Ande: Movember!

Has any girl turned guy talked about shaving on this blog yet?  I haven't seen any, but then we're really outnumbered by the folks who went the other way, which makes sense.  I mean, it's hard losing a big part of your identity and all, but a lot of day to day stuff gets easier and who wants to complain about the creepy teacher not staring at your boobs, or claim that morning wood is more annoying than periods?  There's some hidden things that aren't great in terms of expectations and I still worry about losing my temper and losing control, but I know Andie got the more difficult situation. 

And shaving your face is pretty easy.  I haven't gone more than a day or two without doing it since becoming Andrew and by now it's just part of my morning routine.  At first, it was really important - neither of us wanted to be the guy who grows a full beard in high school, it was an unwanted reminder of my new masculinity every time I looked in the mirror, and it's just itchy and annoying when you miss a day.  Some guys get really into it, heating up foam and using a straight razor, but when I was a girl, I just took a bath rather than a shower and used a pink disposable every few weeks, since it's not like I was wearing miniskirts to school or on the swim team.  As a guy, I've basically been doing the same, just keeping a razor in the shower and doing it by feel while the steam and hot water has my pores or follicles or whatever open.  Don't even need shaving cream. 

There's some downsides to this, of course.  I'm basically doing it blind and shaving the sideburns off entirely rather than have them wind up uneven, and that wasn't really a big deal at first, and even desirable - I was still thinking of myself as a girl and didn't want 'em - but now I'm starting to look a little more baby-faced than I really want to, and it kind of feels like the sort of thing a grown man should be able to do. 

So, when a couple guys in one of my study groups came in looking a bit scruffy and mentioned that they were growing their beards out for "Movember", I figured what the hell?  If I don't like it, I can shave it off, and it's dumb to not see what I look like now that I've more or less accepted that this is who I'm going to be .

Right now, I look like a caterpillar is clinging to the very bottom of my upper lip for dear life. 

It's apparently hilarious. 

Don't take my word for it; Hildy apparently didn't even see it the first time she leaned in for a kiss and came away saying yuck, although she then said it was promising for just a few days' growth, with only a little detectable insincerity.  Griff was walking by and asked what was so funny and said he would try that.  He woke up the next morning with more than I'd managed in three days.

And I just got off a Zoom call with Andie, who saw what was on my face and then immediately started laughing, putting her head down on her desk to smother it, holding up a finger after a minute to say she needed another few seconds when I asked if she was done, and then letting out one last snicker when she sat up straight again. 

"Sorry, man, I just feel like I dodged a bullet, you know?"

"Har har.  But did you?  Do you think I might suck at growing hair because of some Inn thing, like it didn't make me male enough?"

She snorted.  "If it worked that way, I wouldn't get the cramps I do."

I allowed that, and talked with her a bit more.  She insisted on taking screenshots to show Mom & Dad, and that reaction will probably be interesting.

-Ande

Ande: First Anniversary

So here's a kind of funny thing:  Andie and I both had our first-anniversary dates about a week ago, and it's kind of funny how sometimes we're in sync like that, even though we're in different parts of the country.  I mean, we should be - we're twins and we've exchanged lives! - but things don't quite wind up lining up quite so often as we'd like.  

She and her boyfriend did fly out this summer, though, to see the fireworks on the Fourth and get a chance to hang out with me and Hildy.  The spare room they used has since been filled with Griff's girlfriend - they really like having their own space - and I like Chipper.  I don't think I would have dated him myself, though Andie does think about what might have been when hanging around Hildy, but he seems like a pretty good guy who likes Andie a lot.  I'm also glad to see that long Covid isn't completely kicking her ass these days, though she shows symptoms often enough that we didn't bring up the idea of switching back.

Strangely enough, I may have felt more pangs for my old life during the anniversary date.  Hildy and I don't dress up much when we go out, to the extent that she was making jokes about how completely buried her one pair of heels were in her closet, but she clearly spent a lot more time than usual, curling her hair, doing her makeup, waxing her legs, all that.  On the one hand, it kind of sounds like a real pain in the neck these days, but in the other, my heart kind of jumped into my throat when I met her at her place.  Sure, I was wearing a coat and tie,  but it wasn't the same effect. 

The date itself was fun - we had a nice meal at Legal and then went to a show at the A.R.T., then got snacks at Insomnia Cookies because we didn't really want to mar the night by not being able to talk or way into a bar.  We spent the night at her place (we didn't want to get the stink-eye from the new roommate either).

Andie texted me a selfie overnight, saying she knew it was weird for me but if she was wearing garters and stockings and had a big old slit practically all the way to her butt, plus a push-up bra, she was showing off.  I laughed, saying she looked good and I don't know if I would have had the patience, and she said, yeah, probably not, but sometimes we both overcompensate.  I asked how I overdo it, and she said she couldn't help but laugh at how short my hair was in July  especially since I had to wear a baseball cap in order to avoid sunburning my scalp. 

She's got a point, I guess. 

Anyway, it's kind of worth noting that I've been doing my thing as a guy long enough to have an anniversary that's more about being happy about something in this life rather than thinking that i can't believe I've been a guy long enough to have dated a girl for a year. 

-Ande

Ande: Staying put for the summer

I'm pretty sure that there have been moving trucks parked somewhere on my street constantly for the past two weeks.  The profs and TAs make jokes about September 1st being Moving Day because every lease in the Boston area runs from September to August to accommodate the schools, but between all the graduations and folks going from closing dorms to sublets for summer programs, there are a whole lot of folks packing and unpacking right now.

I'm not among them, though - the rent's got to be paid through the summer, and the parents of the guy who left during Christmas break aren't going to be paying his part any more, so I don't have the luxury of working a part-time job with the idea of making spending money this year.  Or necessarily going home, because you don't necessarily make Boston rent money working the same job back there. 

Anyway, to make it a relevant-to-this-blog thing, it kind of got me thinking about how maybe I've left home for good and only realized it afterward in the same way I stopped being a girl for good a few years back but wouldn't really know until a year or so later.  I left home back in the fall thinking I was just going to school, and home would still be home, but it's entirely possible that I've had my last extended period in my own room, and that the house where I grew up was now a place I would just visit as opposed to a place where I lived, barring an extended period of not being able to find a job post-graduation.  It feels like a decision i should have made deliberately.

Mom and Dad think it's good that I didn't, that it would have been another moment that would have made them cry.  Andie thinks I'm being silly, but she's moved back home for the summer and may actually wind up commuting next fall.  Griff and Lindy nodded for a second, not having thought of it that way.

On the other hand, it's kind of nice.  I feel like I've slowly spent the past year and a half making this life mine, after coming east to attend the school Andie chose, and if it's not my original plan, I'm mostly still doing what I want, without looking over my shoulder to see if Andie or my folks approve.  I'm not doing anything weird or dangerous, but it's been months since I wondered if I was doing something out of character, and even if I love my parents and brother-turned-sister, sometimes just having them around makes me ask the question.

That said - it was hot as shit yesterday, and I still don't really have a handle on when a guy can go shirtless in the middle of the city.  Hildy looked way more comfortable in her halter and booty shorts than I did in my t-shirt and cargo shorts!

