Jordan/Yuan-Wei: My First Real Bachelorette Party

STOP READING OVER MY SHOULDER, JONAH, OR DO YOU WANT TO EXPLAIN WHAT I'M WRITING TO THE NORMIES?

I'm just going to leave that up there, because I'm writing this on the bus that's taking the bridesmaids from New Orleans to Atlanta, including the adorable junior bridesmaid.  She's probably the one I have to worry about snooping the most, but I'm sure Jonah will tell little Moira not to bother Auntie Jordan if she tries to stand on her seat and read over my shoulder. 

"Auntie Jordan".  I do not feel old enough to be an auntie, even acknowledging that becoming Yuan-Wei made me physically younger by a few years.  And on top of that, should I be this kid's auntie?  Am if really that close to her mother? 

I mean, even when we both lived in the same city, we didn't hang out a lot.  I was a well-off college girl and she was working the service economy, and even when you feel you're not supposed to be on those positions, you don't form friendships along those lines.  Heck, when or paths crossed at the Inn, I made fun of him. I basically hired him/her to housesit while I was on a trip, was all.  We were kind of allies more than friends, really. 

But a funny thing happens when you move to the other side of the fucking world (or country) and there's nobody else to talk to about this big, weird thing in your life which keeps being weird even though you should have gotten used to it.  Those messages become a lifeline and I probably tell Jonah more than I do Annette or my brother Max, even though they've been through it.  They've gone back to things being normal, mostly, but we're fellow long-haulers, sharing something others can only half-understand.  We're gonna want each other right at hand for stuff like this. 

Of course, I say that like yesterday was some sort of fucking hassle rather than a blast. 

It was a long flight from Hong Kong to NOLA, but I flew first class (I don't throw money around much, but definitely do for that), and the folks at the airport were only a little racist and willing enough to believe that being from Hong Kong was different than being from China (it is and it isn't these days).  Nice rideshare to the hotel to drop luggage off because I was there before check-in time and then to Jonah's place, and a big hug when I got there.  I was first, but just barely, and Moira and Karla arrived on the same plane soon after.

This isn't my first bachelorette party.  Aside from the one for Chen-Ai/Bingbing that played like a weird celebration of things she'd acquired to me, and new-Chen-Ai's which was a small affair most notable for he announcing her new English name, I've been invited along with a couple friends and co-workers since settling here.  But the vibe was different from the get-go.  Jonah and I had a little time to gush like teenage girls about how happy we were and how strange it was that it was happening this way before the Boston contingent arrived, and then it was fun as we pulled out our party dresses and did each other's hair and makeup (I had never realized just how much white and black people could find themselves envying my hair!) and got ready to go out for dinner.

I forget exactly where we went for dinner - Jonah says it's almost impossible to have a bad meal here - but I had red beans & rice with alligator sausage and loved it.  It's definitely local, but also feels a lot like the Chinese-American fare that I grew up on and which kind of horrifies Chinese folks who visit America, although the five is also Hong Kong, straightforward meals with basic ingredients and no shame that you're fuckin' wolfin' it down.

The conversation over the meal was really fun, too, because while we've all met on one occasion or another, what we've got in common is that we know and love "Krystle", and while Moira is the one who has the most stories - sure, Karla does, but Jonah is often laughing like they're all new to her, and they may be - and we've all seen her when she wasn't sure of herself and are all impressed at the person she's grown into.  We wind up having more in common than we think at times, too - both Moira and I can talk about coming to new countries where we speak the language and mostly know the culture but finding it daunting, and I had no idea that Karla was a big manga & anime fan who had just been doing some sort of matching cosplay with her oldest at Anime Boston the weekend before.

After that, there was music, and bars, and more music and bars as we went up and down Bourbon Street like complete fucking clichés, including late-night beignets because Krystle said we had to do it.  We sang and had random folks toast  "Krystle" and had a bunch of people say we looked sexy and, hey, we weren't the ones getting married, so could they buy us drinks?

Nothing happened, of course, and the folks at the hotel's front desk apparently have beaucoup experience checking folks who dropped their luggage off fifteen hours earlier in after midnight.

The alarm came much too early in the morning, it seemed, but either Jonah or Karla had anticipated the condition we'd be in and booked a minibus and a driver to get us from New Orleans to Atlanta where everybody but me and Little Moira would be meeting our boyfriends, because Dominic ultimately decided he wasn't making a trip to America under the current conditions.  It's about seven hours, which isn't too bad considering airport nonsense and other things like us being hungover enough to mess up all sorts of things.

Which brings us up to now, somewhere in Alabama.

-Jordo

Jonah/Krystle: Yes to the Dress

Just when I think I've totally adapted to being a woman and gotten everything else in my life lined up, my mom barges in on me while I'm in a dressing room stripped down to my bra and panties.

I should have been ready for the possibility; choosing a wedding dress with my moms was always going to involve a lot of stripping down and fewer boundaries than usual, but I've spent so much of my time with my parents and parental figures trying to be either a good girl or boyish - or ideally landing somewhere sexless - that is wasn't really prepared for what an outing focused on their daughter looking good for her wedding would be like at all. 

It just happened this past weekend - my mom was ready to come back the weekend after her vacation, but Momma Kamen wasn't, and then there was Mardi Gras, so they all decided to save a little money and come in after.  I'd done a little poking around various shops, sending emails back and forth to them and our wedding planner, and the place we found was relatively affordable and not afraid of what they saw as kind of short notice.  Two months out for a dress doesn't seem that long, but then, I've never tried to make ilor alter one.

I didn't think I was feeling or acting particularly self-conscious in front of them at first, although I soon discovered that getting into a wedding dress isn't exactly a one-person job as I tried the first one on.  I didn't like it much at all; it had seams that seemed designed to rub my nipples the wrong way, though i was glad the others didn't need to hear that before saying we should see some others.  The second kind of had the opposite problem - it draped off me like a parachute - and I was in the dressing room about to put the next one on when Mom came in with my phone.

I actually did the thing where you try to cover your"breasts and groin with your hands.  "What the heck, Mom?"

She held the phone up.  "It's Moira."

Blushing, i took out and turned to the side.  "Hey, honey...  You okay?"  She was, of course; she just wanted to know if she could go sharing with some of her friends, since I'd told her to call of she wasn't going to stay at Josie's house.  I asked to talk to Josie's mother, who assured me it was a safe parking lot and she'd be watching.  I thanked her, told Moira she could but to be careful, and asked if she had her key to get her skates because Gabe was out.  I turned around and saw Mom still there, staring.  "What?  I'm a good mom!"

"I know you are!  It's just...  I don't think I realized you had all this going on under your clothes.  Why have you been trying to hide it under a wedding dress that could pass as a white tent?"

"What do you mean you didn't realize...  Oh, wait, you've only seen me a few times since I was pregnant, right?  Mostly before I really started climbing, and I wasn't exactly wearing a bikini to June's graduation party."  I turned to look in the mirror.  "Yeah, I guess I look pretty all right, if you're into fit girls.  Although, it's not like the original Krystle is the only person who thinks I should have tiny little smooth waist instead of some abs, and skinny legs.  Other folks say my arms make me look mannish."  I chuckled.  "Not the compliment it used to be."

She snorted.  "White folks, right?"  I half-nodded; it's not just white guys but they do say that more often.  "You look good.  Anyway, get that thing on."

She stepped out of the room, I got changed, and then came out again.  Momma Kamen nodded but Mom said to see if they had anything sexier.  "Let's let Gabriel's family know he's done well for himself!"

I think my jaw actually dropped in surprise.  "If the girls in Sunday School could hear you now!"

"There is a difference between a girl looking to get herself in trouble and making sure the groom's family sees you're a grown woman they can't push around!"

The staff of the shop had apparently heard it all, because they said nothing and just fetched me another dress. I went into the dressing room but soon saw there was no getting it on myself; part of it was a corset and while maybe the original Krystle knows her way around those, I sure don't.  I poked my head out, saying I could use a little help, and Momma Kamen stepped forward, staring Mom back into her chair.  She looked at the laces and started pulling.  "Too tight?"

Surprisingly, it wasn't, although the way it pushed my breasts up felt odd, different even from a push-up bra.  "No, that's okay, I think I can take a bit more."

She nodded, and pulled a couple strings tighter.  "I apologize for Mrs. Glass's behavior.  It was generous for her to get me down here, but that bit about getting into trouble was out of line."

"I mean, she's not wrong.  The moment I found out I was going to have a baby, it sure seemed like I was in trouble."  I took a breath, reminding myself that as far as Momma Kamen was concerned, I was her daughter and my mom was the one who was butting in to her family business, and the night she came to collect me must have been really strange and horrifying.  "She and her husband, they didn't see any of this coming, and sometimes trying to help is a lot like taking charge for them."  It was weird to talk about my parents as a "them", especially with Mom in the next room, so it was probably good that I didn't have both around that often.

