Paul: Not the Position I was applying for

Ok so apparently I'm not the only new person to find this blog in recent weeks, but I guess the end of season is kind of the busy time for people whose live's have been turned upside down and ruined by magic. 

My real name is Paul Eastman and I'm supposed to be 22 and just graduated from Virgina Tech. I was up in Maine as the last stop on a Summer road trip/ applying for jobs at National Parks with my forestry degree. I had just finished my final in person interview at Acadia and it had run long so I was late to get onto the road back to the DC suburbs where my parents live, so I just decided to stay over in Old Orchard Beach. It was the choice between the Trading Post Inn and the Motel 6 and the theme of my trip was "Try Local Things" I went with the boutique little place instead of the big chain. 

  I arrived Thursday evening exhausted from 5 weeks on the road and just ready to go home. I didn't really do much besides order a Doordash lobster roll, watch Netflix on my phone, and pass out into what may have been the deepest sleep of my whole life, considering all that happened that I managed to sleep through. 

 I didn't set an alarm so the sun hitting my eyes from the window is what woke me up. Everything was fuzzy so I squinted a few times to try and make the world clearer to no avail before moving my hands up to rub them and have them met with hair. I've always had a buzz cut, something leftover from Scouts, so long hair in my face was enough to get me to jolt up in bed and almost fall off it from the shock of all the movement on my chest. I looked down and saw my purple tshirt stretched out in front of me by an unmistakably female chest. Out of shock and instinct I reached down to grab them and saw my arms were hairless, my hands were tiny, and my nails were long and pink. "What the fuck" I said, hearing my voice in a much higher sound.

 I jumped out of bed to go find a mirror and was met with a dull pain in my hip...I winced and even that was in a higher pitch. I reached down to rub it and felt a soft jiggling of fat on my normally pretty fit midsection. Everything jiggled and swayed on the way to the bathroom as I made my way there, turned on the light, and saw a woman in the mirror. Not a girl, a full on woman. About as old as my mom from the look of things. Shoulder length light brown hair with a few grays, hazel eyes, a few wrinkles on her face. She looked weird wearing my boxers and shirt that said "Hokies" across the front. The shirt was too big everywhere but the chest, going almost to my new knees...I must have lost like a foot in height. Lifting it up slowly my boxers were stretched to the limit around the thigh and hips. I lifted the waistband to get some relief and saw my penis had been replaced and this was a complete change. 

 "Why am I a girl?" I asked my reflection That answer came after a few minutes of inspection with a knock on the door. 

I tiptoed over and opened it a crack, feeling suddenly so small and vulnerable. On the other side was a tall guy a little younger than me. Or at least he seemed tall...how short was I now? The guy in the doorway looked relieved to see me "I found her" He called down the hallway 

 "Wait" I say quickly "I'm not---" 

"You're not really that woman, I know. It's going to be OK, follow me and it will all be explained. I followed him into the next room where there was a teenage girl having a very heated argument into a cell phone. 

"How do you screw this up" She said to the person into the phone "There are 15 years of detailed fucking instructions on the internet on how to change back and you had to mess it up for one last fling, but I don't suppose that matters since YOU got back to normal" She looked up at me with a look of defeat and annoyance "I'm going to have to deal with all of this...thanks for nothing" she said hanging up the phone and turning to me 

"Please tell me you have some idea of what's going on" 

 "I have no clue" I say "I went to bed last night and woke up a woman"

 The teenage girl sat on the bed sighed. "Great. On top of everything now there's a man in my body" 

The guy who had led me here saw that that had confused me even more "Have a seat while I explain" 

The first thing the two of them explained was the whole nature of the cursed hotel, how you turn into a replica of someone who had stayed there before. And then they told me that the reason they knew all about it was because this was the second year in a row they've been here. 

Kimberly and Maya Scott were a mother and daughter that had stayed here in 2023 before becoming sisters in Arkansas for the past year. During that time they had set up and planned a reverse stay with the people in their bodies and the people whose bodies they were in to try and get everyone back to normal. 

It worked almost to perfection. Things got messed up when the person who was in Maya's body had a little too much fun on the beach the night before the switch and took a local back to their room to hook up. The person who was in Kimberly's body slept in the bathtub and apparently that extra person triggered the switch and since the magic goes off of who slept where an not just the room numbers, when it came time for the Scotts to finish the chain Kim became Maya, Maya became the hookup, and I....closest to the bathtub....became Kim.

 I was relieved to hear we would be able to turn back "Ok, so all we do is stay here again and we can get back to normal?" I suggested 

 "Yeah, except this stupid Inn isn't year round" Kim said letting her frustration rise again "This is the last fucking week they sell until May. We're stuck like this until May!" 

That hit me like a ton of bricks. Maybe I'm being selfish because being a young man I have no idea how to operate in the world as woman who looks and feels 43 years old. At least I'll have her nearby to make sure I don't make too big a mess of her life. Unfortunately the real Maya will have to do her senior year of high school here in Maine, as a man. Although from her talking she didn't seem as angry about it as Kim. Maybe it's having already spent another year as someone else, maybe it's the addition of male privilege to try out. I don't know. I just know that I've got to fake being a mother and apparently wife for the next few months. 

 Should have just risked the bedbugs at Motel 6 

 

 -Paul

Marc/Ryan/?: ...I'm tired and I want to go to bed...

"I took a risk, I took a risk, I took a risk..." I chant to myself during a private moment of examining my face in the mirror. I had figured the odds were in favor of John and I ending up in some lives that were perfectly livable while we worked to figure out how to proceed. In actuality, it's more evidence in favor of the fact that I should not be permitted to make decisions for my own life.

I wouldn't even say it was a particularly good vacation. I've certainly had better. The weather was agreeable but summer heat is over. John was very keen to cuddle at night, taking advantage of the fact that we were far away from anyone who knows him, but I was a little iffy on taking things further physically because, who knows what that might lead to if we transform mid-act (which I have some experience with.) That turned out to be a correct instinct, one of very few.