-Ande

Ande: Shipping Down to Boston?

Is seeing Dropkick Murphys at Fenway Park (well, the connected music hall) on St. Patrick's Day weekend the most stereotypical college male thing imaginable?  Maybe.  But my roommate Griff bought four tickets last fall, but that turned out to be super-optimistic:  We actually lost a roommate over winter break - not lost like "dead", but like "his grades were terrible and he figured maybe he'd be happier as an electrician than an electrical engineer" - who was going to use his second pair, and asked me if I'd be interested.  I wasn't, at first, but Hildy thought it would be a lot of fun.  So we said we'd take them a couple weeks ago, and he put the other one up (purchased for the girl who got back with her high school boyfriend over Christmas) on SutbHub or something, and I didn't think a lot of it.

Then, at around noon on Saturday, I get a text from Mack, saying she's at Alewife, and was I up to anything?  Hildy was doing something with lab partners, and while I had figured on studying all afternoon myself, I was already looking for excuses not to, since it was kind of a surprisingly nice day, so I said why not; we'll meet up at the Common.

I was scrolling on my phone when I heard her call out and looked up and did a little blink.  It's been almost a year and a half since I've seen her in person, and she sure hit me different now that she's seventeen and I've kind of accepted that I'm probably going to live out my life as a man who likes women.  She was wearing blue jeans that had rips up and down the legs from how tight they were, high-top sneakers, a white crop-top and a full-zip hoodie tied around her waist.  Maybe a bit too much makeup, but her short haircut was cute.  "That's not a college-visiting outfit."

She laughed.  "Yeah, like I'm getting into some fancy Boston college!  Nah, just down for a concert tonight."  She grinned for a second like she wanted me to ask what before blurting it out.  "Don't laugh, but I'm seeing the Dropkick Murphys."

I folded my arms, kind of suspicious.  "Really."

"I know, it is so white it has bagpipes, but look at me.  I am in fact just that white, as far as anybody can tell, and not only did a guy in my class put them on a playlist for me, but I should probably make some effort to get in touch with the Irish hooligan roots everyone will assume I have when I go off to Springfield on my own."  She shrugged.  "Besides, Jonah is getting married to a great guy i would have met if I'd been staying with Momma during quarantine, and every once in a while the invitation on the fridge makes me want to scream.  It's good screaming-at-injustice music."

"And you didn't know I was going to the same concert?"

She started to open her mouth to reply, but held it like that for a while.  "I think you might actually have put it on my radar by putting it in the group text, but aren't they playing all weekend?  Anyway, we're probably on opposite sides of the building."  Without it needing to be said, we pulled our phones out and brought out the ticket apps.  She started laughing even harder when she saw we were two seats apart.  "Oh my god, what are the motherfucking odds?"

"Yeah, my girlfriend's going to find this hilarious."

She gave me a look that seemed to be trying to imply she was wiser than her years.  "C'mon, Ande.  I may have been that kind of bitch before, but I haven't been in a long time.  And you're still a kid to me."

"Is that what you thought when you offered to, you know..."

Her eyes went as big as they could, and then she shook her head.  "Damn, I did offer that, didn't I?  I mean, mostly it was about making sure you didn't miss out, but, let's be honest, the teenage part of me did have a crush on you.  You are good-looking and it would be nice to be with someone who knows, but, honestly, I've had three high school boyfriends and it's great fun until they do something that makes me go 'that's so cute', and you're kind of doing that right now."  She folded her arms and smirked.

I raised my hands in surrender, we declared a truce, and then went to find ice cream before hitting Newbury Comics and other places around Quincy Market for the afternoon.

I guess I'm not supposed to find shopping that much fun as a guy, and I know that when I'm getting stuff for myself, I'm kind of happy to just see what's got a good price at Marshall's (when I'm not at home), but i don't know if that's all I need as a straight guy or if I know how much fun I could be having and don't want it to bring me down.  I haven't really had a chance to be "dragged along" with Lindy yet, but I had a good time with Mack, and I don't think that because she was giving me some sort of treat.

Somewhere around or four I texted Lindy that I'd run into a friend who was also going to the concert, so maybe we could grab dinner.  Mack suggested a Mongolian barbecue place after seeing that all of her other go-to places from when she lived in the area were gone.  She was starting to say something about that when Lindy arrived and gave us the look I'd been dreading.  "I didn't realize 'Mack' was a high-school girl."

"Oh, yeah, my family wound up vacationing in her hometown for a couple summers in a row and we wound up hanging out."  It didn't sound weird to me, and Lindy shrugged it off.  Eventually, Griff showed up, we ate, and wound up at the show

Which was a lot of fun!  I'm not sure I would have been into the band as Andi, but Mack's right in that it's the sort of punk you can yell with but still be having fun because, like, the first song of the concert was some sort of Revolutionary War-era thing about making out in the servants' quarters or something like that and they've also done deep-cut baseball songs, although Griff said they didn't do either of the big ones that night (unless you count "Shipping Up to Boston", which, I guess became a pitcher's entrance music because it's about dismemberment).

Griff and Mack hit it off, at least, although I didn't realize how well until I realized Mack was still heading to our apartment while I turned off to head to Hildy's because her roommates were still on spring break.  She had an early morning call with some overseas classmates, so I went back to my place in the morning, where I found Mack making coffee in her crop-top and panties.

"Fun night?"

She smiled.  "Let me tell you, 19-year-old boys don't really know what they're doing, but they can do it all night!  Trust me, I know from both sides of this!  Anyway, want a cup?"  I nodded, and she poured two.

"Cary going to be worried?"

"Nah, he knew I'd be staying over somewhere, probably here, although he'll tell anyone who asks that I found a hotel room when the concert didn't finish before midnight."  She smirked.  "Kind of hoped it would be with you, but you really like your girlfriend."

I stopped drinking my coffee but still held the mug in front of my face.  "What?"

She sighed.  "I'm awful.  I told you, I get frustrated about my boyfriends being kids, but I tell myself that the real problem is I hate lying to them - which, let me tell you, is kind of new, because I absolutely was that bitch the first time I was in high school - and I figured, hey, maybe Ande will get me.  But, no, you're really into Hildy, which is sweet, but, annoying."  She took a sip.  "How do you do it?  Like, ever since that first time at the Inn, I've always been with people who knew I wasn't really the person they see, but now I'm looking at college in Springfield, and while I'm kind of psyched to be the first person in my family to go, even if it's the long way around and Momma and Karla will never know..."  She held out her arm.  "I mean, look how pale I am at the end of the winter.  Am I just going to start thinking of myself as a white chick once I've got nobody who remembers me being otherwise?"

"There's worse things to be."

"Oh, you know I don't mean it like that and you're my favorite white girl!"

"Whose dick you were after."

"Right!  Where am I gonna be if I don't have people bringing me back down to Earth?"

I laugh.  "I know.  Maybe you could come to First Thursdays, after you graduate?"  I told her about the regular meet-ups at the Changeling.