I knew it was too much as soon as I looked in the mirror, but dutifully went out and made Mom realize we'd gone too far. It had this big ol' upside-down U cut out of the front which was nice for walking but also pushed the girls up way too aggressively and the lacy gloves were just weird.  I pointed out that some of Gabe's friends might have gone to college in Boston and we didn't exactly want them to suddenly remember Krystle's stripper name in the middle of the ceremony.

We tried another couple before finding one everybody liked, which does show off some deep cleavage and clings to my butt, but is floor length and has got neat sleeves which show off my shoulders.  Kind of a nice veil, which is a weird thing to say.  I'm probably going to have to buy a couple dresses or skirts with the same sort of slit for my legs so I can practice walking in something like that, since it didn't feel totally natural.  The shopkeepers  had some ideas about the wedding-night lingerie which would match, but having my moms there for that was too much.

I've still got another few appointments at the place, both for fittings and to get bridesmaids' dresses sorted out, which is a heck of a thing when one is flying in from Hong Kong and two from Boston, and nobody local aside from "junior bridesmaid" Moira, who is a bit too old for traditional flower girl things.

The dress is apparently going to run something like $1800, which is below average, believe it or not, because Momma Kamen is a fierce negotiator who was able to make it look like I was reluctantly not having quite so many fittings and progress reports rather than being perfectly happy to just pick something off the rack.

We all went out to dinner that night, which wasn't as tense as I thought it might be - Mom and Momma Kamen apparently thought the whole thing was funny afterwards, and I guess I should be glad Moira was there so that Gabe didn't fully hear them roasting me.  Both of them flew out the next morning on the same flight to Boston, though, I noted, on seats at the opposite ends of the plane.

Two and a half months to go.

-Jonah/Krystle

Jonah/Krystle: Meet the (Grand) Parents

We're pretty sure that Gabe meet my real parents at some point, but not sure exactly when, and I was half-tempted to search the blog and Facebook to find when before they arrived in New Orleans for their "vacation".  Which is to say, their time checking out Gabriel Potts to see if he's good enough for their son/daughter and making sure that I'm doing okay raising my daughter.  They've mostly accepted that in going to be Krystle for the rest of my life, but even with me having been a woman long enough for Moira to be a very happy and outgoing second-grader, they're not sure I've got the proper instincts to raise a little girl so she'll wind up in a better position than pre-Inn Krystle. 

And maybe I don't, but I'm doing okay with trial and error.  Moira is at the age where she's staying to ask questions about her biological father, even if she has more or less accepted Gabe as "Daddy:.  June doesn't seem to mind answering when she calls and sends birthday cards, but he's found a new girlfriend, and maybe nothing comes of it, but maybe he justifiably wants to look forward rather than behind, even if it hurts Moira a little.  Not that Moira is lacking for attention and support - Gabe and I volunteer for a lot at school and after, and try to be attentive parents.  Folks tell us we do well.

Still, my folks wanted to see for themselves, so they came down here on vacation and found reasons to not just have their granddaughter dropped off with them to babysit, although they did do a lot of that.  I think they kind of played the roles of people coming to see their granddaughter but not wanting to impose on their son's baby-mama a little too much - Gabe knows "Krystle" lived with them while "Jonah" traveled, so it's reasonable that we'd be close - but I'm pretty sure that it's mostly playing a part rather than rejecting me.  If anything, I think, it's about sparing themselves the incongruity of me being with Gabe even though meeting him was part of why they came.

We had a few fun evenings out - a riverboat cruise, some jazz, including Preservation Hall.  The latter is one of those things that you kind of avoid if you live somewhere because they're swamped by tourists but which you're reminded are, in fact, a lot of fun when the tourists drag you there.  They also had a lot of fun with Moira, who has picked up more French than I have but really only needs to say "bonjour!" and "merci!" to impress Mom & Dad.  It is adorable, truth be told, as has a girl who used to be such a fussy eater deciding she really likes po'boys and telling them to try one while they're shocked that I get red beans & rice with alligator sausage.

Everyone was having enough fun that it was hard for them to find time to talk to me as Jonah, so to speak.  They'd told me not to disrupt my work schedule too much when they informed me of their vacation plans, but because Gabe works remotely and actually has pretty flexible hours, there weren't any times we could exclude him until Friday morning, when he had a big end-of-week review meeting and I had a couple hours between dropping Moira off at school and the gym opening to have brunch with my parents after they checked out ofd their hotel.  I dressed up a bit for Brennan's, and while I didn't get too fancy, a silk camisole, capris, and two-inch heels must have seemed like a lot to them the way they stared.  I get it; even after almost ten years, their experience with me as a woman is mostly tomboyish outfits, what they probably think of as a costume or disguise when I was waiting tables, or really casual clothes for the busy single mom, and the idea that I might be wearing something that makes me look nice in a very feminine way without having to fool people was probably new.

Surprisingly, it was Mom who took it with good humor this time.  "My little boy, showing off his rack."

I laughed, in a bit of shock, but shrugged in a way I knew would make my breasts move a bit.  "Haven't been little or a boy in a while.  But it is kind of surprising; I feel like even five years ago, all of this was something I just kind of had to put up with in order to have brought Moira into the world and fed her and all that, and maybe it was useful to sometimes play it up because of how people react.  But at some point, I kind of liked how I looked in the mirror because it said something about me rather than because I saw the sexy girl as someone else.  You know what I mean?"

Mom nodded.  "Oh, I sure do.  Your father still probably doesn't really believe that we dress up more for our girlfriends and ourselves than boys, but you get it, don't you?"

Dad snorted before I could respond.  "Hey, I am not some caveman who think women are just here to please men.  It just seems like a lot of trouble, is all."  He paused as the waitress came over and took our orders.  "But you have landed a man, haven't you?"

I smiled.  "I have."

"And that's really what you want?  In here, and in here?"  He tapped his heart, and then, a bit more tentatively, his temple.

I took a breath, trying to figure out how to explain it, not to avoid giving offense, but so I could say what I meant without really understanding it myself.  "I mean, I don't think Gabe is just 'a man'; I think he's pretty special.  I don't know how all this works.  My friend Jordan, she really tries to figure out the biology of it and explain it to me, and sometimes knowing that the Inn changed something in my nose so it would respond more to men than women helped and sometimes it just made me feel like the Devil is using my body to tempt me into sin.  I don't really understand it, to tell you the truth.  I just know that the pieces of the world fit together a lot better around me and Gabe than me alone."

Mom nodded.  "A good man does make a lot of things easier."

"It's not just that.  I mean, when I first started trying to date guys, it was about that, realizing that America is really not set up for Black single moms and their kids, and trying to find a way to cushion the blow if something went wrong, but I actually started doing all right for myself.  Gabe just makes me feel more me, you know?  Even if that's not the me I was ten years ago."

Dad nodded, trying to process it, while Mom raised an eyebrow.  "Doesn't hurt hat he looks fine and has a good job, though, does it?"

My mouth sort of popped open and stayed that way while the waiter brought us our food.  "Oh my god - is that why you're suddenly so much more accepting of all this now?  Because I've got a good man?"

Mom looked down at her plate, avoiding eye contact.  "It's not just that, although seeing you do so well on that count makes it all a bit more real, but--"  She looked around and pulled her chair a little closer to the table and me, sort of remembering that Louisiana is the South, even if New Orleans often seems like a whole other thing.  It's just, this past year, with that lady at the Olympics and the election with all those people who call themselves Christians just being so mean about girls who started out as boys and vice versa and then looking to hurt them as soon as they could.  It made me realize where the hurt at at you choosing not to be the boy I gave birth to could lead, and, honey, you may not believe this, but I don't want to go there."  She reached across the table and took my hands.  "You've done so well, even without me helping the way I should have, and that includes Gabriel."

Dad nodded.  "I'm not going to say it doesn't sting a bit to see you embrace all this, but..."  He didn't seem to know how to end that.  "Anyway, I can't imagine changing  everything like you did, and kind of figured if you did get married, you'd still be, uh--"

I beamed.  "Wearing black instead of white?  Let me tell you, I kind of want to!  I've stood outside bridal shops and seen those things that go out to here and look like they'll tear if they even get near something with a point, and I just cannot bring myself to go in, and Gabe's family is sending me pictures of dresses with veils and trains and corsets, and sometimes insinuating that me not being gung-ho on the biggest, fanciest wedding and dress and reception is me not wanting to marry him!  Trust me, I have fantasized about whether it would be possible to use the Inn to make Gabe the bride and me the groom!"

A tut-tut-tut that I had not heard since high school came out of my Mom's mouth.  "Trust me, you do not want to miss out on being a bride!"  She looked at her watch and sighed.  "You should have told me this earlier; no time to do anything before our flight."

I quickly clicked my phone on and off to see I had about half an hour to get to work, so I signaled for the check, argued over who was paying before I got the bill, and then hugged before pointing them in the direction of the nearest taxi stand and then catching a bus.