So the whole thing felt like a business trip and John was worried that I was upset with him. I tried to reassure him that wasn't the case, without actually explaining what was on my mind.

Despite the decreased intimacy, the trip gave us a chance to spend some real time together, browsing shops and going out to eat as if we were actually a, gasp, couple. I didn't say much about myself because I haven't been "Ryan" for too long, but John filled the silences, seemingly having waited a lifetime to unburden himself like this. There were times when I was really happy to see the real John at play. Something about seeing someone attempt to be comfortable in his own skin, combined with the predisposition toward men I had inherited, really made my heart beat, which was something I felt like I needed to put a pin in and unpack later, depending on how everything shook out. We did have some sex during daylight hours, since what little I understand about the Inn's magic, it appears to be a nocturnal thing.

I pointedly said we should not look at the mysterious baggage found in the closet, ostensibly out of respect but really because, well, I didn't want to deal with it.

I spent as much time as possible avoiding answering the question of: what do I actually tell him when it happens? Years of law practice gave me what I think is a pretty strong poker face, but it wouldn't be too hard to put two and two together when you consider how actively I worked to put this trip together.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I could tell almost immediately that the change had happened overnight. I knew some of what was different about m physical form but lying still in bed, I remained frozen as long as I could. Time was up on deciding how to play it. It felt like there was nobody in bed at all beside me. I would need to investigate further to determine what that meant: had John gotten up and left in the night? Surely if he knew he had transformed, he would have woken me up, no? 

The room was dim. The sun hadn't broken in yet. I reached over to my phone. It was not even 5 AM.

Gingerly, I pushed myself up. I felt heavy. Slow creep to the bathroom. Light. Mirror. Oh, no.

Looking back at me was the rather saggy and jowly face whose name I soon learned was Ed Levesque -- Grandpa Ed to some. I smacked my forehead. Dolt. Everyone assumes they'll become some pretty young thing or an affluent middle-aged person. I guess all walks of life find themselves at the Inn, naturally.

I went back to the bed, cautiously. There was lying a young boy of about 10. Little "Cayden," aka John. He had not yet woken up, at least not until I sat back down on the creaky mattress.

"What's going on?" he asked in his little voice. "Who are you?"

"John," I said in something of a wheeze, "Something's happened. Something very strange."

It's a bit of a blur, how I managed to mumble an explanation and let him see for himself. The word "No" was said and shouted a variety of times in his little voice. Well, I say little as in young, but he could really holler.

Finally came the part I had been dreading. In a cold, soft tone, "Did you... know this would happen?"

I sighed and dropped all pretense of lying to him. "I knew something would. Not this specifically. I just knew how badly you were hurting and needed to... to get out of your life. You said so yourself."

He cursed me out with all the fortitude of the grown man he really is: "You bastard! You rat bastard! What did you do to me? What did you do to me??!"

I certainly didn't expect it to do well, but I steeled myself and tried to draw on some of my past experience being in rooms with people who hated my guts. I could navigate this. I explained rationally that we could go back, but not until the Inn re-opened next year.

If you've never had a ten-year-old boy tell you "I never want to see your fucking face again," well, it's certainly an experience. Unfortunately, it seems like we're somewhat tied together, what with me being the lad's grandfather and all.

It's going to be some year.

-Marc/Ed

Dave/Chris: Not as much of a man anymore

I was woken this morning by a young woman. Frantic, with a wild look in her eye. She was yelling "Dave, is that you? What the fuck is going on?" I'd never seen her before in my life, and she certainly wasn't one of the ladies we'd spent the evening with the night before. She was wearing Shane's t-shirt, but he didn't seem to be in the room. I sat up and things seemed a little off. I was a lot skinnier than I should have been. I wasn't exactly fat, well maybe a little overweight, but now I felt like I'd lost half my weight. I pulled the drawstring of my shorts tight so they wouldn't fall off and stood up. I was definitely shorter as well - where I'd been close to 6 foot, I was probably about 5"6 now and I was pretty much at eye level with this woman. She said: "It's me, Shane". I must have looked at her like she was crazy, so she grabbed my arm and dragged me into the bathroom. I saw a stranger's face in the mirror, a man, but definitely not me. He was a lot younger than me, probably in his early 20s, although I'm never good at judging ages. He had a beard, but it was a lot less dense than the one I had for years. The face was quite boyish looking. At least my receding hairline looked like it had been fixed, although the hair was much darker than the light brown it had been.

 

I could hear some commotion in other rooms, muffled screams, and yelling. It sounded like we weren't the only ones affected by whatever happened to us. Not knowing what else to do, I looked through the room for clues. I don't know how we hadn't seen it when we got into our rooms, but there were 2 suitcases and a letter in the closet.

 

The letter briefly described that we were staying in a cursed inn and we were expected to live as them until next year. I'm now in the body of Chris (28) and Shane is Sylvia (26), a couple from San Francisco who own a small cafe, which we're apparently supposed to run now. More information about these people and their work was available on their cell phones and laptop..

 

We looked through the suitcases and apart from clothes for our new bodies and the laptop, there were a number of sex toys. Strap-ons, dildos, etc. It looked like this couple were into some kinky stuff. I'm pretty sure we aren't using any of it. I'm not having sex with Shane - it would be way too weird.

 

At some point, I needed to pee, so went to the bathroom, and when I took my shorts off, I screamed. My penis was gone, and I had what looked like a pussy. I had been awake for at least an hour and hadn't noticed. I couldn't understand how I couldn't - I mean, I've always had one, and I would have thought it would be the first thing I'd notice, but I guess there were so many other changes. Shane came to the door and asked what was wrong. I told him to go away and sat on the toilet and did my business, which felt odd and wrong. I took off the top I'd slept in, which was way too big for me now and saw nipples that looked slightly too big, and small surgical scars on my chest. 