She seemed about to say something when Griff came out of his room, and we looked at each other a bit disappointed that we were going to have to start talking like normal people, improvising together on the fly when he asked why we'd never hooked up.  Girff asked if we wanted to do brunch, but Mack said she kind of wanted to drive, so she got her pants on, let me walk her to the Hynes station, and gave me a little peck before heading to Park then Alewife then points north.

I've got to admit, it's been hanging with me the past week, especially when I looked at Andie's pictures of herself in a bikini at spring break and thinking how she really doesn't have much reminding her of her old life when Mom and Dad aren't around, and maybe that's better that feeling I'm lying to Hildy.  It doesn't happen very much - although I kind of wonder how she parses me being happy to talk about my family but not really telling any stories from more than a couple years ago - but it does, occasionally, and, heck, sometimes I wonder what Mack thinks of me always calling her "Mack" when I know she's Krystle, and whether I'll wind up somewhere where I'm just this guy and nothing else to anyone else in a couple years, to the point where I might try and do something I know is wrong to not entirely disappear inside being "Andrew".

-Ande/Andy/Andi

Ande: Off-campus and In...

Well, infatuated at least.  I think?  It's weird feeling like this about a girl.

Anyway, first things first - I'm back at Northeastern for the fall term, although instead of a dorm, me and three other guys have an apartment a couple miles away.  I'm not yet sure whether this is more concentrated testosterone or less than being in a dorm, but it's probably more.  Like, it's only been a week and I'm already resigned to being the one that's going to be cleaning the bathroom, because I came in to wash my hands and could spot two distinct types of facial hair in the sink.  Apparently I'm weird for choosing to shave in the shower?  And the pubic hair!  God, the pubes! Like, i know it's a cliché that I can't handle mess because I used to be a girl, but my friends are disgusting!

It's not a bad place, though - the guy who's local scouted it out over the summer, since all leases in this area run September to August because of students, and it's pretty convenient to the school.  A bit to the south, because Boston is expensive, but it's an easy enough walk and a block away from a bus stop that goes right through three campuses, at least.

Anyway, that's where I saw her, wearing an MIT t-shirt, jeans with the knees worn out, short black hair with a streak of purple in it, and I might have ignored her except she suddenly broke out laughing and her smile was something else.  She saw me looking, said "what?", and I found myself tongue-tied enough to just ask what was so funny.  She named the podcast, the bus came, and as she moved to the back I stood up front, both because I was only going a couple stops and because standing next to her made me tense.

Found the podcast, though, and, yes, it was pretty funny.

I didn't see her again until Friday, because class schedules change day-to-day and the #1 bus either comes every five minutes or gets weirdly delayed and then three come at once.  The latter was happening, I wound up on the bench next to her, said I liked the podcast, and we talked about it a bit.  I managed to sit next to her as far as Northeastern while she continued on across the river.

Anyway, her name is Hildy, she's cute as heck, says the weird way I spell my name will help her remember me, and I don't know if a boy ever made me feel like this when I was a teenage girl.  Like, for a moment I felt like some bit of internal bracing was kicked out of place and I couldn't figure out exactly what did it.  I'd barely heard her speak and just barely spoke a few words to her, she's pretty but there are a lot of other attractive people out there who didn't do this to me, and, somehow, every other guy around me didn't seem to be reacting the same way!

This didn't happen with Cindi.  She decided she liked me - and it did kind of feel like she decided it, rather than having something about "Andy" capture her attention in a way that didn't let go - and I went with it for kind of the same reason, because you're supposed to have a boyfriend/girlfriend, it felt like something Andy would do, and I was kind of flattered, even if I had my issues with her.  It built into something more than just playing a part, but I don't know as any moment of it was that intense.

I kind of daydreamed in class a lot on Friday, and I wonder how many people get into that sort of state trying to figure that whole thing out but not really aware of it the way someone who has tried to work out what it means that all their hormones and brain chemistry has changed does.  And it makes me think about how I can get really mad, just ready to lash out in a way I never did in my original life, and all the guys who haven't given that much thought, or even been encouraged to not give it a lot of thought, and how many of them won't be able to handle being told that the girl isn't interested.  I'm pretty sure I won't be that guy, but I also sort of recognize that, while we've talked a couple times and I'm hoping to see her every time I ride the bus, she hasn't given me a last name or an address yet.  I probably could find her online, but I'm kind of worried about the line between curious and stalker.

Anyway, here's hoping we meet again soon!

-Ande

Andi/Andy : Freshman Year Down, Summer Starting

So I just realized that there's nobody who might come in and look over my shoulder as I post something here, two weeks after getting home, and I guess this means that I'm just used to this?  That I'm going to be Andy for life and maybe going back would be harder than staying this way.

The funny thing is, Andy probably could have updated the blog with his/her adventures as a freshman girl all year without it being a big deal; his roommate was a cool lesbian who is really into writing slash fanfic for some detective series and even if she didn't believe "Andrea" used to be "Andrew" before visiting a magical inn, she would absolutely have been into someone writing about their life as if they were really someone else dropped into it.  Me, I got a jock who gave me a hard time every time I said I'd been to the museum or streamed a movie that was not built on explosions.  So much more testosterone in the room than I wanted!

The whole floor was guys, which was some crazy immersion therapy, even after having been Andy for the previous couple years, because we could always come home and have each other and our parents know who we really were, or really had been after Andy unilaterally decided he wasn't going to saddle me with his long covid by switching back.  Now it was 24/7, and it was kind of either be Andy or go nuts.  Not that most of the guys on the floor were like my roommate, or I was at some boys' boarding school where you could go weeks without seeing anyone else or anything like that, but when you're surrounded by guys during your just kicking back/studying hours, it starts to mess with what you think is normal for at least that part of your life, it can kind of bleed over into the rest.  I wasn't quite a complete idiot in less than two weeks, but I did kind of notice the way I was talking about girls with other guys after a while.  Not disrespectful, I hoped, but much more "them" than "us".

Plus, I spent less time with folks who knew me.  I thought I'd see Mack occasionally, but the day in September when she came down for the Janelle Monae concert was kind of uncomfortable.  She looked more grown-up than she had before - she'd gotten her hair curled, put on some makeup, and padded her bra a bit - but even though I'm just a year and a half older than she is, officially, folks looked at the college freshman hanging around with the high school junior kind of weird.  Not much, but she pointed out that I'd just get to know more people who would wonder what our deal was if she kept coming down for stuff.

Cindi and I thought we'd be seeing more of each other, too - she's going to school in New York, and that didn't seem quite so far, but apparently it is in the Northeast, especially since we left our cars back home.  Even with regular buses and trains between the cities, you're still maybe looking at leaving later than you would and coming back earlier, her roommate was not going to let me crash in her dorm room (and that's reasonable! I wouldn't want her trying to sleep around my roommate!), plus you often can't just go straight there, but there's stops in Providence or Hartford or New Haven or whatever.  It's a huge hassle, but whenever one of us implied it was a huge hassle, the other felt slighted, we found we had less to talk about at Thanksgiving, and...  Well, not sure exactly when we broke up, but we did.  Not like Andy and Len - we're still following each other on Instagram and stuff - but it got weird for a while.  She's blossoming, but I kind of had a bit of a "I shouldn't even be dating anyway, because it's all a lie" funk.  I haven't seen her since coming home.  I hope it's not too weird.