That night, I got a text asking if it was okay if she and Momma Kamen came down in a couple weeks to help me choose a dress.  Is that something I should look forward to?

Jonah/Krystle: We Bought A House

And by "we", I mostly mean "Gabe" because he's got a lot more savings and a better credit history than I do, even if you don't make a lot of assumptions about what the original Krystle was doing in her life.  All the paperwork is in his name, and I'm more or less cool with that, even if I probably should be more paranoid about my whole life being upended instantly.

We got a pretty decent deal in a good location - Moira isn't going to have to change school districts and can still see her friends without a whole lot of effort.  Between what the two of us make, it's surprisingly affordable, although I do kind of worry that this is in part because we're in New Orleans and can wind up literally underwater at any time.  I wasn't really old enough for Hurricane Katrina to really register with me, but both my parents and Momma Kamen asked me if it really makes sense to buy property in the Delta.  Maybe it's not, but, somehow, this has become my place, and our place, and I don't want to leave it.

Of course, moving in has been another reminder of how the Inn has left me, even after nine years, a little afraid to settle in:  My apartment had enough furniture and other stuff that we had to use a bigger moving van this time, but the amount that's Moira's dwarfs the amount that's mine.  Yeah, Gabe and I and other people spoil her, but I never bought much of a sofa for the living room or much more than the minimum for the kitchen, and the bed I bought two years ago went on Facebook Marketplace.  I'm sure my lady friends have noticed that I cycle through my nice outfits a lot faster than they do on girls' nights.  They believe me when I say I've been poor (which isn't really a lie), but there's still some "you could be someone else tomorrow" in there.

And then, once Moira and I got our stuff in, Gabe arrived with his van, which was packed, even though I kind of gather that his apartment in New York was actually smaller than ours:  Bigger TV, a sofa and a recliner, sports memorabilia, a record player and a bunch of vinyl...  More to show for being 30-ish than I do, for sure!

(For those keeping track, my driver's license says I'm 31 and I've lived 25 years; I've gotten used to saying the former when asked my age but it still feels like lying, more than writing "Krystle Kamen" for my name and marking "female" for my sex does!)

The house isn't big, but it's got a kitchen, living room, and dining area downstairs; three bedrooms upstairs, and an attic that could probably be converted to some other use.  We set up one bedroom to use as Gabe's home office, since he'd be working remotely now, before starting on the master bedroom.  We put the new king-sized bed together and filled closets and bureaus, and then stood back to look at our handiwork.  He beamed, but I was like, "huh!"

Not the expression he was expecting.  "Something wrong?"

"No, it's just kind of hitting me that we're basically married now.  This is a shared space, we're splitting the bills, no place to retreat to if we get upset.  It's different than sharing a room in a cramped apartment with Moira or Karla.  Like, next year isn't when things change, but just when we throw a party and sign some papers.  This is the actual day."

"Is that a problem?"  His eyes hit a cross necklace that I'd laid on top of my dresser.  "Of course it is; I just assumed.  Look, I can move some stuff into the office and get another bed--"

I put my hands on his cheeks and kissed him.  "No, it's not a problem, it's just, look, you know I'm kind of a weird girl with a lot of contradictory stuff in my head.  I didn't really grow up dreaming about my wedding or being Missus someone, so it's kind of the first time I'm thinking of a lot of this."  I stepped in a bit closer.  "It's kind of nice to know there's going to be someone there to hold me every night."

He took the hint and pulled me in, cupping my butt and letting my soft chest press against his hard one.  "I'm not going to mind holding this, either."

"Mm."

He chuckled.  "Of course, if we do enough, then that home office might have to double as a nursery."

It was the first time either of us had said something like this, but, strangely, it didn't leave me shaken.  "Well, we'd better be careful on the timing.  See what the next year brings before we make that commitment!"

Moira interrupted us at that point, but we did pick up where we left off later, and I can confirm - I does feel pretty good to fall asleep in your man's arms, in the bed you share, in the house that has your names on the door.

-Jonah/Krystle

Jonah/Krystle: Well, I've got news

Sorry I haven't been posting much.  It's the usual deal:  I've been just being a regular single mom for the past few months, and this is kind of a blog about people finding themselves in new lives, and that hasn't been me in a while.  I've been pretty confident, doing okay as Krystle, to the point where it kind of seems right.  I kind of think I remember more of my life like this than being Jonah, and wonder if I should stop using that name even here.  This is me.

Or, you know, until last weekend.

Gabriel was in town.  He shows up for a long weekend every couple months, and the nature of it sort of changes depending what our lives are like.  Sometimes he comes with a friend, often that friend comes with a girlfriend, sometimes we hit the sights and restaurants, one time it was mostly a Pelicans-Knicks game, sometimes we spend a lot of time in bed, sometimes it's just two pals hanging out.  When anyone asks, I say it's a great friends with benefits relationship, and a lot of my girlfriends say they couldn't do it.  I sometimes wonder about that, because sometimes I think about how uptight I was about sex even as a horny teenage boy and also wonder if having been a guy just lets me just be buddies more easily.

I haven't really been keeping track of which weekends are like what or anything, but this past one was just us.  Well, not just us - Moira is playing tee ball and had a game Saturday morning and they we did a trip to the zoo - but the nights were ours, and the plan was to spend them at his hotel while Moira slept over at a friend's.  And that's how it went; we went to one of the zillion nice restaurants in town and had some time to kill before the jazz show he'd purchased tickets to, so we started walking along the beach.  I had taken my heels off and was enjoying walking barefoot, and had just pulled out my bag to put a wrap on, because I've kind of acclimated to what people here call "chilly" even though I spent most of my life in New England, but as I was saying that, he coughed and I was about to turn around and ask what his excuse was.

And then he got down on one knee.

I don't remember exactly what he said - it wasn't any sort of "never met a girl like me" thing, but that he'd never been drawn to someone so much, even when we weren't nearby, and that I always seemed to know how things should be even when he was drifting or I said that I felt overwhelmed, and he'd been kind of afraid to move forward because I was so independent, but, well, we hadn't seemed to just be friends for months, and it was time to make it official.  Would I marry him?

My legs went weak.  Like, weaker than when I woke up as a grown up woman after going to bed a teenage boy, weaker than when I slept with the creep wearing my old face because it seemed like the only thing I could offer him to become myself again, weaker than when I found out I was pregnant, weaker than after I'd just given birth.  Why?  I mean, why?  My life had changed so much in a moment before, and this wasn't close to the same category, was it?  But then, when had it really changed in a way that made things feel more solid?  Like, all of that was ways in which I was going to have to adapt in a way where I would have to rely on myself more despite not having any idea of what I was doing, and this was being told I was good at my life and made someone else's better and I wasn't prepared to hear that.

All that went through my head in a second, and I said yes.  He took the ring out of the box that, quite frankly, I hadn't paid any attention to, we kissed, and some of the other folks on the beach applauded.  

The rest of the night was kind of a daze - there was music, there was sex - and then the next morning he checked out of the hotel and we went to pick up Moira, together, because his flight wasn't for hours.  On the way, we talked about just what we do at this point, because while Moira really likes Gabe, she's a kid, and would this be too big for her to take in?  Like, what if she said she didn't want Gabe to be her daddy, or even to be around all the time?

That didn't happen, thank God.  I sort of turned the ring around, kind of hiding the diamond so that it didn't become a whole topic of conversation with the other adults until we got back to our place, and then tried to explain to her like she was a big girl that Gabe and I had decided that we should all be one family, and we really hoped that she liked the idea.  She had a lot of questions - was Gabe going to be around all the time now?  Where would he sleep and put his things?  When were we getting married?

We'd talked about some of them - Gabe could work remotely from anywhere, so we would probably look for a house over the next few weeks and he would move in when we found one, although that might take some time.  We'd probably get married next summer, which seemed like a ridiculously long time to her, but I pointed out that we had to make sure we could find a date that worked for Momma K and maybe her daddy Jonah and definitely Grammy and Grampa Glass, and Big Moira and Auntie Karla and maybe even my friend Jordan, and that meant planning a long time in advance.  But what if we changed our minds before then, and I told her that a man doesn't buy this kind of expensive ring unless he was really sure we wouldn't change our minds.

She said it was pretty, especially since Mommy almost never wore jewelry besides earrings.  I said it really was, although to myself, I was kind of thinking it was heavy, this weird and unfamiliar weight on my hand.  Not, like, in a way that meant more than that, I don't think - not like my breasts did when I first turned into a girl! - but I do feel it and my brain is doing its level best to treat it as a reminder that Gabe loves me that much.  Although sometimes I kind of freak out when I bang it into something.

It's really new, and while the reactions have been mostly good.  I almost think that this might be the thing that gets Mom to be okay with all this, even more than Moira, like I'd passed some sort of girl test.  Jordan kind of can't believe it.  When I sent Moira's namesake a photo she called me up immediately to screech into the phone.  Klara and Momma Kamen are really proud of me, which is weird.