 

When I got back to the bedroom, Shane was sitting on the bed and asked what was wrong. I wanted to tell him, but it was too much, so I told him "Nothing, I just freaked out for a sec". He seemed a lot calmer than me, even though his changes were even more than mine. I at least still looked like a man, while he looked like a young woman. Her hair halfway down her back, average sized breasts, pretty face. Shane was always a lot more laid back than me, and he obviously still had that trait. We sat there for a while, not really saying very much, and trying to get over the shock. It was Shane who started talking about the logistics of going across the country to these people's lives. We managed to book a flight for later that day, and looked on Google maps to see where we live and where the cafe is.

Now we have to go to place neither of us have ever been, work in a job we know nothing about, and pretend we're in a relationship together.

 

Oh and we both have to do it without our penises...

Marc/Chantelle/?: Show me the way to go home

I don't know how long the memories of people who read this blog are, so let me re-introduce myself. I was born Marc Green, but for the last 2.5 years I've been better known as Chantelle Carey. I was deposited in the life of this Albany Real Estate Lawyer after an ill-fated trip to Maine with my wife in the spring of 2022. It's hard to believe how long and yet how quickly time has passed.

When I last wrote here I was just getting into the swing of things, becoming marginally more comfortable in my new skin, socializing with my co-workers and trying to enjoy my relatively low-pressure job, a big switch for me because in my past life I had been a more high-powered corporate attorney. Laura and I were also trying to navigate what the transformation meant for us -- our relationship was on its last legs in our original lives, but maybe we could rediscover each other in the new situation. I was even willing to give it a try, even given our new gender dynamic, with the hitch that he was now a married man.

It was all fun and games for a while, but reality bit us. I had to cope with an unexpected personal situation in Chantelle's life that meant I honestly didn't have a lot of time for an affair (or blogging about myself.) In the end "Damon" decided that it was easier and better to pursue his new wife, using the logic that since the original Damon was a philanderer, taking on his role as husband on a permanent basis was a victimless crime. That's, erm, debatable from my perspective, and I used to argue for a living.

Because of my personal situation, I was unable to return to the Inn last year, and what's more, because of lingering bad feelings about everything I had left behind -- Laura, my smoldering crater of a career, et cetera -- I let the people who landed in our lives simply have them, which is the last you heard of me. From what I understand they are doing well, but you would have to ask them directly.

The time since then has been a haze, which out of respect to the parties involved I won't go into detail about, but it's calmer now. As good as this situation has been to me (on balance) I did always want to let Chantelle retake her life. The Careys are extremely close-knit, which was never comfortable for me and must have really messed Chantelle up to be away from, especially with the family issues I had to navigate.

And that's why I came back to the Inn...... three months ago.

I didn't care who I became, man, woman or child. I had to do my good deed and give Chantelle a chance to regain what was rightfully hers. (And by now, she is safely back where she belongs.)

After waiting around all weekend for the Inn to fill up, it happened on a Tuesday night (really, a Tuesday??) In the late/early hours, I felt my breasts stiffen into pecs, my hips straighten and narrow, and watched a male sex manifest itself between my legs.

I left the Inn that week as Ryan Berardi, a 24-year-old from Queens, NY. I certainly wasn't mad about being so young or male after years of femininity. But it's not like I would be going back to a life that looked a lot like my original existence. Ryan is young, single, active, and gay.

I spent my time as Chantelle kind of fumbling with the keys to the door of my sex life without every fully getting it open. I had a tryst with Laura-as-Damon, and him being male certainly wasn't a turn off, but I didn't fully understand whether I liked guys or whether I liked my (ex-)wife in a new body. If I had thoughts, they did turn out to mostly be about guys, with a sort of intrigued curiosity attached, but there was never much impulse to pursue. I didn't know if that was a Chantelle thing or a Marc thing or a "life's got me down" thing.

I sort of assumed the same would be the case as Ryan: you just don't do anything if you're not comfortable with it. But suddenly as Ryan, I was different. I had energy, I had time on my hands, I had drive that I hadn't known since... well, since I was a 24-year-old man.

Most of Ryan's friends were gay men, and being around them had an undeniable physiological effect on me. It was not that dissimilar to if I had found myself, back in college, in a room full of available women. There's someone in here that's having this effect on me. I may have been self-conscious about my new role, but these guys were easy to talk to and fun to be around in my new physical state.

In the end, though, I didn't end up doing anything with Ryan's friends. They were just sort of the key that made me feel okay about pursuing whatever it was that I wanted. I had been an ostensibly straight woman, for crying out loud, what was wrong with spending some time as an actively gay man?

That brought me to someone I will refer to as John.

John was older, and had had some experimentation in his youth but was now back in the closet, or identifying as bisexual (I'm not here to proclaim anybody's specific orientation for them. He should know.) He was married with grown kids and I guess was going through a sort of midlife crisis about never having gotten to explore his sexuality the way he wanted. I allowed myself to become his sort of secret fling because it felt like... better me than someone else. Things developed very rapidly and very intensely over the summer as we got to know each other not just on a primal, physical level, but a personal one. I felt for this guy, I saw a lot of myself in him.

He had such a sadness. Like he couldn't bring himself to leave his wife and disrupt his family dynamic and be the person he wanted to be, and yet anytime I broached the topic of calling "us" off, he would insist that no, I was the best thing in his life. He seemed stuck between two worlds, and he ached about it.

In a normal situation, the sensible thing to do would probably have been for me to walk away and wish him luck in sorting himself out, but I knew something he didn't, that there was a way out when you feel stuck in a role. Think about it: if I break up with him, he's just going to repeat the pattern with someone else and end up hurting more people.

After sex is when he usually becomes reflective and starts moping about how he wishes he could feel this way all the time. At one point in August, I asked him if things were really so bad in his life, and he said yes -- similar to the way things were that bad for me as Marc, I gathered. I asked him what he would do if he could give all his problems to someone else and instead take on the problems of another random person.

"Well," he began to contemplate this 'thought experiment,' "That depends on what you mean. I know I have it better than some citizen of the war-torn middle east, if that's what you're talking about."