What is weird is how much Andy has committed to my life/his life/her life.  I was still mad at her when I went off to Boston, and Thanksgiving was kind of weird, but by Christmas I'd sort of settled into the whole guy's dorm thing, and started talking about changing my major and looking at other parts of the class catalog.  It still kind of felt like giving up, but Andy's recovery has been kind of slow, and I kind of think about the number of hills I walk around campus or the time I spend on public transportation and I'm not sure I'd swap good lungs for ovaries.

Spring semester was more fun, though - I knew the city and campus better, the classes were more interesting, and making Andy's life my own has made things a little smoother.  I do, occasionally, wonder if this electrical engineering major would have been more difficult as myself.  I haven't been a jerk, I hope, but Andy and I have been noticing the way teachers and classmates have been treating us a bit differently for the past few years, and while this isn't entirely easy mode, I do sometimes wonder if I'd be on track to getting frustrated as myself and even wind up reverting to some more traditionally-feminine major.

(Looks at all those "myself"s and sighs)

I'm going to have a real hard time with the whole "I'm a guy going forward" thing, aren't I?  I've kind of got to, because Andy is doing more to embrace his - her! - feminine side.  It's getting warm, and I can't miss that she's shaving her legs more, letting her hair grow out, and hasn't made any comments about clothes or makeup or anything being weird since I got back for the summer, aside from wearing wedges most of the time and saying she misses being taller.  Heck, she wears actual heels at work.

(But more about that later!)

-Still kind of Andi-with-an-i in my heart.

Andi/Andy: Considering College

For the past year, if you asked me, Andy, most of our friends, our parents, and on out, about college, we'd all make some sort of groaning noise, like uuuggghhhh.   Obviously, the two of us had bigger things to consider about our futures, but even aside from wanting to put off anything that we could really mess up for each other, it's just such a pain, and both our parents and our friends with older siblings say it's more messed up than it was in their days, with Covid making campus visits and taking SATs and Achievements more of an effort, although they're apparently not so important for a lot of places.

Enough still look at them to be a pain, though.  Andy says he wants to major in something like history or pre-law, and those aren't really things I'm going to test well for when I show up for the test with his driver's license; my ideas for my future are even more vague - I don't know if electrical engineering with a minor in theater is a thing you can do, but Andy's scores are not going to get me into a good program for that, no matter how terrific my essays are.

(We both can kind of write, but a lot of our teachers who had us for freshman and sophomore years raised eyebrows at the beginning of last year about how, while our homework assignments seemed the same, our in-person essay tests were odd, with "Andi" turning in better-structured arguments while "Andy" had regressed but had what they called "a livelier style" when I was writing but signing his name.)

Anyway, we talked about delaying, making plans to take a gap year, and I think that still may be the best idea, but Shawna, Cyndi, Len, and a few other people said that sounded nice, but also talked about how we were all planning to apply to some of the same schools and being roommates, and so didn't want us to be a year behind.  And it's not like we want that either.  So we're doing a lot of what we've been doing for the past year, trying to set things up so that we're acting normal and can jump back in when we switch back, although we're doing more to acknowledge that things can go wrong like our friends wouldn't believe and planning for that as well.

So in the meantime, we're kind of trying to split the middle or find some overlap.  We visited a few in-state places the week before our senior year started, both state schools and others that have decent programs in science and what they call "the humanities", and nobody seems to think it's particularly weird if your twin tags along for every stop even if it doesn't seem to be their thing.  Exceptions were made for the place that had separate boys' & girls' dorm buildings, rather than mixed ones, and it was kind of a relief that this was still kind of weird for us - we've been in and out of locker rooms and other spaces where there isn't much overlap, and they were mostly empty with just a few summer students hanging around before the next semester, but it was still something like 10% of the smell of a locker room permeating the entire floor.

All that makes it sound awful, but Andy and I were really excited!  We met some cool people our age on the tours, there were real labs in the science departments as opposed to just a few things in the back of a classroom, a couple places had cool sports arenas, and okay, being in a boy's dorm was kind of weird, but the ones where there were co-ed floors seemed awesome.  You've got your own place, but there's also the cafeteria and the quad and game rooms and quiet rooms and it all feels like yours.  I mean, I love Mom & Dad & Andy, but especially for the last year-plus, we've had so much "you should be doing this!" even as they're supposedly trying to let go makes it feel really appealing.

Mom & Dad have also been pretty good about giving Andy and I some space on this sort of thing.  Like, I know Dad wasn't really going to go to bed at 7pm while we were at the hotel back on the 18th, but just giving Andy and I some time to sort of hang out and talk about stuff that most folks were just pondering themselves but which we really couldn't.  We weren't really super-serious about it - we had spotted a place that had weird Mexican ice cream flavors and decided to stop there before wandering around downtown, but we didn't wander long.  It's partly my fault; back when I was shorter than him, I'd sort of developed a tendency to walk fast when we were together to keep up and I haven't quite shaken it, so he has to try and practically jog to keep up with me.  Anyway, we wound up sitting by the hotel pool, crossing our fingers that nobody was going to show up and be weird.

I admit, I took off my shirt/socks/shoes and jumped in for a bit, because it was still hot even at 9pm.  Andy didn't, but he'd conceded to the heat a bit with a tank top and shorts that didn't get close to his knees, and sat by the edge sticking his feet in.  "You're going to miss going topless, aren't you?"

"Nah.  I mean, a bikini's not that far off, and I do feel kind of naked like this, still.  And, like, watching guys walking around between their dorm rooms with their shirts off and having conversations while one is at a urinal with the restroom doors open is a good reminder that you can take this sort of thing too far."

He stuck out his tongue.  "Ew.  Was I that gross?"

I shrugged.  "Sometimes?  I mean, you could be, but if the last year has shown me anything, it's that a lot of guys don't have sisters telling them something isn't cool."

"Well, sorry for what I did do."  He laughed.  "If it's any consolation, I think some of the girls on the floor I visited were sort of doing a skit where one ran into another's room wearing workout clothes and asked if she had a spare tampon, to show how on your own you were and that there was nobody around treating you like a kid.  Worse actors than Shawna."

"Hey, not cool!  I don't talk shit about Len!"

He didn't respond right away.  "You can, if you want.  I think that I'm going to break up with him before he can invite me to Homecoming."  He paused again.  "He's not a bad guy, but you know how he was trying to talk his way onto this trip, right, like he's got some sort of duty to scope out where his girlfriend might go to school?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know that he thinks I'm going to hook up with someone while you're not looking or anything, but he whines whenever I'm doing something with Shawna where he's not invited, and had a lot of opinions about our classes for the fall, and, you know, always tries to sit a little bit closer."

"Duh, he's a guy.  No offense."

"None taken, but I don't think I'd be like that, and not just because I've got you to slap me upside the head."  I must have looked kind of concerned, because he backed off a bit.  "Hey, I don't think he'd attack me or you or whatever, or try to make us do things we don't want to do, but he needs to learn some boundaries, and maybe it should be an actual girl teaching him.  I dunno."