Krystle/Mackenzie...  That's complicated.  She barely remembers Gabe from when they were kids, but kind of wishes I had found someone who had never met her at all.  She's never going to forgive me, I know, but we're a little more cordial these days (I think finally being old enough to date without it being too weird and starting to look at colleges has her treating my life less as what she should be rather than what she could have been).  She's not going to say "good job", but she's not automatically going to "why are you fucking my life up so much" anymore.  Gabe seems like a good guy to her.  Probably the best I can hope for from that end.

So all that happens, and I kind of feel like my feet are just now touching the ground again.  And while I don't exactly have a lot of fantasies about a fancy wedding that have been in my head since childhood, Penny tells me that I should prepare for the next year to be insane anyway!

-Jonah/Krystle

Jonah/Krystle: Regular Life

Things have gotten more normal in the neighborhood since things got weird with Leroy at a wedding.  Not necessarily more enjoyable - the long and short of it is that I like hanging around with Leroy a lot more than Larry, and might have enjoyed dating him, but he's not going to break up with his brother, is he?  I suppose it's possible, considering both the relationship I have with Karla and the one original-Krystle did, but I don't suppose it's really that common.

We still see him around, of course; heck, he was very excited about Moira's Moon Girl costume when she came around trick-or-treating a week ago.  I kind of wrapped the cape for my storm around my torso when I got to his place, not to be taunting, although I have to admit, it's getting kind of hard to remember if I would have been weird about a girl I liked walking around all sexy if things had gone wrong back when I was a guy.  I've been Krystle long enough that I don't have as many "yeah, I get that" moments as I used to.

Though I'm not really a girl any more, am I?  It was crazy enough with the move and everything last year that I didn't wind up doing much to celebrate the big 3-0 that the 1992 birth year on my driver's license would imply, which is fine, considering I haven't actually lived that many years, but I am on the other side of thirty now, as far as the world knows.  Working at the gym keeps me in good shape, but not like the Tulane students who come in and just look like they could all be Lululemon models or something in their yoga pants.  I'm kind of cool with it, although I am starting to get more inquiries from Momma Kamen as to whether there's anyone I might like to settle down with, because I'm not getting any younger (then again, I'll worry when I start hearing that from my mother).

Still, I feel pretty good about how I am, good enough that I wasn't looking to cover up when I made my Halloween costume.  And, yes, I made it.  It's not that fancy - I pretty much started with a one-piece swimsuit and put some gold trim on it and a pair of thigh-high boots that were on their last legs anyway (basically spray painted then glued together for the night and ready to fall apart right after), with the cape not much trickier, and the white wig can from a thrift shop.  But I had a bit of a laugh at myself sitting at a sewing machine making costumes - just so macho, right?  Well, wait until you've got an active little girl who regularly rips out seams or destroys the knees on her pants to the point where they are basically salvaged by making them into shorts; you'll learn to sew no matter what you thought about taking home ec back in high school!

But you know what - I really felt good about it!  This was probably the most fun I've ever had on Halloween; Moira is kind of the perfect age to really enjoy dressing up and knocking on the door of a bunch of neighbors that she knows without being ready to crash by the end, they had a little party at school, and she had knows all of her character's moves and poses and stuff, so she could be a little ham.  I know a lot of the other local moms & dads, so there was something to talk about.  And, believe it or not, it's kind of a totally different experience putting on a sexy outfit that you've made than one that you bought off the rack and which doesn't quite fit or seems like how someone else wants you to look.  You're more actively choosing to push your cleavage up and out or something.  Maybe.  I don't know how all that stuff works beyond feeling like I was under a lot less pressure than dressing up usually has me feeling.

(Although it's not lost on me that I might not feel quite the same way if I were still in Cambridge rather than New Orleans)

So, anyway, did Halloween, then the next day Moira went to school and I went to work and things were normal again, and it's kind of a pretty good normal.

-Jonah/Krystle

Jonah/Krystle: Visitors

I kind of thought that Moira would be more upset about not seeing her grandparents or cousins at Thanksgiving or Christmas, but kids her age have a really frightening ability to adapt to change once they've gotten past the temper tantrums.  It's been almost eight years and I'm still going "boo-hoo, being a girl is hard even with a bunch of folks who've gone through the same thing to help!" and she's like, well, I left everybody I know except Mommy behind on the other side of the country and my new friend Josephine's parents speak French so now I'm just going to pick up more French than Mommy did in three years of school and also I never get lost when running around the neighborhood like Mommy does.  She's six, she did video calls with her extended family at the holidays, and they ran out to show "Josie" the new toy she was sent.

In fact, the only family member she has seen in the past six months is "Daddy", because June/Jonah and his fiancée Alana got the idea to come down during Mardi Gras.  I gather it had sort of been a bucket list item for June in her old life, except that her ex-husband didn't think it sounded like his sort of thing when they were younger, and it's not something you do at June's real age, but when the world thinks you're twenty-four, you and your cute redhead finacée do it.  I think they both also wanted to be seen as being good, mature adults, about Moira, even though neither June nor I wants there to be any sort of regular arrangement.  I almost wish we could get Alana to go through a cycle at the Inn, just so that we'd all be on the same page, but that's apparently not practical even if stuff didn't often go wrong.  Anyway, I can't exactly treat June/Jonah as someone who can just disappear from our lives once the opportunity arises, in part because my parents want to keep up appearances.  Then again, they can't just up and move like I just did and start fresh.

It was a weird few days.  Moira was shy around "Daddy", and I felt bad about not making the fact that there is a Daddy out there somewhere who likes her (maybe loves her; I mean, how could June not?) but just can't see her very often more a part of her life, especially now that she's got friends at school and sees other family arrangements more often and asks a bunch of questions.  June, meanwhile, does know how to be around kids so Alana thinks "Jonah" is closer to Moira than is the case.  They mostly did young-single-person stuff, but there was a daddy-daughter outing, from which we now know that Moira really doesn't like boats.

(In the time since this happened, Alana has made overtures about Moira spending a week with Daddy during summer vacation, and I asked Junah if this would be tied to him visiting "his mom and dad" and, yeah, this is complicated!)

More fun was a couple months later when Gabriel had a work thing in New Orleans - some conference or other.  We hadn't chatted online much over the winter and spring, because he met a girl who seemed pretty cool from what showed up on his Instagram, and while we still thought of each other as mostly friends (although I guess sleeping together that once makes us "friends with benefits"), a message from me popping up on his phone at the wrong time could get a bad reaction.  Ironically, it was her who got back together with an ex a couple weeks before this business trip.

Which suddenly added new possibilities to "we should meet for lunch while I'm out there".

We did that, obviously, and it was really enjoyably casual.  Meeting for lunch in this city is terrific, because the sheer number of good places to eat is overwhelming, and I joked with him about being on the dating apps just so that I could get a bunch of guys to introduce me to local restaurants (though I'd found this place myself).  He asked if there was anyone, and I said no, that so far the guys who were okay with me having a daughter were not exactly folks I'd risk a second kid with.  Like, they figured it made me desperate or something and I wasn't going to pay for babysitters on three nights to get laid once.  Joke's on them; Moira loves sleeping over at her friend Josie's and Josie's mom Justine loves hearing stories about men being dogs the next day just as much as hearing about someone being great in bed, even if she does think I should be getting laid more.

(I don't bring up the girls I've swiped right on, because that's not happening.  Jordan says I should have worked at being bi earlier, because otherwise your nose overrides what you'd trained yourself to find sexy or something.)

Once it was established we were both single, he said he could extend his stay into the weekend, and maybe we could do something Friday night.  We settled on Preservation Hall, which is obvious but should be fun, especially since it was on the list of things I hadn't done here yet, and agreed to meet that night.

I was planning to keep it casual again - camisole, shorts, hair in a ponytail, minimal makeup - and got all the way to the point where I was starting with the makeup after dropping Moira off at Josie's when I got a call from Jordan, who had just got in after a long night in Hong Kong and was kind of buzzed.  I put her on speaker as I worked on my face, and when I mentioned it was Gabriel in town she was all like "ooh, you like that boy, don't you?  Go get 'im!"  I protested that it wasn't like that and I wasn't going to get anyone, she said "uh-huh" and that she was probably keeping me late, so she hung up and left me to it.

(I feel like I usually call Jordan "he", but she was really being a she that night!)

I started with the lipstick, but what Jordan had said was on my mind, and it looked kind of dull all of a sudden.  "Damn it," I said, actually said out loud, "I do like that boy!"  So I stripped back down to my bra and panties, threw the closet opened, and went straight to the third date dress, the blue one that has a hidden underwire because there's no hiding bra straps with the bare shoulders and it's made to make my cleavage pop.  It also doesn't do much to hide the shape of my ass and has some round cutouts just above the hips.  I've actually got makeup that matches it, and four-inch heels that do as well.  Not necessarily the sort of things I like wearing when I'm probably going to stand in line for an hour, but Gabriel deserved it and I'll admit it, I didn't feel like leaving much to chance.  I did what I could do with my hair on short notice, chuckled at what my mother would think of me in this moment, and headed out.