I clarified that was not what I was talking about. "An American, probably, someone with a life not totally unlike yours... any age, any gender, from any city or small town... maybe they have a family that doesn't love them, maybe they have money issues, maybe they don't even have any problem bigger than what to do on a Saturday night. Would you push the button, roll the dice, and take on that person's burden instead of your own? You would not have to clear things up with your wife, you might not even feel attraction to me anymore, you would be... in effect... a different person. But you have no control over who that person is. And someone else would have your problems."

I was hoping he would say no, do the sensible thing and feel inspired to appreciate what he had and go back and sort things out in his life, but depression and anxiety are absolute beasts.

"I think I have it worse than the average person," he said thoughtfully. I don't personally agree, but I think from the outside people would have said that Marc Green had it all, so who am I to argue?

"So you think, based on the odds, you would prefer..." I paused. The more clearly I defined the 'experiment' the more obvious it would become that I was leading him.

Before I could rephrase, he kissed me. "Ryan, honey, if you're saying you want to run away together and start fresh... I would love to... I would want nothing more... but there's no way I could. I'm stuck."

Stuck. God, did that word trigger me. Because that was how I felt when I quit my job as a lawyer the first time. And doing what I did to get away only made me feel more stuck. It was only going to the Inn that got me "unstuck." And on balance, I feel it was good for me... and the odds were, I was probably going to go again.

"Maybe not run away forever," I said with a sigh, "But how about a week or two?"

I did the mental math on the ethics. Somebody has to go to the Inn. It's going to happen. Is it not better that it be done under controlled circumstances? Is it wrong to go -- and bring a first-timer -- knowing what is going to happen? Or is it better?

For all the talk of the dangers of "rolling the dice," let's not forget... as shabby as the Inn itself is, who goes on a vacation to Maine besides people who are at least marginally comfortable in their lives? What is the absolute worst possible outcome? I feel strongly that almost anybody who would be in Maine at the Inn would have a life worth living. If you are so determined not to be yourself anymore, what right do you have to get choosy about whether you're a teenage girl or a pot-bellied uncle?

Again -- these lives are going to somebody. Right? I rest my case.

I called the reservation line. They were booked up through end of summer, of course. Well that's that, I thought, and better for it. Out of the question. I will have to simply go through the winter and not think about it, and meanwhile I will have to ensure John does not destroy himself.

Then I got a call the next week. It kind of sounded like a robot voice, or maybe just a very, very formal person.

Cancellation. Room for two now available. Deep discount price, must be filled. Sept 16-29, the final reservation pod of the year.

John was overjoyed at my thoughtfulness and immediately made arrangements. He told his wife he would be going on a hiking retreat, which is something he knew she would not be interested in.

Once we had locked in, I practically broke down in tears. Oh God, what am I doing?

Well it's too late now. We arrived yesterday afternoon. 

Dave: Just checking in

My name is Dave and I checked into this place today with my buddy, Shane.

We've been friends since elementary school in Indianapolis, which is where we both still live. We were both troublemakers at school, and I guess that's how we bonded. Neither of us liked school, and school didn't like us. We dropped out in high-school and both managed to get apprenticeships. He's an electrician and I'm a locksmith, and once a year we go on vacation together. We've done it for years, and my ex-wife used to say she was jealous of the time we spent together. Maybe that's why she's my ex now. The two of us have been through a lot together. We were best man at each other's weddings, godparents to each other's children. I was there for him through his divorce and he through mine. We're in our 40's now, but we're tight and he's like the brother I never had.

 

Every year, we go to different places, and this year we're here. We sometimes go fishing or hunting, and this year we decided to go to Maine, because neither of us had ever been before. Shane managed to get us a reservation at this place, and it was a pretty good deal, so I'm not complaining. But the place gives off a strange vibe, and a few of the other guests we've seen have seemed nervous, which gives off a strange tension. It's clean, though, and we have a room that has everything we need. Unfortunately, we have to share it, because it was the only one available. Hopefully he can cope with my snoring. 

 

We'll go and hit some bars later tonight. Shane is a hit with the ladies. He's lean and fit and a smooth talker, and whenever we go out, we manage to get some female company. Tomorrow, we'll probably see if we can find a good spot to go fishing.

Aidan/Emilia: "Hello, uh, Aidan"

I don't know how many Inn victims get visits from the people taking over their lives, but it's unnerving to say the least.  The boys and I didn't have that option, and I figured we would just leave the notes and maybe keep in contact via email.  When I got one saying they were going to do a quick weekend trip into New York so that we could get to know each other better, I was quite surprised, and not just because I wasn't sure our bank accounts could afford it, but because they had told us they were doing it rather than asking, and it's something I would have discussed with Kutter and Rusty to make sure they were okay with it.  Instead, I wound up telling them, but making it clear they didn't have to participate if they didn't want to.  Rusty immediately responded with "are you kidding? I've got to see this!", while Kutter nodded a bit more seriously, although it didn't seem like he felt pressured.

Apparently, the new me knew the city at least a little, saying she checked and saw that a brunch spot she liked was still open, and maybe we could meet there.

And, yes, the person living my live is a woman.  Indeed, the whole replacement family is or was, and in fact it's a seemingly much more straightforward substitution than we had:  The new me is a single mother of two daughters, about my sons' ages, and the Inn made the younger daughter into Rusty and the older one into Kutter.  They had arrived at the place first, new-me at one end of the booth and new-Rusty at the other, and the three of us wound up seating opposite our counterparts.  There was a moment of silence, and I cleared my throat.  "Hello, uh, Aidan."

She smiled a smile that was not my own and reached out a hand.  "You must be Emilia."  I shook it and she sighed looking me over.  "Well, girls, it looks like we should have booked for a couple weeks earlier, huh?"

New-Rusty leaned in and looked my Rusty over.  "Totally!  Hey, are you Korean?"

"Like, a quarter."

"Oh my God, you're so lucky!  I love K-pop and I've really been getting into Korean movies lately!  They probably actually play them in theaters here and even if they're rated R or whatever they won't card you!"  For maybe the first time in his life, Rusty found himself unable to get a word in edgewise. "Not that I don't think I'll enjoy being you!  I've only just met your friends but they seem really cool!  Oh, and I think I'm going to try out for a part in the fall play, because I don't know if that's something you would do but I wanna try every activity I can't do on account of being homeschooled--"

Kutter looked surprised.  "What, really?"