I pulled myself out of the pool and gave him a side hug.  "Hey, it's okay, but I wish you'd told me.  I know we've never done the 'defend your honor' thing, but we always stuck up for each other, even before this!"

He playfully pushed me away and irritably pulled at his top, trying to shake it dry so it wasn't clinging to his right boob where I got it wet without taking it off.  "Cut that out!"

"Sorry."  I scooted over and turned my head.  "You're not worried he won't want to be friends with either of us if you do that?"

He shrugged.  "Yeah, I am, but it's not like we're turning back before graduation, and after that, who knows when we'll see each other again after that?  We may not even get accepted into the same places, so maybe we shouldn't worry about anything from high school carrying over."

I nodded, thinking of Shawna and Cyndi and a few other folks.  "I guess."

It had gotten dark, so I tried to scrape as much water off me with my hands as I could and got dress so we could go back to our rooms.  The next morning, Dad asked what we talked about and we told him the tampon story, and that was enough for him to look like he regretted asking.

Then, the next Monday, we started Senior Year, which so far is a lot like Junior Year with a little extra "hey, this might be our last..." to it.

-Andi-with-an-i

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Jordo/Missy/Yuan-wei

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh. Okay."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which was good, cuz it fucking sucked.

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

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

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

No problem, right?

-Jordan/Yuan-wei

Annette/Benjamin: Graduation Parties

I've been to a couple of them in the past few weeks, and I can't say it's not kind of tough.  Sure, when I look at what Jonah is staring down, the fact that I'm skipping college seems like small potatoes - by the time he gives birth and goes back to the Inn next summer, he'll have missed his last couple years of high school, and who knows how that particular experience will change him - but I worked so hard to get there, and now I'm the townie boyfriend in the audience whom everybody thinks that Marybeth is going to eventually outgrow and leave behind.

It's a pretty tough pill to swallow, at times.  I mean, I'm proud as heck of her - her Master's is no small accomplishment, and I've got no idea whether I would have had the patience for it.  She lit up as she accepted her diploma and then, afterwards, jumped into my arms when she and all her friends finished giving each other high-fives.  We kissed for a long time, and it was a really blissful kiss - I slowly eased her to the ground, and it felt like a portion of her satisfaction and success flowed into me.  I never had that with boyfriends in high school or the ones I had as Ravi in New York, and I wonder if that's what being in love, really in love, as a grown-up feels like.

We had to come up for air eventually, and that's when she dragged me over to meet her parents.  They seem like nice folks, although I'm not sure exactly what she had told them about me and what they've assumed.  They're in their mid-fifties and Marybeth is their only child, so they were looking askance at me to begin with, and I don't know if I quite made the best first impression.

I've at least learned to navigate the whole "firm handshake" thing; the line between showing that you are a dependable person of some substance and turning it into a test-of-strength battle for dominance is a lot thinner than you may expect!  Her dad was strong but kind of recreationally strong, like he goes out and does physical things but wears custom gloves when he does it to protect his hands. He sized me up too and asked what I was studying.

I could hear Marybeth going "uh..." beside me, but I just smiled and said "same things as your daughter, just without so much institutional support and formal direction." He gave me a look that said he had it half figured out but wasn't quite there, but wanted me to say the thing that made me look bad. "I bus tables, sir, but I read and write a lot, and I hope to make a career of it someday."

He wasn't sure how to react to that, although Marybeth's mom looked at her daughter mock-seriously and asked why she hadn't said that was an option - they could have had a house on the lake! Everyone laughed at that, and her quizzing me on what sort of experiences I'd be able to bring to my writing outside of ivory-tower twenties was kind of fun. I obviously couldn't say ''well, I was a gay Indian man for a year", but I could string together just enough of my real life, Benny's, and the year that Ronan lived this life to make it sound interesting,

It was an exhausting but enlightening afternoon, and the party that night with Marybeth's classmates was a good way to blow off steam. I didn't drink quite as much as I might have last year - I'm no longer a kid excited that I can get a beer just by asking for it, and I've gotten pretty decent about just drinking enough to take the edge off in awkward social situations rather than obliterating it. Which was good; as much as I felt kind of needled that day, seeing her parents was kind of stressful for Marybeth as well, and we engaged in some terrific tension relief when we got back to her place that night. It would have sucked to be too out of it for that.

Then, the next morning, we woke up in each other's arms. I kissed her and asked what it was like for her to be both that much more overqualified for her job and that much too good for the likes of me, and she laughed before saying that it was pretty awesome, although if I keep it up with the uncanny instincts about what a girl likes, the second part will stay debatable. And as to the first, well, that's just a matter of stepping up her résumé-writing/sending game, because her student loans have officially become a ticking time bomb.

The other party wasn't really for anybody I knew, but sometimes being an "Inn Person" doesn't just mean that life dealt you an unfair supernatural hand, but that you are part of a community of people who are so much more than they seem at first glance. That I wound up in Boston makes me especially lucky in that regard; being kind of near the Inn means that there are enough other people around who have been through the same thing that your support system is not just your roommate, with whom you now likely have an even more complicated relationship. There's The Changeling, and while Ashlyn, Penny, and everyone else may be a little reluctant to immediately welcome anyone who posts on the blog or says that they've been to the Trading Post with open arms - "Pygmalion" and a number of other incidents (like how Penny is Penny rather than Arthur) have reminded them that being in the same boat doesn't mean people want to steer it the same way - the connection is wonderful.

This second party was kind of a delayed affair, as Jessica Brooks was going to law school out in California, but she still wanted to celebrate with her Inn family who know that she used to be a middle-aged cop in Baltimore, and making it here was about finding her new self as much as anything else.

She wasn't the first to arrive, though - Jonah had just finished a day shift, and didn't protest too much when I hugged her, or when Penny arrived and told her that, even though being pregnant was obviously something that, having been born a man, he wasn't prepared for, it would be amazing, changing the way he saw the world for the better. I felt a bit of a twinge - I'd never really given much thought to having children beyond it being part of some vague future but something to take precautions against for right now, but now it was an entirely different potential thing.

Soon Penny was there, and despite what she's told me before, I was still kind of surprised to be introduced to Elizabeth Kim. She read that on my face and smiled at it, saying that she was obviously still one of the villains of Penny's story when she stopped writing, but, of course, nobody is the bad guy in her own, although it took her a while to really comprehend what sort of selfish choices she had made at times and how, sometimes, you need to change your whole way of thinking. It was an interesting conversation, although I don't know if I buy it as it relates to me and Sandra.

The next person I was introduced to was Louisa Torrence, and I did kind of fangirl out meeting her, which looks funny coming from a working-class guy. I told her that when I thought that the whole blog was a piece of fiction that Penny (and others) were writing, she was one of my favorite characters because she reminded me of my mom in a couple of ways and just seemed so empathetic and genuine, and to find out she was a real person... Well, you get it. She reacted to that sort of thing about as well as she could and caught me up on what she'd been up to, and, as she put it, a bunch of other "dangling plot threads". As she said, it's not dangerous for "Marie Desjardins"in Montreal any more; the gangster boyfriend was in jail and the original Ashlyn had enough influence to keep people off her back. She's back to being a librarian again, and kind of loving it - she makes sure that she sets to work in both French and English, and the classes in library science she took (because while someone her actual age would be able to list experience but "Marie" needs to be a specialist) help her keep her mind sharp. She says she probably doesn't need to worry about senior moments, but it seems to vary for everyone. She hopes and thinks that because she dropped thirty years before her brain started to deteriorate, she's probably got the mental acuity of someone her apparent age, but that the Inn won't necessarily fix what's already brown up there.