He liked what he saw, and I managed not to fall on my butt as we stood in line and chatted.  We got good seats, the music was a ton of fun - it's a tourist trap but one that pulls the tourists in because it's genuinely a lot of fun and really makes you feel like you've had a proper time in New Orleans (and as a recent transplant, I'm not immune to that feeling).  It's a quick show, about an hour, so we walked around a bit more, had some late night beignets, and then I let him get me off my feet in his hotel room.

Afterward, we both lay on the bed, naked, kind of joking about how this was kind of sexier than L-shaped sheets on TV and wondering if smoking afterward leveled you out like it always seemed to in movies - I don't know about anybody else, but I always have this want-to-do-more-but-can't feeling if sex is good, and I'm not sure if it's me, Krystal, or just the weird sense of being a guy turned into a girl.  I kind of liked being naked in that moment, though, walking up to the window and looking out, knowing he was looking at me, and not having any clothes in between us.  "It's gonna be weird if we ever do this anywhere but a hotel, isn't it?"

He laughed.  "It is, especially since hotel sex is the best sex."

"I know, right?  The sheets are always perfect, the bed never squeaks, there's no worry about being interrupted, you're on neutral ground and someone else is gonna clean up...  God, I must sound like such a ho!"

He walked but and put his arms around me.  "You're just sayin' facts."

"I guess, but...  There's some folks who would be really shocked about me having opinions like this, and some who look at me and think ho sells me short, and I--"  I stopped, realizing that I was saying things I usually only said with other folks who'd been to the Inn.  "I just sometimes still feel surprised that I'm an adult woman with adult responsibilities and interests, you know?  Like, I'm sure you heard that I missed high school graduation, and never went to college or got married, so even though I've got a kid of my own and a job where people act like I know what I'm doing and mostly do as I say, I always feel like I'm putting one over everything and should be heading into first period geography in the morning."

He walked up, put his arms around me, and kissed my neck.  "I think you're amazingly together."

"You're just saying that because you see me once a year in my best outfit."

"C'mon, you're pretty good in no outfit at all!"

I laughed, kind of enjoying a man appreciating me and not thinking about it too much in the moment.  "I'm just saying, tomorrow I'll be in a t-shirt trying to get Moira to try new food and you'll be on a plane.  You're not getting the full Krystle Kamen experience."

"I think I'd like it."

I shrugged, turned around, and feeling that he had started getting hard, pushed him back to the bed, thinking maybe I could do a bit more.

The next morning, I called an Uber and went home, because the deal-sealing dress is cool and all, but public transportation in a dress where you have to cross your legs ain't great.  Heck, I was lucky enough to get a woman driving the car, which is a way bigger deal than I ever could have imagined.

So a kind of funny thing is, I did sit down with Justine and talk about the good sex I had while the girls played the next morning and, like, I never really had girlfriends I could do that with back in Massachusetts.  Like, with Ashlyn and Jordan it was always a former-guy conversation and Original Moira and I just never had a sex-talk sort of friendship.  But Justine and some other women I know do stuff like that, and I wonder if maybe Ashlyn was right - going to a place where nobody knows me is a chance to start fresh.

I do still kind of feel like a visitor myself, in part because Moira has acclimated so fast, but I'm getting there - the fact that folks from before are kind of odd and unusual must mean something.

-Jonah/Krystle

Jonah/Krystle: Settling In, Part Two

Moira and I have been down here almost a month now, and we're almost set in our routine.  I only got as far as actually moving in last time, but obviously there has more to it than that.  I'd been able to get Moira registered for kindergarten on the phone and online, so the next morning, we called a Lyft and went to her new school, signed the last of the paperwork that needed to be done in person, and then waited in the hall while the principal brought her into her new classroom and introduced her.  I kind of wanted to stay there all day, but I had to do all the shopping for stuff I didn't have.

It dawned on me as I left the school that I kind of had no idea where the best place to do this was, especially if you can't really afford Crate & Barrel or anyplace similarly fancy.  I searched furniture and housewares on my phone, but I didn't really know which ones were respectable local places and which ones were kind of shady.  I'd made a list the night before of what we needed, and whistled at the amount of it.  Not just the cost, but I really should have kept the moving van for an extra day rather than renting a car.

And what is the right amount, anyway?  I knew that I couldn't really get away with two plates, two cereal bowls, etc., especially since I can get kind of lazy in terms of doing dishes when things are busy, but eight kind of seems like overkill - although, once I thought about "what if my parents and Momma Kamen and Karla and her boyfriend and her kids and maybe some neighbors all showed up at once", I started to panic.  I went with boxes of four and made a note to buy some plasticware for emergencies when I went grocery shopping, with the idea that I could go buy some more matching good stuff if I knew I'd have visitors a few days in advance.  It seemed like a weirdly grown-up and responsible thought for someone who sometimes kind of still thinks of herself as the teenage boy she was before the Inn.

(On the other hand, I got a text from Gabriel asking how the move was going while I was shopping, and I may have responded with a comment like "you know, if we got married, other people would buy us all this shit as wedding gifts" and he may have texted back "hahahahaha u srs?", leaving me wondering what I would have done if he'd replied "deal!")

I kind of punted on some things, since I only had so many hours to work with before school let out and I didn't want to buy actual furniture on short notice, but did want a place to sit and eat.  It felt kind of wasteful to buy chairs and tables that folded up that I hopefully wouldn't use for more than a week, especially before my first new, higher paycheck, but I wasn't going to have Moira telling her new friends that we were just sitting on the floor for a couple weeks and have people think we were really poor rather than just starting out.  I especially don't want her being told she was poor.  Like, okay, I kind of felt poor a lot when I first took Krystle's life, and it sucks.  It's a big part of why I've been kind of slow to move out of Momma Kamen's apartment even when I'd saved a bit; I didn't want her to ever feel like she didn't have everything she needed.

Anyway, once all that got done, I sat on the steps outside the building and waited.  Moira had been taking school buses at pre-kindergarten in Cambridge before summer, but I still worried about her getting on the wrong one on her first day, especially if she got distracted or forgot her new address, so I sat out there and waited, barely able to pay attention to the book I was reading on my phone.  She and a boy the same age got off at the same time, though, and they were really cute introducing each other when they realized they were neighbors and pointing at their respective apartments.  Then she ran over to me, and I picked her up and asked how her first day went.

"It was kind of neat!  There's a lot of kids in my class, but most of them seem nice.  The girl who sits next to me, Josie, speaks English and French!  Can I speak French?"

"Well, I'm sure you can learn."  I had actually been trying to find a way to get her into the classes where they teach her Chinese back in Cambridge, but I suppose French would be more practical here.

She got on the bus by herself the next morning, and then I went to the gym.  It wasn't exactly in the same neighborhood, but I left early and it's not hard to figure out buses with a smartphone.

The guy I was replacing got there about ten minutes after me, and looked me up and down as he unlocked the door.  I probably wasn't dressed the way he thought I should be, but I'd kind of had to guess what "proper" was.  The manager back at the old location was a guy, and tended to dress casual in khakis and short-sleeved button-up shirts, stuff where he even if he doesn't have to change out of it quickly if he needs to help on the floor, he's still giving the impression of someone fit and active as you'd expect in a gym.  My body isn't exactly built for that sort of thing even when a sports bra is doing its best to keep the girls under control, so I went with a loose camisole that still covered my shoulder, plus a skirt over black yoga pants.  Not quite "casual management", but I'm not really sure how that works for me yet, even a month or two later later.

Not that this guy looked like he was likely to help out on the floor.  I've been kind of lucky in most of my bosses as Krystle, who have more or less been either folks who started the business and shared the load or had been promoted from the same sort of position I have been, but this guy looked like he'd gone to college to be management.  A month or so in, I'm not exactly ridiculing it - it's a skill I'm still learning - but he sure seemed both happy that he'd be able to get back to spending all of his time managing a location in a nice white suburb and to suspect that I'd slept with someone and was either being rewarded or sent far away (or some combination of the two).

He gave me the quick tour, showing where everything is.  Chain places like this are kind of weird; it had all of the walls the location back in Massachusetts did but rearranged because the space is a different shape, with offices and the employee changing areas and break rooms in the back rather than downstairs.  I kind of wonder if there's someone at the main headquarters whose job it is to adapt stuff to the location or if that's contract work.

He seemed eager to get out before the regular employees arrived, and I wonder if there was some bad blood there.  I wouldn't exactly be surprised - both of the guys I met on that first day were a head and a half taller than me, and a little googling says they were big-deal high-school basketball players who wound up not being such a big deal in college and apparently gyms are where you apply when you've got a degree in physical education but your hometown doesn't need a gym teacher.  Indeed, five of the six people doing my old job are guys like that.  The other is a 19-year-old girl who goes to Tulane.