New-Kutter rolled her eyes.  "Yeah, everybody hates Mom and she thinks their kids will take it out on us but even though she works remotely she won't move."

New-me made a "knock it off" gesture with her had at her throat.  "We're here to learn about them; they don't need to know our problems."  She gave me the sort of smile she probably gave men a lot but which looked a bit odd on my face.  "Sorry, teenagers.  Although they're not wrong; we've had some setbacks and I'm not exactly popular in my home town because of stuff that happened before they were born."

"Because we were born."

"Would you stop?"  She looked like she wanted to take her elder daughter aside and hiss something at her but I guess she realized that would look worse.  "Look, we're not running from anything or looking to take your lives for our own."  She tried to blow some hair she no longer had as me out of her face.  "I'm not sure how to be reassuring and complimentary here, but, honest, I want to be myself again, but I'm not afraid to admit that I think we're all enjoying some time away from the stuff in my life because you guys seem to have had your shit together when you went to that place."

"Um... Thanks?"

She spent the next day or so showing us various spots and picking our brains, saying this would help us get ahead as new New Yorkers, although this city moves fast enough that a lot was "there used to be a great place here, but I guess it closed during the pandemic".  Mostly mine, for practical work information.  She seemed relieved to hear there wasn't a woman in my life, especially when she saw how new-Kutter seemed to be pushing hard for the original to let her dump his girlfriend, saying she's a nerd and if they're really into each other they'll get back together no problem.  Kutter didn't like the idea, but also didn't likethe idea of his substitute pushing things one direction or the other.

Rusty and his sub got along like a house on fire, though - apparently she's as gregarious as he is and they share enough common interests that she'll probably do just fine standing in for him.

Plus, as we saw them off to LaGuardia, Kutter elbowed his brother and smirked.  "I think someone's got a crush on you!"

"What?  C'mon!  Although..."  Rusty smirked and made some sort of motions with his hands to frame his face that I don't quite understand.  "I am extremely my type!"

Kutter snorted.  "Oh, yeah, like you've got a type.  You've got to establish a pattern to have a type!  At best, you've got aspirations toward a type."

They argued a bit, but I don't think anybody won.  At the very least, we came out of the experience feeling reasonably sure that they would keep our seats warm, although I suppose it wouldn't hurt to check in with them every once in a while to make sure that's all they are doing.

-Aidan/Emilia

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

Aidan/Emilia: "I mean, it's this or a locker room!"

I was sitting at Emilia's desk yesterday, looking for new jobs to apply to, when Rusty knocked on the bedroom door.  "Hey, uh, Dad...  Would you like to go for a run with me?"  I turned around, probably intending some sort of joke, only to see that he really meant it:  His hair was tied back in a ponytail, and he was wearing black lycra shorts and a matching sport bra, with a holder for Monica's phone on her forearm and a fancy-looking water bottle in his other hand.

"Look at you - turned into a sporty girl, huh?"

"I guess?"  He scratched the back of one leg with the other foot, justifiably uncertain about the answer.  "There's, like, a lot of workout outfits in Monica's stuff, way more than Kutter got from Katey, she's got the little weights in her closet, and there's a gym membership in her wallet that seems to be the first thing she bought when the girls moved to New York."

"I see."  I tried to read his face to see what he thought about it, but although I can usually see my boys' expression on these girls' faces, I wasn't sure what Rusty thought of that.  "You know you don't have to do anything just because Monica did."

"I know, but I'm sick of sitting around the apartment and, I don't know, I've got Monica's biology, maybe she knew she'd get fat if she didn't put the effort in or something."  He put his hands on his hips, which emphasized his trim waist a bit.  "Like, a cursed inn can give you this body but isn't going to maintain it!"

I raised an eyebrow.  "That important to you?"

He shrugged.  "I dunno.  I know pretty girls get treated better than than plain ones, and it's not cool, but here we are!  But mostly i just kinda wanna try the legs out, you know?  Figured you might too."

Put that way, it made a little more sense, and if he was going to run through the streets in something like that, he probably shouldn't be alone.  "Okay, let me get changed."  He nodded and closed the door, and I heard him filling the water bottle as I saw what Emilia had.

It was pink, but at least the shorts went to the knee.  The top had short sleeves rather than Rusty's open shoulders and squeezed enough that I immediately understood why she didn't wear sports bras all the time even though it did a better job of keeping things in place than most of the other bras she owned.  I don't have quite enough hair for a ponytail, so I put on a headband.  I also donned a t-shirt and jogging shorts, seeing if maybe he'd take the hint.  Instead he just threw me a "looking cute, Dad!" before handing me a bottle.

We started with an easy enough pace that we could talk about how the job hunts were going, but every once in a while he'd ask if it was okay to pick up the pace, and we did.  That Monica was a few inches shorter than Emilia didn't much seem to matter - maybe Monica had toned the right muscles before Rusty got her shape, or maybe he had just been in gym class more recently than I had, but it seemed to come naturally enough to him that we wound up keeping pace.  Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy it; sure, I could feel some of the bounce in my chest, but the arms and legs and back moved easier than they had in years (if you've read that story about how people seem to age in two bursts at 44 and 60, well, I'm past that first one).  It was a reminder that, yes, the Inn had made us women, and made my boys adults, but it also made me young, and I should maybe enjoy that while I could.

After a while, though, I had to tap Rusty's shoulder and ask if we were supposed to take the bus home, and he almost tripped stopping like that had just occurred to him.  Indeed, he must have been in some sort of zone, because he took a big swig from his bottle as if just realizing he was thirsty, then opened his phone, shocked to see we'd run nearly four miles.  "Wow!  I guess I did become a sporty girl!"

I laughed.  "Yeah, well, I maybe haven't, and your brother's going to wonder where we went!"  He nodded, and we turned around and started back.