Which, she joked, could have applied just as much to the guest of honor as anyone else, as Jessica Brooks had been a veteran cop before the Inn made him a pre-teen girl who has, in the years since, made it to adulthood, graduated college, and then finished law school out in California, which had to put her near retirement age, old enough to be my father (and then some) if we had never visited the Inn, but physically maybe a couple of years older than I look right now.  She arrived with an entourage - the road trip she and Louisa took eight years ago had led her to Dana Costello, the guy who started life as Jessica, and his best-friend's-father-turned-mother Parker (mother of Dana, not the friend, because she was now Dana's adult husband because sometimes the Inn really fucks families up), and the whole group sort of arrived together - Jessica & Kathleen Brooks and Dana & Parker & Carson & Phuong Costello.

They weren't how I'd pictured them, obviously; though my binge-reading of the blog happened within the last couple of years, the posts which introduced me to them were from 2007, so it was a bit jarring to see Jessica, Dana, and Phuong as adults in their mid-twenties, Carson as a confident middle-aged man, and Parker and Kathleen as, I don't know, the veteran moms?  You know, folks who buckled down to be parents in tough situations while still trying to do their own things, probably don't get enough credit for either, and now look at each other and know they kicked ass even if guys are just counting ways they don't look like swimsuit models.

It got loud quickly, and though I've been welcomed into the Boston group of Inn people, I'm admittedly an outsider with this collection.  Still, when I reached out to shake Jessica's hand and noticed the ring my eyebrows went up a bit.  I asked who the lucky guy was, and she nodded toward Dana.

I squealed, which is probably kind of scary coming out of someone who looks like I do, but she laughed, saying that for a moment, she could totally see the teenage girl whose fanfic had just actually happened underneath the mid-twenties male exterior.  I blushed, but nobody noticed, as they were all too busy congratulating the happy couple.  As soon as that died down, Ashlyn handed Penny a twenty, and Dana looked genuinely shocked.  "Really?  You guys were betting on this?"

Ray said that of course they were betting on it, what with them being the most hot and cold couple they've ever seen, and that's before getting into the Inn stuff.  I guess it must be kind of crazy dating someone who sort of used to be you.  "You've got no idea!" Dana said.  "But compared to watching her date losers that I never would have gone near..."

"I have never dated a loser!  Do you have any idea how high the standards someone who's secretly thirty years older than the kids who look age-appropriate are?  You're the most immature person I've ever dated, by far, in two lifetimes!"

"Oh, not the 'two lifetimes' thing!  You promised that treating me like a kid was over, because you know what this life is like and how it doesn't work if you don't trust me--"

"AFTER we're married--"

"Hey!"  Kathleen just needed one word to quiet them down as she put her hands on my and Jonah's shoulders.  "You're scaring the kids!"  They apologized to us, and the whole crowd laughed.  Ashlyn was grinning the biggest.

"This is why Penny and I had money on the two of them winding up together.  Their fights are legendary, even if they were missing something before Dana applied to the police academy."

"Which is still the most god-damn foolish mmmmph!"

Dana had put his hand over Jessica's mouth, but I guess this was a thing with them, as she quickly pulled it down, kissed him, and had the whole thing sort of turn into him embracing him from behind.  "See what I'm signing up for?"

"You love it!"  He kissed her (it was kind of a good thing she was wearing heels, because he has about a foot on her), and squeezed.  "Yeah, we fight, because we both think we know what's best for each other and broadly have a better claim than most couples.  But, let me tell you, I can't imagine my life without those fights, and when I realized that she might actually move away after graduating, and I'd have to argue with her over the internet--"

"Seriously, we weren't together two months ago, but when this goofball got down on one knee, that seemed absurd."

There was a big round of "awwwww!!!", maybe with me the loudest despite knowing them for about ten minutes.

After that, it sort of became a regular party, and it was a lot of fun.  I really found myself liking Dana; I gather that when Louisa and Jessica met her, she was really a guy's guy, but maybe it's just knowing the truth or his having spent more time with other folks who have been through the change, since it certainly feels like we've got common ground as men who used to be girls.  For insurance, he really enjoyed choosing a ring for Jessica, even as his friends broke into cops sweats.  Got some Taylor Swift on his phone, too.

Later in the night, I asked Penny if she'd bet on Jessica and Dana getting together randomly,  and she said it was because she and Ray had worked out.  I mentioned that I worried about things with Marybeth sometimes, because there was something I was holding back.  She said not to worry, because she's seen a lot of cases where it had worked out with people who couldn't know.

"So are you and Ashlyn being on me now?"

She smiled and said that if they were, it would probably be about me and Missy, chuckling when I said there was no chance of that.

I think she's just messing with me.  She's better be.

-Annette/Benjamin

Lane/Kari: 23

Saturday I let Ashley sleep in after going to a (supervised) party and ran the errands and bought the groceries that day. I was loaded down with bags when I got back, but thinking she was still asleep I grabbed the mail with my teeth and cautiously made my way inside, where I found her on the couch awake.

"Need some help" she said with a laugh as she got up to take some bags without even being asked

"THNK Q" I said with a mouth full of mail before pulling it out of my mouth and looking through it and seeing a bright brochure "Why are you getting mail from Eastern Michigan University"

Ashley shrugged "They do that if you're on their mailing list. They were one of the schools that got my ACT scores."

"You got your ACT scores?!" I repeated

"They make you pick four colleges to send them to" She said nonchalantly as she put the groceries away "It's not like I'm getting in anyway. I got a 23."

Sometimes I wanted to slap the guidance counselor at her school. "No, that's good!" I reassured her. I actually had no idea if it was good or not. New York takes the SATs instead. I looked it up later and it's actually above average, but I wasn't going to NOT tell her it was good at the time. More importantly, it was more than good enough to get into the mid to low tier public universities in Michigan.

I opened the pamphlet booklet and sure enough in the back was an application. "You need to fill this out?"

"Do you really think I'll get in. Or can we even afford for me to go?"

"You'll get financial aid!" Said handing her the application and looking for a pen. I was sure about that. Kari has little income and savings and is a single mom. The federal government would give Ashely more than enough cash to afford a place like EMU. (Who are nicknamed the Eagles, missing the golden opportunity to be called the "Emus")

So that afternoon she and I sat at the table filling out not only the EMU application, but applications to Central Michigan, Western Michigan, and Wayne State. The whole time I had to keep from smiling from just how good and knowledgeable I've gotten about Kari's life as well as Ashley's. I was able to rattle off things like immunization history and allergies from forms I've filled out before.