It's kind of weird; a lot of the guys don't look at me as an authority figure at all, and a lot of the time they are not shy about staring at my tits and ass at all, but - and this is only paraphrased a bit from an overheard conversation - I'm also not that white nerd who thought I was better than them, and maybe subconsciously they pick up on how there's a guy their age under this skin and that smooths things over a bit.  There haven't been any real problems where I've had to cut someone's hours or warn them about being inappropriate with the clients yet, but I'm kind of dreading the first.

I'm kind of running first-day and so-far stuff together there, but I guess I've fallen into enough of a pattern to remember exactly what I was feeling those first few days.  I am still kind of keenly aware of the day-to-day with Moira after school.  The elementary school in our area doesn't have the same sort of after-school extracurricular activities the one in Cambridge did, and I still really don't know anybody I trust as much as Momma Kamen to babysit yet.  She's made some friends and often goes to their places after school, but I feel kind of weird asking other parents to look after my kid on top of theirs, especially when it comes to ask which neighborhood teenager or granny is worth paying.

Still - my apartment is looking more like a home, I haven't fallen flat on my face at work yet, and Moira has made a bunch of new friends.  This may just work out!

-Jonah/Krystle

Jonah/Krystle: Settling In

You ever feel like you have a moment when every adult responsibility you've got doubles in intensity?  That's what the last few weeks have been like.  I thought getting pregnant and having Moira would be as big a jump as it gets, but then I got the promotion, and it has been absolutely crazy since.

Part of it's me.  The Inn sort of has a tendency to freeze your idea of who you "should" be at the point where you changed, and somewhere underneath all of this, I think of myself as still a kid having to fake being an adult, but I'm not - "Junah" graduated from college, so there's no going back to that status quo.  I'm in my mid-twenties and folks think I'm in my late twenties, so I'm not some sort of teen mom, but a grown-ass woman.

Still, it's been a lot.  After getting the promotion, I had to find a place to live in New Orleans remotely, and once I had that more or less figured out, I had an idea of Moira's new school district, so I could go through the process of getting her enrolled, and also out of Cambridge's system.  That's when I told my five-year-old that, no, she didn't have to start school the same day as her friends, because we were going to be moving, far away from Grand-Momma and Aunt Karla and her cousins and her friends, and, boy, did that lead to a lot of screaming and abject refusal to help me pack, even if I did point out that she'd be able to go swimming even in the winter.  Momma Kamen and Karla tried to help, saying that we could do video calls and we'd try to see each other at Christmas and other holidays, and that they were actually jealous, but that just meant that when we put our boxes in the truck, she was sad-crying instead of screaming.

I'd said a private goodbye to my friends in Boston, with "Big Moira" making me promise to keep in touch and Ashlyn and Penny again telling me that starting fresh would really be the best thing for me.  She also asked if I was okay to drive the next day, and I'm not going to lie, that had me nervous as well.  Living in a city like Cambridge, I really only have to drive once or twice a year - mostly when somebody is not good to drive home - and though I'm past the "I never actually took my driver's test!" nervousness, it's still kind of a lie and driving 1,500 miles with a five-year-old who has never been in a car for that long is a lot different than running an errand!  Google will tell you that it's a 24-hour drive, but it took us four days, with one spent going into some of the Smithsonian museums in Washington and another stop to sleep somewhere in Tennessee.  I must admit, I kind of feel like I'm a traitor to my status of being a guy deep down in that, while I'm not nearly as anti-car as Jordan, I can't see why someone would want to drive all the time when there are perfectly good trains and buses.

We got into New Orleans at around two in the afternoon, and met the realtor at the apartment.  Moira had been napping, and when I woke her up, she didn't know what was going on.  I told her we were at her new home, and while I think she kind of wanted to be grumpy, she looked at the building - a very basic one-story with steps up from the sidewalk to two doors, really - and her eyes went wide.  "Is that whole thing just for us?"

"Well, not the whole thing - just the part on the left - but yes, it's just for us."  Once I opened the door she ran in and through the empty living area to the back, and then back to me.  "Mommy!  We each get our own bedroom!"  I said I knew, but she pulled me in to show me anyway, then raced to try and look out every window, find the bathroom, look around the kitchen, very excited about what a big circuit she could run.  At one point she stopped in the entryway and pointed up.  "Why's there a door in the ceiling?"  I said that was the attic, but we didn't need to go up there yet.

After a bit, we walked back outside, and I told her we had to get everything from the van into the house, and it was going to be tricky because we were kind of on our own here.  The fact that everyone else she knew was far away hit her again at that moment, but she started trying to help with some of the smaller boxes.  I managed to wrangle the bed frame in and assembled okay - real-Krystle may not like my arms, but they come in handy for more than just hanging from a fake rock, but the box spring and mattress was going to be trickier.

I admit - I looked down the street and saw some people hanging out on stoops and figured I might as well use what I had, unbuttoning my loose-fitting top and using it to wipe the sweat off my brow.  I was wearing a sports bra underneath, but it was the sort that didn't exactly disguise my rack.  I kept one eye on the open door as a couple young men decided to stir and walk over, hoping I wasn't making a huge mistake.

"Well, well, well," one of them said, "ain't nobody told us a fine-looking lady like yourself was moving into Eddie Grant's place."

I smiled, trying to remember everything Ashlyn - who, longtime readers of this blog may recall, got over any qualms about big breasts making a lot of men eager-to-please very quickly - had told me about flirting:  First and foremost, don't promise anything.  Wear something where you can get noticed, but downplay it; of course you wore the sports bra on moving day.  No innuendo unless you are sure you want to get laid, because they'll lead you down a path you don't want to go.  Just try and show you're smart and fun enough for them to want to be around you generally.

Anyway, I smiled, not too wide, and pulled my hair back in a ponytail, being practical but also letting my breasts ride higher for a second.  "I bet you say that to all the sweaty messes."

The one who hadn't spoken stifled a laugh, and I admit I kind of liked him the best in that moment.  He and his friend each grabbed an end of the box spring, though, and asked where to.  I guided them to Moira's room, where she had emptied out a box and was playing happily, and got them to lay it on the frame.  As we left, the first one took his phone out of his pocket, checked it, and dashed off, saying I had to give him a chance to introduce himself properly, and he might have really had a message rather than deciding a single mom wasn't quite so hot.  Whatever; I could handle the mattress with just one other person to help.  He got it there and we walked back out to the van where he raised his eyes at how little was left.  "Just the one bed?"

I shrugged a little, the sort that didn't set everything moving, and made a face.  "The thing about moving out of your Momma's apartment is that you realize how little you have that's yours alone.  She said I could take the other bed, but did I really want to haul a twin all the way there when I'd have enough room for something bigger?"

I hoped I wasn't implying too much with that, but he just nodded.  "Your Momma's got a point."  He grabbed a box and helped me bring it in.  "And, apparently, your Momma's also got all the chairs, the kitchen table, the TV, the dishes..."

I put my own box down next to his.  "Yeah.  Hopefully Moira doesn't mind roughing it for a while.  I didn't realize it would look this empty."

He raised an eyebrow.  "Moira?"

"Look, there were reasons not to give her a name that was in the family, and my best girlfriend was all that came to mind at the time."  I chuckled a bit, thinking of some of the confusion it's caused.  "If I ever do that again, I'll be more prepared."

He nodded, looking around the place, seeming pretty well aware that, cute anecdote aside, I hadn't really volunteered much.  "Well, if you need anything, I'm Leroy Watkins, my brother is Larry, and we obviously can't complain too much about how people choose their babies' names."

I reached out a hand.  "Krystle."  I was about to spell it out, then didn't.  No need to make it easy for two guys I'd just met to Google it and judge me by the footprint that the original Krystle Kamen left.  Heck, I thought, maybe I could do something along the same lines as Jordan and find a way to be "Joanna" or even just "Crystal" or "Kris" here.

Seeing he wasn't going to get a last name, he shook my hand, either content to play the long game or seeing that I had a lot of other things to check off on the list before "lover".  I saw him out and waved as he walked back down the street toward the place he and Larry share with their own Momma.  The back of the truck was empty, so I reached up and pulled the door shut, then walked in.

Moira walked into the living room shyly until she saw that I was alone.  "Is that your new boyfriend?"

I laughed, pulling the Celtics jersey that was on top of one of the boxes out and putting it on.  "Oh, no, honey, at most he's a boy who might be a friend.  We've got enough else to do with all the other new things!"  I picked her up and spun around.  "Look at all this empty space!  Just a blank canvas to make our own!  And there's going to be new friends and new places to visit and new things to see!  I know it's kind of scary, but I'm also really excited!  Are you excited?"

She hugged me and whispered in my ear.  "I'm kind of scared but also kind of excited."

I kissed her forehead.  "Well, I can't ask for more than that."  We looked around again.  "So, what do you say we put our clothes on the hangers and hang them in the closet, then put your shelves together so you can put your books and toys on them, and then it'll be just about time to return the truck and get some supper!"