It was actually a nice time to chat - in the apartment, I suppose we're kind of guarded and worried about what comes next, and I'm still Dad, but outside, our brains flooded with a bunch of endorphins, he talks about all the things he's seen that are going on in the neighborhood, the borough, and the city at large, that some band or other would be playing here but would have been a few hour's drive from our hometown, and so on.  Some kid's soccer ball got away from them and he happily kicked it back.  It was a real reminder that we've spent an awful lot of the last few weeks worried about everything and making each other more worried, and that's no way to live, especially for someone as naturally outgoing as Rusty.

As expected, Kutter was plenty surprised when he heard us opening the door and came out of his room to see us in workout clothes.  He looked at Rusty especially dumbfounded, asking when his brother had started running, and Rusty shrugged.  "I mean, it was this or a gym, and just imagine how Dad would have freaked out if I said I was going to go someplace where a bunch of women would be naked with me in a locker room!"  I felt like I should say something at that, but he turned around and looked at me and said I should probably hit the shower first.

He was right; I was sweaty and he was glistening.  But I smiled as I got in and the water reduced Rusty and Kutter chatting in the next room to a vague chatter.  The workout had felt good and it was very nice to hear Rusty sounding like himself.

-Aidan/Emilia

Daryl/Zee: Wouldn't Be a Proper Inn Person Otherwise

There's a bunch of reasons us folks who have been to the Inn wind up in and around Boston, eventually; it's the nearest big city that has a direct connection to Old Orchard Beach, if only by rail, so a lot of folks who wind up switched around come from there.  If you're looking to change back and at a loose end, it's tempting to settle there so that logistics don't mess it up - they never posted to the blog, but I heard about one person whose borrowed identity was low on PTO, so they would drive up to Maine, sleep there, and then come back to Boston until they changed so that the person getting their old life back wouldn't get in too much trouble at work.  And it's a pretty nice city; not Chicago or New York but it's got all the sports, plenty of museums, at least one restaurant from whatever cuisine you happen to like, and, relatedly, your various ethnic enclaves.

"Inn People" isn't really one of those, but I do think we need each other.  You look at some entries from when this blog first started and there's someone who wound up really far from everyone else, they drop off the site, and when someone gets back in contact they've got a conspiracy wall that was apparently 10% informative and 90% paranoid.  Or you can just lose track of who you were before, like this huge portion of your life just didn't matter.  And given my personal history of losing myself, it's probably a good idea to have people around who can say "hey, Zee, what would Daryl think?"

(Is this always a good rule for an Inn Person?  Probably not!  Is it good for me to occasionally ask the question?  More often than not!)

Plus, and I cannot stress this enough, the new job is full-time rather than freelance, offers health insurance, and only averages a little more than two days a week required in the office because my job entails leading in-person training sessions as well as project management, and there's enough hardware engineering/prototyping going on that a lot of the team is on-site anyway.  Apparently my willingness to come in got me the position over a few people who insisted on being completely remote even though my "Zee" résumé isn't quite so good as my "Daryl + Elaine + Zee" one would be, if I could get people to believe in it.

So, that's me in Boston.  I found a fairly decent condo in Dorchester, although the down-payment has nixed me doing any sort of real vacation for a couple of years.  It's not quite on the subway, but one of those bike things is nearby, and that's probably better for me anyway.

Will I be here for good?  Who knows, I may decide that even in a fairly Black neighborhood, this city lives down to its racist reputation and decide to go elsewhere.  But for now, it suits me.

-Zee

Aidan/Emilia: "Son, Your Breasts Are Very Nice and Don't Let Anyone Tell You Different!"

As much as being a woman is deeply strange, I think it's probably good that it happened to all of us.  I may not necessarily have a lot of advice to offer Kutter and Rusty from experience, but us all being in the same situation keeps things from getting too acrimonious.  The boys are inseparable these days, but they would fight over everything when they were younger, and this is a situation where kids yelling "you just don't understand" could get really nasty.

I'm kind of in awe of my friends who have daughters and are good fathers to them, because I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and can't imagine how I'd feel if I were entirely looking at it from the outside.  I like to think I'd be a good girl dad, but this is the first time I've had to think about it, and having it just happen all at once is different.  The other day, for instance, Rusty and Kutter were playing a videogame when Kutter got a weird look on his face, paused, and looked down before getting up and racing to the bathroom, slamming the door.  There was a little spot of blood on the leather couch where he'd been sitting.

Rusty opened his mouth as if to say something and I raised a finger.  "Just get something from under the sink and some paper towels and wipe it up, okay?  It could be you tomorrow."  He nodded and went to the kitchen while I walked to the bathroom door and knocked.  "You okay in there?"

I heard a loud sniffle.  "I don't know.  I guess i knew it was coming but it's so gross!"

"Yeah, I know.  Anyway, look in the medicine cabinet; I think the girls all marked their period stuff with heir initials.  What've you got?"

There was a pause.  "Oh, it's tampons."

"That's okay, I think that's what Emilia uses too.  I guess Rusty gets the pads.  Anyway, I don't know how much you've poked around down there, but your mom always said men make too big a deal about the whole thing.  Just read the instructions and do what they say.  Hopefully it's just uncomfortable at first."

There was a pause, and then he sounded a bit more confident.  "Okay, but I think I'll take a shower first.  Could you get me a change of clothes?  I even got some blood on the bottom of my t-shirt."

"Of course."  As soon as I heard the shower start, I went to check on Rusty, who had cleaned up the mess.  "Your brother's doing okay.  How about you?  I know it's been a couple of weeks, but this makes it all a bit more real, right?"

He nodded.  "Yeah.  I mean, it's been plenty real, but this is really real."  He looked like he wanted to say more, but was at an unusual loss for words.  I squeezed his shoulder and went into Katey's room, which I suspect wasn't as tidy before Kutter moved in.  Not wanting to intrude, I quickly opened a couple of drawers, pulling out panties, a top, and shorts, not really looking at what I was taking; the piles in there were running pretty short, as we hadn't done laundry yet after a couple of weeks.  I stationed myself back at the door and passed them through when Kutter opened it a crack.  A few minutes later he came out and I slapped my forehead.  The shorts were cutoffs just barely covering his behind, and the shirt was a crop-top camisole.