I mailed those out earlier in this week, and they've given me a peace of mind. If all goes well Ashley will be college bound in a little over a year and set to make her own way in life. Now I'm a little less worried about the person who is going to take this life after me, knowing that she'll have a viable future.

-Lane

Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-wei: Spring Break

Given the amount of "Jordo really likes being a sexy bitch" content I put up here, it might seem like my going on spring break was a given, but it was kind of a last-minute decision. That stuff is a lot more exciting than "Yuan-wei's classes are a bunch of things I didn't study the first time I was in college", but it's not all easy As because I've done it before and have a bunch of essays stored on my old laptop.  If anything, I was thinking of another trip to China - maybe not Hong Kong, but Beijing, because Yuan-wei did spend some time there and it might be smart to bone up on something that a young Chinese woman of means would be expected to be familiar with.

That was before I got an email from Chen Bingbing, one of the original Yuan-wei's best friends from Hong Kong, asking what I was doing for Spring Break. She's going to school at Columbia right now, and thought this would be a great way to hang out with me since neither of us has had time to take the train to the other's city over the weekend yet. So, with appropriately exaggerated sighing, I said fine, I'll fly south out of this cold and go party for a week, if you insist.

(Benjamin and Jonah would later tell me it got really nice in Boston while I was away, although not quite ''fearlessly walking around in a bikini" nice.)

The credit card I inherited along with my new passport is pretty nice - even though I booked my flight and hotel pretty late in the game and therefore had to deal with prices I would have considered gouging in my original life, it absorbed them like a champ and asked if I would like to use my points for an upgrade. Fuck yes!

The hotel I booked wasn't exactly five stars - as much as luxury is nice, being in some classy place far from where the other college kids were would have been missing out - it was pretty nice, with breakfast and laundry and a pool. Since Bingbing wasn't due to arrive until the next day, I decided to spend the afternoon by the pool.

After a New England winter, it was really nice to pull off my t-shirt, drop my shorts, and just feel the sun on my skin. I put on some lotion, pulled the music and Kindle apps up on my tablet, and just enjoyed the moment.

I've been starting to actively notice guys lately. I don't know how it works with other guys that the Inn turned to girls, but I didn't really find guys attractive visually until I started screwing them.  I've got a theory that it's about my brain building associations, but that's kind of beside the point, which is that I only noticed the skinny-but-not-bad-looking white dude who walked by me with his phone at a kind of weird angle after the third time he passed or so.  Then, my brain was still a little behind in processing that he had a bit of a chub and was kind of handsome - I was actually focused on the tech a bit.

''Hey, buddy, what kind of phone are you using to creepshot me?"

Probably not the way he usually hears that question. "What? I, uh--"

I made the "over here" motion with my hand.  "C'mon, dude, hand it over." Ashlyn told me later that this sort of confrontation was usually a pretty bad idea, but I sort of sensed that he'd fold. It's not any sort of former-male-nerd thing; it's more that he seemed to want to be caught, like the bikini pics were a consolation prize, and having me notice him was first.

He handed me the phone, I swiped through his pics, made a comment about the camera and how the hotel had free wi-fi and he didn't need to burn the data plan, and then started tapping away before handing it back. He was pretty shocked to see the pics still there. Doubly so when mine vibrated!

"What's so weird? You can't get the whole body in a selfie!"

He seemed all right, but he kind of beat a hasty retreat when some of his fraternity bothers showed up.  I didn't take it personal.

Bingbing showed up the next day and said to meet her at the beach, at that sounded like a great plan.  I put on another bikini, some flip-flops, sunglasses, and a purse just big enough to hold my phone and wallet and headed out.

Walking along the beach, it's kind of hard for me to believe how much I freaked out at going to the beach as Deirdre, and whether I would have been this cool with it if I'd wound up staying like that rather than becoming Yuan-wei.  I think so - she's a different kind of sexy but there's still a lot of reason to be self-confident there, and I think I just fucking like being attractive, and didn't realize just how angry people not having a good first reaction got me.  Not everybody likes being whistled at, but it makes me feel good.

Chen Bingbing didn't whistle at me - she's not into that so far as I know - but I was glad to see her.   She's awful cute, is really into fashion, and seems to really dig that I defer to her a lot on that now.   I never really liked chatty girls before, probably because I often just took it for granted that they didn't want much to do with me, but even if listening to her go on want filling me in on stuff I could do with knowing, she's actually really funny, especially since she'll occasionally drop thoroughly unexpected Cantonese swearing into something innocuous.

We hugged - is it weird to both enjoy feeling boobs pressing against you and also feel gratified that yours are bigger? - and she talked stuff off about how America was so much fun, especially New York, although she also got really homesick.  I told her it passes, trying to draw on becoming a stranger rather than moving away.  Ironic, that, because that when she decided to introduce me to he new boyfriend.

You know that thing where a girl will get caught less dressed than she probably should be and then suddenly starts trying to cover up with her hands, even if they're way too small and she's wearing something anyway, just in case?  I don't do that, because, like I said, I like people liking what they see and don't want to start things off by cowering - at least most of the time.  Still, I made an exception at that moment, crossing my arms in such a way add to make sure my nipples weren't showing and quickly glancing down to make sure that nothing was perking out from beyond my bikini bottom.  What can I say; Max's eyes went straight to my chest and I was suddenly really uncomfortable with my fucking kid brother staring at my tits.

I felt stupid right away, and reached out my hand.  "Hi, Max.  Small world, huh?"

Bingbing seeing her head between us in surprise.  "You two know each other?"

Max was silently trying to figure out where he knew that chest from - really fucking concentrating, if you get my drift - so I told Bingbing the story we used back in September about how "his brother Jordan" and I played Call of Duty together until he got in shape and found other hobbies.

That rang a bell with Max, or at least he put on a good show of it.  It gave me a chance to ask what Benny was doing with my life.  Apparently he disapproved of "Jordo" just tossing everything he'd always done away to work in a gym and date a Hindu girl much more than our parents, although Bingbing defended him, saying that love and happiness were the most important things.  Max kind of grunted, but didn't argue with the pretty girl.

It made for a kind of interesting week. It was kind of mortifying at first to not just have Max looking me up and down when he thought Bingbing wasn't looking, but he was also the one buying us drinks when we found a bartender who wasn't carding entire parties too diligently. Having the world think I'm younger than him is weird.

It also made one kind of a third wheel, and while I really didn't mind it - I was a whole hell of a lot more interested in what was going on with Max and Bingbing, together and separately, then whatever random guy got attached to us in order to even the numbers out. Some of them were Max's friends, which was kind of creepy. Not half as gross as Max clearly wanting to fuck me, but about a third of the way there. They probably thought I was a stuck-up bitch for how quickly I seemed to write them off, but whatever. I just can't see Max's friends as potential lovers.

Easy enough for me, but it leaves Bingbing with a friend who seemed way too interested in her boyfriend and Max with a hottie who is weirdly keen on just being friends. I'd be lying if I said it didn't create some friction, including this weird thing where Bingbing said she understood Max's attention, because as a Chinese-American he was raised with a lot of white standards of beauty, so his eye is drawn to girls with a few extra pounds, you know, in the chest and such. I try not to get too freaked out about being called fat - I know that's the most direct way to get at a girl's self-confidence and as much as I'd like to be immune to it because I have actually been flabby, I do worry about whether a New England winter has pushed me toward that.