"Yay!  Can we get pizza?"

"Baby, we're in a new city, with all sorts of food it's known for!  Your Grandmomma and Aunt Karla and everybody said we've got to try po'boys, red beans and rice, jambalaya, beignets, alligator sausage..."

"Ew!"

We got pizza, of course, and she nodded off just as soon as we got her bed made afterward.

Anyway, so that part of the move went okay.  Obviously we've been busy with a lot more since, but, yeah, we got here, at least!

-Jonah/Krystle

Jonah/Krystle: Just Like That

It's no secret around the gym that I've been looking for another job; they've seen me come to work right from interviews wearing skirts and heels and other stuff I don't generally go for, and besides, everyone who gets paid by the hour is looking for a new job.  Heck, a lot of people higher up are.  Low unemployment, but lots of bosses who don't realize people have options.  It's a lot easier if you've got a college degree, though, so I've come up short a lot.

I hadn't been on an interview the day I got called into the manager's office at the end of shift, so I wasn't dressed up, unless you consider lycra dressy.  I'm worried about getting fired, of course, but my boss just looks at me like he hasn't really done that since I was hired.  He wasn't alone, though - there was a guy in a suit from the corporate office.  "So, I gather you've been looking for new work?"

"Uh, yeah - don't misunderstand, I love it here, but my daughter's getting big enough that Momma's apartment is starting to feel small, plus she needs school clothes and supplies, and, well, there have been a lot of weeks when it's not close to full time unless someone gets sick.  I mean, I get it - lots of folks in Cambridge still not ready to come inside and exert themselves around people breathing heavy --"

He seizes on that.  "But you haven't missed any time, have you?"

"I've been lucky."  I smile, realizing he probably can't see it under my mask.  "And, you know, I'm careful."

He nods.  "I see that.  It's got you cross-trained pretty well, too."  I shrug.  "So.  How would you like to have a manager's job?"

My eyes go wide.  "Is Bob leaving?"

He laughs.  "No, not yet.  Here's where it gets tricky.  The opening isn't here.  We've opened a few new locations over the past few months, and they've had some staffing issues.  Hiring folks who don't know the day-to-day business, others who do but leave after a few weeks.  Others who, uh, aren't a good fit for the community.  That's where we need you, at one of the new locations."

I racked my brains.  "You need me in Salem?"

He stared at me, the hardest a man has looked me in the eyes since I became Krystle.  "No.  We want you in New Orleans."

I'd like to say I did something cool or funny like laughing, but instead I just stared back, trying to see if this was a test.  "New Orleans, Louisiana?"

"I don't know that there's another one."

I let out the breath I didn't remember holding.  "That's a big move."

He nodded.  "It is.  But your performance reports have been excellent, you are clearly looking for better things, and, like you said, we would lose you soon anyway."  He slid a folder with various papers in it over the desk.  "We will need to have a formal interview, of course, but we can do that on Friday.  As I said, the previous person we hired for the role has quit, and we need the position filled quickly."

I take the folder.  "Okay.  Let me, uh, let me just talk to some folks."

"Of course.  I look forward to talking with you again."

He gets up and leaves.  Bob raises a hand for a high five, and respond, though not really a hard slap.  I'm not sure I really say anything to him on the way out before getting on the T.  When I get to Alewife, instead of walking back home, I head to the buses and go up Mass Ave a bit, getting off at the stop closest to The Changeling.  They've moved it in the past couple years.

As I walk in, Moira - the original - squeals.  "Krystle!  What a surprise!"  She quickly cleans off a spot near the end of the bar.  "What can I get you?"

"Uh...  Heh.  A bourbon, I guess."

She raises her eyebrows, since I don't drink a lot, especially while I'm still wearing a t-shirt over spandex, but she pours one anyway.  I take a sip and wince.  "So what's wrong."

"Nothing.  It's just... this." I show her the papers.

Her eyes go wide and she shrieks a little, getting looks from the customers, and even getting Ashlyn to walk in from out of the back and see what's going on.  "Oh, hey, Krystle.  Coming crawling back?"

We both know she's joking, but Moira's accent triples in strength.  "She is not!"  She shoves my papers in Ashlyn's face and I mumble something about how that's kind of private.

She looks it over and beams.  "Oh, man, congratualtions.  You are going to love NOLA.  It's amazing!"

Moira looked up at her.  "When have you ever been there?"

Ashlyn's been at this so long that she doesn't even get rattled when someone sees something inconsistent with her being girl who grew up in Providence and has seldom been west of Manhattan.  "Hey, I was a real party girl in college, and where's a better place to party?"

I interrupt before Moira has more questions.  "I haven't accepted yet.  Heck, I could still blow the interview!"

"Come on, be reasonable.  There have to be plenty of people closer to the area they could go to if you weren't a lock."  She came around the bar and sat on the stool next to mine, putting her hand on top of mine.  "Besides, it would be really good for you.  Sometimes we really need a new start.  A place that's ours and not, you know, just where life put you."

Moira chimed in, not aware of the context, but talking about how leaving Ireland was like that for her.  We spent the next hour or so talking, and then I got back on the bus because Momma Kamen was looking after Little Moira and had a night shift.  She looked a little concerned when she smelled alcohol on my breath - it was probably some warning flag with Krystle in the before-me times - but I said I was fine and put another stick of gum in my mouth.  I spent the evening playing with my daughter, watched Frozen again, and then stayed up, plugging the New Orleans location's address into Google Maps and then looking at what apartments cost to rent in that area.

Momma Kamen saw what I was doing when she got in.  "Something I should know about?"

I told her the whole thing, and she got kind of quiet before smiling.  "Well, I've always wanted to visit New Orleans, and visiting my granddaughter sounds like as good an excuse as any."

I think it was this that unlocked something that I couldn't identify that had been feeling more strongly all day.  "Does everybody want me gone?"

She chuckled and hugged me.  "Oh, Kryssy, no.  But I've been in your shoes - a baby, no man to rely on, barely a high school diploma, feeling like I was a burden on my momma - and I want so much more for you and Karla.  There were days I didn't think it would happen, especially when you were getting into so much trouble, but look at you - you've grown so much, and I'm so proud of you.  You deserve this opportunity."

Her being proud of me always felt strange and made me feel more guilty - I've taken her daughter's life and now she's a white teenager - so it didn't hit as she expected.  "But what about Moira, and her friends?"

"Honey, she's five.  She'll be mad at you for a few weeks, and then she'll make a lot of new friends, and if you stay down there, she'll never remember anyone from here but her cousins.  Do you remember anybody from Roxbury?"

No, I didn't.  I had no idea that the Kamens had lived anywhere but this Cambridge apartment block.  But I didn't exactly remember a lot of people from when I was five, either.  Heck, I'd lost touch with most of the other people who were at the Inn with me.

I still had a hard time sleeping, though, so when I woke up early, I went out to the fire escape and made a video call to my real parents, who would already be up and getting ready for work.  They were obviously worried that it was some sort of an emergency, and they weren't nearly as enthusiastic when I laid everything out.

Mom was especially not-quite-happy.  "Just when I thought I couldn't lose my son more, that we were getting closer."

"It's not like that, I just - I mean, I'm a Black single parent in an expensive city where I never know when I'm going to run into someone who had a problem with Krystle ten years ago and holds a grudge, and a clean slate kind of sounds nice.  Not totally clean, just..."

I didn't have an end to that sentence, but Dad nodded.  "I understand.  We moved a few times back when we were younger, too.  Every one does, and their parents all have a hard time with it."

We chatted a little more - Mom expressed worries about Moira and Dad tried to give me practical advice for moving - and then they had to leave for work.  I had to get Moira ready for pre-K and then run some errands.

On that Friday, I showed up to work two hours early, in my interview uniform, hair straightened, worrying about whether I look like I'm trying to lean too hard on my looks while still wanting to show I care about how I present myself (men who have never been women have no idea how much this bounces around your head), but I handle it professionally.  I get the offer.  I say yes.

I'm going to New Orleans.

-Jonah/Krystle

Louisa/"Marie": Home, such as it is

Jo-Jo/Jane: Missing in action

New Orleans is still a work in progress after two years, sad to say. Ashlyn said that one of the people from her group had wound up there, but he/she seems to have disappeared even more thoroughly than the rest. Josiah Johnson was a professional basketball player nearing the end of his career when he came to the inn; he had left with the identity of a college student named Jane Collins. Pretty much par for the course for that group, especially the fact that he/she stopped posting to the blog soon after the transformation.

What wasn't normal was that he had apparently deleted his posts when he stopped. Nobody realized this at first; we had stopped for the night and were looking to do some research, to brush up on our knowledge of "Jo-Jo"/Jane before knocking on his door, only to find that all his posts were gone. Ashlyn happened to be online at the time and Jessica sent her a message about this, and she said she would look into it. A few minutes later, she said she couldn't find any trace of the messages - with a couple of side comments about how he had always kept a backup for work but never thought to do so for this - and didn't like it. She was trying to find a way in Blogger to keep messages from being deleted from now on, or at least only deleted by someone with admin right like herself or Arthur, because she didn't like the idea of their history being rewritten or papered over like that.