Kutter smiled nervously.  "I guess I should have been more specific."

I started sputtering apologies.  "I'm so sorry - I should have looked more closely!"

He shook his head.  "No, it's fine.  Like, this is how girls dress on a hot summer day, right?  And we're really girls now, right?  Why don't we go get ice cream?  Isn't that a thing, girls getting ice cream after their first periods?  You two go change, I'll wait."

I looked him in the eyes.  "You sure?"

He stared back, hard.  "I am not going to let this get me down, Dad."

I nodded.  "You heard 'im, Rusty.  Let's get changed."  He nodded and practically raced into Monica's room.

Once in Emilia's I looked through my inherited dresser - I confess, I had not gone through it like Kutter had - and pulled out a camisole and cut-offs for myself.  I tugged at the top a bit, took a couple deep breaths, and went back into the common area.  Rusty's jaw dropped.  "Holy shit, Dad!"

"C'mon, they're not that big!  Emilia just favored, you know, a deeper neckline than her roommates."

"Yeah, because of her great big boobs!"

I was about to say something when Kutter elbowed his brother.  "Stop being a creep, you little twerp.  It's still Dad, and it's not like you're exactly hiding your cleavage either."  He took a few steps to the door.  "You guys coming?"  I nodded and we followed.

We didn't actually walk very far, finding a nice place with not horrifically expensive cones (for New York) next to a little park. grabbing a picnic table to sit around.  Rusty took a big lick from his and jumped in.  "So, Dad, I'm not trying to be disrespectful or weird or anything, but you've been hiding those boobs, right?"

I grumbled, not really wanting to talk about it, but not wanting to lie.  "I mean, we've all been wearing these ladies' loosest tops, right?"  The boys sheepishly nodded.  "I guess maybe I've had more opportunity to look in the mirror and think that's kind of tight in the morning, but I also don't want to feel like I'm putting an pressure on you guys to embrace your new figures or whatever."

"But what if we were waiting for you to show us we shouldn't be embarrassed?"  Sensing the question rattled me, Kutter continued.  "Although now I guess I'm just going to be embarrassed by my little B-cups."

"Son, your breasts are very nice and don't let anyone tell you different!"  The boys laughed.  "But, seriously, size isn't everything and we're not exactly looking for attention from boys, are we."  The two shook their heads.  "But, anyway, I'm sorry if you've been looking for a signal from me or have been feeling held back outside the apartment.  This is new to all of us."

I narrowed my attention to Kutter.  "I do want to say, though, that you handled everything as well as can be expected, and you're kind of lucky, in that you didn't know it was coming."

Rusty looked confused.  "How's that lucky?"

"Because my guts have been killing me for the past couple of days and I couldn't figure out why until this morning.  You'd think I'd've noticed the Midol with Emilia's name on it in the medicine cabinet, but, no, I've just been taking regular ibuprofen.  So I'm probably up next, but, seriously, I think I'd rather have been surprised by my first period than feel this."

"Geez, Dad!"  Kutter shook his head.  "What about that stuff you said about us being in it together and Rusty and me being adults?  Don't hide this stuff from us!"

"Okay, I won't.  Promise."  I noticed I'd gotten an odd look.  "Although, maybe not 'Dad' when we're outside like this."

"Fine, Emilia."  A moment later, Kutter shook his head.  "Nope, feels wrong.  But I guess we'll get used to weirder, because I've got at least eight more days like today coming before we go back."

Rusty started counting on his fingers.  "Gee, thanks for that, Katey.  You guys are really making me look forward to the next couple of weeks.

He laughed, but it's kind of funny that my period came just as Kutter's ended, and now it's Rusty's turn.  I suppose this is better than it hitting us all at once, but it's been a long week!

-Aidan/Emilia

Aidan/Emilia: Getting Started

I got a few messages expressing concern about my first sight of and conversation with Rusty in the last post, and it's actually kind of gratifying, because my first instinct was to sort of dance around it.  Rusty wasn't having it, though; he saw me typing on Emilia's laptop, looked over my shoulder, and said "you have to put in the bit with me asleep with my hand on my boob, it's the funniest part!"  I told him I was making the post to try and get advice, not make people laugh.  He pouts, which looks exaggerated with Monica's face.  I say I'm not sexualizing my fifteen-year-old kid.  He says the Inn did that, but that it didn't feel sexy to him, any more than touching his own body in the shower or while putting on suntan lotion does.

He's right about that, or more right than not.  A lot of the time, when you read or watch stories about people who change into the opposite sex or switch bodies, they're getting hot and bothered right away, but when you get past the part where it's unnerving, breasts are often just kind of weirdly distributed weight, and I have yet to get turned on by trying to get them settled in a bra.  I want the boys to be practical about this.

And, to a certain extent, I want anybody reading this who might give me advice to understand that Rusty and Kutter are very different kids, and I'm not sure what helps one is going to help with the other.  Rusty jumps to making jokes very quickly, while Kutter tries to get his facts straight.  They're good, smart kids, but I sometimes have to pause and consider that in both cases, they might be trying to look more confident than they are.  For instance, they both seemed kind of thrown when we got to the airport and had to get the bags we've inherited from there to Brooklyn in the middle of rush hour.  The airports, the plane, and then the subway were a lot of strangers packed in tight, reminding them of how they were shaped now, and that they were going to have to navigate a much bigger city than they'd ever lived in.

They were glad to see a PlayStation in the apartment's living room, though I told them they had to unpack before starting to play.  They did, snickering at who pulled shoes with higher heels or skimpier panties out of their luggage, and then laughed when they saw that it was apparently Emilia's, or mine now.  We got pizza and then they played until well past midnight.

The next morning, I was up before them again, so I took inventory.  Mostly well-stocked on cleaning products in the bathroom.  Nothing worrisome in the medicine cabinet.  A lot of food in the fridge needed to be thrown out, since the apartment had been empty a couple weeks longer than expected, and there were other things I stared at for a while.  There was some instant pancake mix, so I figured we were having pancakes for breakfast.