I'm making this seem like a whole lot less fun than it actually was. I mean, it was a fucking blast! 

Bingbing is awesome, and I'm not going to lie - I enjoyed sharing a changing room with her a few times. My brother got damn lucky the day he stumbled on her having a bit of trouble communicating in the campus bookstore, and I'm happy for him. I know that most of what I've written about Max hasn't exactly been complimentary, but I do love the little brat.

And, you know, it was spring break!  Even considering that a huge chunk of the guys there were white fraternity assholes who might lose interest in Asian girls once they realize that their evening isn't going to turn into a fucking fetish video, there were still enough people worth a bit of attention that I want always bothering Max & Bingbing.  And while I don't go out of my way to be a bitch, it is kind of fun to identify the sort of guy who decided to treat me like shit in school, get them to but you an expensive drink, and then go off with my friends.

And, hey, I got laid a fair amount too.  It wasn't always great - I'd apparently been riding a lucky streak in terms of actually being brought to orgasm my first for times, and discovering what it's like to deal with a guy who just slurps at your tits before monotonously thrusting until he comes and then just rolls over isn't great.  But, hey, I certainly kept one phone number for if I happened to be in Los Angeles over the summer!

Anyway, I was really glad I did it, even if I did really find myself missing my real family when I got back to Boston.  Still, I did feel kind of refreshed when I got back here (just in time for the weather to sort of sick again), and it does kind of make me feel more like I am a college kid again rather than just playing one.

- Jordo/"Missy" Yuan-wei

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Jordan/Yuan-wei

Jordan/"Missy" Yuan-wei: Back to School

I've been trying not to rub Benjamin's face in how good the life he might have had if he spoke Chinese can be, but let's face it - not only is it pretty fucking sweet at times, but if you were making a return visit to the Trading Post Inn, knew that your old life was gone, and could choose any room in the place without screwing over anybody else, you would probably choose someone like Lee Yuan-Wei, for three reasons.

First, she's young and hot, and all things being equal, that's better than the alternative. Maybe all things aren't equal - maybe you've got issues with changing ethnicity, and, fuck, I wouldn't exactly be down with giving up my dick if I hadn't had a year to get used to being without it. But within whatever bounds you set, it is nice to wake up and like the naked body that you see in the mirror.  I like looking down and seeing good-sized boobs and nice legs whenever I want to.  I am finding that I mostly like people talking to me rather than looking away. You deal with more assholes, but you have more choices.

(Her family being rich probably goes under this category - the fact is, the Inn's clientele probably tends to fall within a certain income bracket, with Yuan-wei being an outlier who was only there by accident. You're generally going to wind up "not poor, but not exactly wealthy" 99% of the time.)

Second, she's a college student. Practically, this is way better than having to dive into a job without any sort of training; you'll be expected to screw up and learn. If you know that this is for the long term, you can either point your new life at something familiar or whatever you've decided you should have done instead.

Plus, college itself is awesome. There are parties, clubs, an environment full of young people with similar interests, student days and discounts... If you've been through it before, you're probably remembering having more free time and figuring that will only increase with experience. Shit, I started missing college about a month into my first job and suspect that for a lot of us, the main thing that keeps us from going back for a masters/PhD within a couple of years is the student loans that need to be fed.

As for the last thing... Maybe she isn't officially one yet, but she's at least on the path to being an actor or actress. I'll bet a whole fuckton of people who have visited the Inn and wind up stuck in some other life wind up doing community theater or auditioning for something because, shit, everyone knows that there's good money in it if you make it to the top and we spend our whole lives pretending to be someone else - we obviously have a head up on all the normal people who we'd be auditioning against, right?

Well, most people have had practice pretending to be someone else.  I stayed in and tried to be myself as much as circumstances would allow, and while I don't regret it much at all, it means that I don't have nearly the experience in finding ways to turn someone wanting something from me into a way to discover something about who "Lee Yuan-wei" is expected to be while simultaneously satisfying that expectation.

Which is a problem, because she has chosen the most painfully fucking social major possible.

Me, I majored in computer science, and while not all of the stereotypes were true about everyone, there were certainly a lot of us that lived like Morlocks, coding deep into the night, finishing off a two-liter of Mountain Dew, and maybe doing the same with World of Warcraft if there wasn't something due that week. Not everybody was like this, and there were some classes where they put you on teams to work on a larger assignment - some where that was the whole point - but you can get through a lot of a CS major by doing the reading, coding, and showing up for the final.

Theater? Not a fucking chance!

ALL of the courses Yuan-Wei signed up for are pretty much mandatory-attendance. Even if we're just watching a movie, they get stopped and we've got to discuss the scene, and one of the professors is old and absent-minded enough that he'll frequently wander back to his desk and make notes about who is participating and who isn't, and probably which ones of us are saying stupid shit that gets laughed at.

And that's before you get to the actual acting classes.

I'm only in one right now, and it's a really bizarre thing in that there aren't a lot of concrete things to learn - no "this is how you cry on cue" stuff, really - but a whole lot of talking, trying to relate what's in the text to something from your own life to try and bring some emotion out. tn don't suck at reading something and getting what it needs, but it sometimes feels like my classmates, who took similar courses with Yuan-wei last year, are suggesting things that I can't access and making me feel like I have to hold back because they know "me" better than I do and me trying to inject myself into it just makes me come off as insincere.

There is also not a whole lot of immediate, reliable feedback. I don't have the practice that the original Yuan-wei did, and it's kind of like being in the batting cage but not seeing where the balls you hit are heading. I often feel like I'm really nailing something only to be told that I'm way off.

Most of my classmates seem nice, though the guys seem way nicer.  I don't think it's too conceited to chalk a lot of that up to them wanting to fuck me - I still get that feeling when I see myself in the mirror - but it holds for the gay guys and the ones who just aren't into Asian chicks as well. At first, I had it down to the inverse - envious of my hotness and family wealth, and a bit of how Benjamin warned me that men really have no inkling of how competitive girls can be (unless it's over them).  It turns out, though, that theater is just a hyper-competitive major here - something like 70% wash out by the end of their sophomore year - which, naturally, is where I landed.

Of course, it's not just competitive as a major in this particular college, but as an activity. I'm not a rival for the guys in the program, but there are only so many female leads, strong supporting roles, and so on down to complete background players to go around. And it's not like there are many under the school's umbrella - stuff I'd get actual credit toward a degree for - specifically for Asian women and thus with a smaller field.

I don't think many of my female classmates are actively sabotaging me, but I sort of suspect it might be in the backs of their minds. I don't know how necessary it may actually be - even the auditions I feel like I crush don't seem to set much reaction at all.

Will I fall far behind if I don't get a role in a fall production? I don't know. Just have to keep fucking trying, I guess - if I'm going to be the best possible Yuan-wei I can be, the way Benny is impressing people as me, I'm going to have to get the hang of it.

-Jordo / Yuan-Wei / Missy