This sent Jessica into full-on Nancy Drew mode (although she has resisted every effort for me to make that nickname stick; besides, she will say in teen-girl-iest voice, Veronica Mars is way cooler). We spent our first day in New Orleans on the Tulane campus, with Jess pretending to be everything from a high-schooler on a campus visit to a friend of Jane's from "home" trying to find her. We eventually found out she dropped out after her first semester.

We weren't sure what that meant, at first. I supposed that it might be like this for a lot of transformees - you wind up in someone else's life, go along with it for a few months, and then decide that the way it's set up just isn't for you. Jane had been a communications major and Josiah an athlete, and while Arthur has been getting a first-hand look at how the two can go together, maybe that wasn't something Josiah was looking to investigate.

Jess wasn't so sure. "There's something going on here. I thought it was just a cursed inn, but when you throw people into the mix... Look at what Jeremy Boyd did to Art and Nell, that bogus FBI agent, Ashlyn's stalker... People use this thing, and Josiah Johnson could be in trouble."

The Other Josiah Johnson

The person who became Josiah Johnson was also in New Orleans; the original had had some business interests there - investments in two or three restaurants. After an embarrassing attempt to play in the NBA after the curse - the new Johnson was released by three different teams before calling it quits, he relocated down here, in part to be close to the original Johnson, in case he needed help living the life.

Before the change, he'd been a waiter in Lewiston, Maine; he kind of liked being a part-owner of a couple places. He's also extremely good-looking; I haven't felt this attracted to someone since I was a much younger woman. I guess it showed; Jessica was smirking at me the whole time.

Still, he didn't seem interested in me; he's probably acquired a girlfriend by now, anyway - a handsome former pro athlete in his mid-thirties with a little money stashed away is going to just trip over them. It took me a little off-guard, though, I must admit - in my old life, I was past that sort of fire. I had settled down, and my body had changed the way it does for women of a certain age. That men would look at me like that is strange; that I would find myself looking at them the same way seemed even more shocking.

He seemed to be a nice guy. He's shifted a lot of the investments he inherited from the original Josiah to New Orleans, saying that he fell in love with the city on first sight. Besides, it's not as if he actually earned the money his predecessor had left him with, so if he loses his shirt - well, easy come, easy go.

It didn't take long for Jessica to ask about the original Josiah, and he looked a bit nervous for a minute. "Jo doesn't want anybody following her. She's... She's trying to start from scratch."

Jessica looked skeptical. "She didn't want her life back?"

"She did, but... Look, she wasn't doing well in school, and then I was embarrassing her on the court, and I was screwing up things with the ex-wife. It was a bad situation either way you looked at it."

I remarked that the best thing to do in that situation was probably to cut all ties, but he shook his head.

"Maybe it would be, but... They had a kid, about three years old now. Anyway, since I'm paying a bunch of child support, I've got a say in who gets hired as a nanny. That was Jo's idea, not mine, but I guess it's working out. When I saw her on a visit in February, she said she didn't want to switch back - she likes being with her little boy too much."

Ah. Well, Jess asks, where are they...?

Josiah says he could tell us or we could probably find out on our own, but she wants to be left alone. If every other lead we have runs dry, call him back, but doesn't Jo deserve her privacy?

I guess she does, and Jess agrees reluctantly. I don't think she's completely ruled out foul play, but she seems to believe Josiah's story can be true.

Baton Rouge

As it was with Jessica, the first place we stopped in my home town was the cemetery. I felt very strange standing at Frank's grave. I missed him, certainly, but I didn't feel the great emptiness in my heart that I had when I came to visit him just a few months earlier. I told him I wish we had gone to the inn together, a year earlier, so that we could have this second youth and adventure together. Of course, with our luck, we probably would have wound up brother and sister (and the wrong ones, at that!), and Frank would have felt terrible about someone else inheriting his cancer.

Jessica had stood with me at first, but retreated after a few minutes to give me some privacy. She asked if I was okay when I came back to the car.

"I'm not sure. This trip, that man back in New Orleans... I'm starting to feel young again, like I don't belong with him. I'm not sure I like it."

"Yeah, I know. Let's see what we can do about making things right for you."

The school year had started, so we spent the day wandering around the city. I showed Jess some of my favorite places, told her how the neighborhoods had changed, and the like. It's kind of fun to be a tourist in your home town. We had an early dinner at a place Frank and I had always gone on special occasions. I did find, much like on our previous stop, that this body isn't really adapted to Cajun cuisine; it seemed to stick in my chest more than it ever had before I changed.

The new Louisa wasn't home afterwards, so we checked ourselves into a hotel and waited for the next day. We repeated this a few times, and I cursed the fact that I had never invested in a cell phone or an answering machine. Jessica was surprised by that, but what can I say; we were old and set in our ways and they always seemed like luxuries.

Yesterday, we finally stopped by the school. Jess made a few comments about how she couldn't seem to get away from those places. It's not the greatest neighborhood, so we had to get past a guard with a story about how I was Jessica's aunt and her parents had died and we were moving into the area and wanted to look around before we decided on public or private schools. It got us in, and we headed to the library.

Seeing yourself is shocking. I don't know how twins manage to take it in stride, because seeing someone who looked just like I did - or I was supposed to - made me almost faint. Not a bad thing, all in all, since it drew her over to us.

She asked if she could help. Well, I said, maybe I can help her. My name is legally Marie Desjardins, but before I stayed in room nine of the Trading Post Inn...

It's amazing how pleased she was to meet me - she shook my hand, said it was an honor, complimented my taste in music and clothes, and told me all my friends were wonderful. Some of the other people in her group had gotten into terrible situations, but I appeared to be living a good life.

I told her she seemed to be doing fairly well by it; she seemed cheerful and had a sparkle in her eye. I was afraid I hadn't been like that for a couple years before my visit. "Well," she said, "I suppose it's because..." A student walked up, and we agreed to talk after school.

We went to a different restaurant after she finished work. "This is going to sound strange," she said as we we waited for salads, "but I was a man before, and it had never felt right. I ran across the Trading Post Inn blog while looking for something else, but once I found it, and then found it was a real place and tracked down a phone number..."

Jessica couldn't believe it. "You did this on purpose? Are you crazy? Aside from not knowing how things would turn out, you're looking at a life of lying to everybody you meet unless you choose to burden them with this at some moment that is life-changing for another reason. And, you left someone else with all your problems!"

She got defensive. "I was living a lie anyway! You have no idea--"

"Ladies!" The two lowered their voices and looked at me. "I think you'll find..." I stopped, and made a gesture to indicate I didn't know her real name.

"Dylan."

"Right. I think you'll find, Dylan, that Jessica and I have some idea of how it feels not to have the body you think you should."

She looked suitably chastised. "Yes, ma'am."

"I don't think you need to call me ma'am."

"Sorry, it's just that I was taught to respect my elders, and I know you..."

The look on Jessica's face became a different kind of horror. "Dylan... How old are you? Not your physical age, but how long have you lived?"

"Twenty-eight years next February."

"My God... Dylan, we have to make reservations for next spring. If I stay there, then you stay in the same room, and then I stay there again..."

"No."

Jessica couldn't believe it. "What do you mean, 'no'?"

"I've been reading the blog - I know it didn't work out for Arthur Milligan and Drew Dawson. Besides..."

"Besides what?"

"It's easy for me to be a mature widow. This life is straightforward. I'm not sure that becoming Marie, dealing with men... I'm not sure that's right for me. I didn't get the chance to grow up learning how like you did, Jessica. This... this is right for me."

Now it was my turn to act astonished. "But you doubled your age overnight. You've missed so much..."

"It's worth it."

Dinner was quiet after that. We gave her our phone numbers and email addresses in case she changed her mind, and then headed back to the hotel. While I drove (her car, but I know the streets of this city), she asked if I was okay.

"I don't know. Unless she comes to her senses, I'm going to live another whole lifetime. If I meet Frank again in Heaven, will it be as Louisa or Marie? Will I find another Frank? And how can I live with myself knowing that Dylan has done... this."

"You just start over, live the best life you can."

"But, just putting Frank in the past like that... I know you don't like to talk about your old life, Jess, but is there someone like Frank for Conrad Mancini?"

I was parking the car as I said it, and she just sat there for a moment after I killed the engine. "You're right," she said, "I don't like talking about my old life." Then she got out of the car.

I guess you really can't go home again. I think I'll be glad to leave this place behind for a while. The next stop is Dallas, to check on what Stephen Jeffries is making of Ashlyn's former life. And then, after that, we'll probably be heading straight across the country to get Jessica to school; it must be just about time for her to start classes.

-Louisa