust was doubly terrible because I was really a guy inside.

Then we get "home" and, well, things get worse.

Lamont, apparently, was on parole, and if going out of state for a vacation wasn't a violation, then missing a check-in because there was no Lamont for a couple of weeks is.  Police officers knocked on the door of "our" apartment just a couple days after we got back and took Joseph away.  It's apparently a misdemeanor drug possession charge, and if he doesn't cause trouble in jail, he'll be out by the time we can go back to the Inn and get our regular lives back.  But that leaves me alone in the apartment having to pay rent and utilities, and I can't go to work, because Krystle is a stripper.

What am I supposed to do with that?  I talk to my friends, and I get way more "hey, with the body you've got, not knowing how to dance should just be a minor problem" than I'd like, while the others are telling me that God will show me the way if I just pray and do what I know to be right, and I know that's true, but it's so hard when the guy from the club is calling and yelling and not only is Krystle's checking account pretty much empty but I can't even find the paperwork that has the address I should be mailing a rent check to.  I try to find other work, but putting down "exotic dancer" as your last job makes people assume that you're on drugs and maybe Krystle was - it would explain why she's so broke.  Maybe it would explain why I was even more panicked than some of my friends?  I don't really know how withdrawal works, and what I could find online didn't help answer any questions.  Eventually the management company for the building I'm in figures out that they're not getting rent and evicts me.

I've at least got Benjamin's number, but it's not like he can put me up - he's in a tiny apartment that he's sharing with a bunch of other guys, and...  I'm not ready for that, even if he did have room.  He says it's probably not good that I've spent so much time since the Inn holed up in Krystle's place not dealing with people.  We try to get hold of Missy, but I guess the start of November is really busy for her, but for whatever reason, I wind up having to move in with Krystle's family.

I don't want to sound to proud, or be too proud, like that's beneath me, but...  It's not always easy to be black in the part of New Hampshire where my family lives.  Most of the neighbors are great, and I've got a bunch of friends both at school and the church, but there are also a lot of people who may not say it directly, but tend to think of us a certain way, forcing us to prove that we're not trouble.  And that way is kind of like the Kamen family:  Krystle's mother seems to be a saint, but her father is nowhere to be found.  There's a photograph of a brother who is no longer with them.  "My" older sister by a year, Karla, is twenty-five and has three kids with three different fathers.  That's all crammed into two bedrooms, with me on the couch.

I think they can tell that this embarrasses me, that I feel like I should be in a better situation.  Based on how Karla talks, Krystle has always kind of been like that, but it's worse now, because I'm speaking with proper grammar and praying a lot more often than Krystle ever did, and she thinks I'm putting on airs, like Krystle decided she was too good for the family a few years back what she started stripping and now I've decided I'm too good for that.  I don't know, there's a lot of issues between the two of them, and while I'm happy to look after the kids to help earn my keep, she gets mad at that, especially when the father of the baby looks at me, and telling her I don't like that attention does not get me sympathy.

Please don't think I'm ungrateful.  I try to remind myself that this has to be part of God's plan, that maybe I'm supposed to help this family, although I'm not sure exactly how I can.  Maybe it's to help me learn humility.  I could be in the same situation as my other friends who are constantly afraid of messing up someone's life, or even Joseph.  I visit him whenever I can, although this doesn't please Karla or "Momma" Kamen at all, although they can't understand.  It's just so hard.

It's been a bit better lately.  There's a pop-up toy store in a mall out in the suburbs that hired me, and although it's a lot of hours for what is apparently not nearly enough pay for me to find my own place, I'm not nervous when I go to the ATM for right now, and while the employee discount is small, it will get the niece and nephews something under the tree.  Because all of the Kamen women were working some long hours, we didn't get to have a proper Thanksgiving dinner until a week and a half after the holiday, but Karla and I managed to get through it without fighting.

And while I'm sure Benjamin will talk about it more, meeting some of the other people who have been through this in the area gives me a little hope, especially the writer's husband Raymond, who went through all this and eventually became himself again, and says that he understands a lot of people much better than he would have if he hadn't.

Still, right now, I'm reading messages about friends going to movies while I'm babysitting kids who won't go to sleep.  Karla was supposed to be back an hour and a half ago and I've got to take over an hour of public transportation to get to work by nine tomorrow morning, and I seem to need more sleep with this body than I did before.

I know it could be much worse, and I try to remember that Joseph and some of my other friends probably need more prayers than I do.  But I'm feeling really frazzled right now, and I guess this helps a little.

-Jonah