Around 9am, the boys rolled out of their rooms in nightshirts and cotton shorts, ready to dig in.  We ate, and then before they could start arguing about who got to shower first, I told them to stay at the table.

I cleared my throat.  "I assume both of you have looked in the girls' checking accounts online, just to make sure the information the ladies put in their letters was accurate?"  They nodded, saying that, like mine, it was just a few thousand dollars, including anonymous wire transfers that seemed to confirm that Emilia, Monica, and Katey did in fact have money to burn in their new lives and were willing to help us get started.  "Okay.  Well, I've looked at the lease.  That's not going to get us to the end of the year, let alone to when the Inn reopens in May.  We're going to need jobs.  All of us."

They looked a bit stunned; between their mother's life insurance and my own pretty good wages, they had never had to work during the school year and Kutter had only had his first part-time job this summer, and I'd told him not to go overboard.  As much as they hadn't really cut loose, the previous few days had still kind of been vacation, and I don't know that they'd considered how everyday life is going to work yet.

I'd been standing and pacing, so I sat back down.  "Look, I know that the big change in the past few days has been becoming girls, but you've also become adults, and that's part of it.  I'm sorry."  I suddenly found myself choking up.  "I shouldn't have to ask this of you, but this is the situation we're in, and it's going to take all of us."  They nodded.

There was an awkward pause, and I cleared my throat a few times.  "On the subject of being adults...  I suppose you noticed that there is beer and wine in the refrigerator, and you may have found, uh, other things in your rooms."

Kutter turned red.  "It's big and bendy and right in the middle of her underwear drawer and I wish I hadn't touched it!"

"Um, okay, I'm sure the girls all have one of those somewhere.  I was mostly thinking of the weed gummies I found in Emilia's desk drawer."  Kutter somehow turned redder and buried his face in his hands.  "Hey, it's okay.  But, anyway, here's the thing:  When we do get jobs, we're probably going to be coming and going at different times and I won't be able to watch you.  I'm going to have to trust you two to be as smart as I know you are, and that might not always mean saying no to everything."

"So...  What you're saying is I should go grab a beer now so that I'll know what I'm in for if someone wants to hang out after work sometime?"

I gave Rusty a look I hoped was withering.  "Well, not now, it's ten in the morning, for crying out loud."  The boys and I laughed, but kind of nervously.  "But, to be serious, it's something we've got to think about.  We're all going to have to try a lot of things without a lot of practice between now and May, and, well, I don't want you to be afraid of it.  I'll be there for you any time - no matter what happens, I'll always choose to be your Dad rather than your friend Emilia."

They seemed to appreciate that, and we all spent the rest of the morning looking for jobs online.  It's a little strange - I may be in possession of Emilia's Political Science degree, but I don't really know much about it, and the boys are in the same boat, so we're all kind of applying for jobs that don't really need a degree - but I keep reading about how unemployment is low, so we'll probably come up with something soon enough.

-Aidan/Emilia

Jordan/Yuan-Wei: Mothers & Matrimonies

Hey all, been a minute.  Just dropping in to congratulate Jonah/Krystle on her engagement and state for the record that while I would feel like a complete asshole to ask her to choose a date that's either the weekend before or the one after my brother Max's wedding next summer so that I could just take a couple weeks of vacation and minimize the brutal jet lag next June, I am absolutely not above just casually mentioning this circumstance in a slice-of-life blog entry about how I've evidently reached the point in my life where everybody I know is getting married and it's kind of a pain in the ass.

I am, of course, pretty happy for everybody in my life who is tying the knot, especially them, although I'm not likely to join them any time soon; I had a long string of bad dates before meeting the guy I'm seeing now.  The funny thing is that my mother is starting to get antsy, quoting some statistics about women over 30 getting married or having children, and I tell her that wither you consider me a man over thirty or a woman under, but you can't mix them up willy-nilly like that.  She says it's perfectly reasonable - I've lived that long and I certainly seem to identify as a woman - but she's had two kids and is about to attend her second wedding, anything from me is a bonus.

Meanwhile, both of the Chen-Ais got married this summer, and I was a bridesmaid at both.

For original Chen-Ai/current Bingbing, it's to some guy whose family owns a bunch of factories in Guangzhou, who doesn't seem particularly evil himself, but the rest of his family and friends...  Ugh.  This was my first trip into the Mainland, which I gather isn't necessarily that big a deal for a lot of Hong Kongers, but I've been kind of skittish about it.  I'm not politically outspoken, but folks know I've spent a lot of time in the United States and that I tend to take that perspective.  Plus, I'm a Chinese-American guy who has taken over the life of a Chinese woman and while we've all experienced how the Inn's magic keeps people from believing in it, maybe there's someone in the Chinese government who sees me or the "Lee Yuan-Wei" identity as an asset.  Or just a criminal.

It doesn't seem to have bothered Bingbing, though, who after draining her old bank accounts as much as she could without the lawyers starting to lean on her sought out a new potential rich husband, and this guy is probably a good target because he may technically be what they used to call a "princeling" - wealthy family, educated abroad, not involved with the business's day-to-day - he seems to be an earnest socialist and humble.  Enough that, after I'd wound up dragged along on a few outings with them, I asked if she has Inn-related plans for him, and she stook her tongue out saying "yuk, no interest in having one of those things on my body, and his is big that I don't know what I'd do with it."  I gave her a look and she said she liked being Bingbing and wasn't looking to change.  Much more fun, she says, to be the pretty wife who is good at social things than actually running the business

I think she remembered my skepticism, though, because I fucking swear she had the dressmaker make my bridesmaid dress tighter, shorter, and doing more to push my tits up into a plunging neckline than when we tried them on, so I spent the whole wedding and reception looking like I was some tacky Kong Girl trolling for a rich Mainland husband of my own from among the much-less likable folks on hand.  Just gross even when they weren't grabbing my ass.

(It's been a while, but, no, I haven't become a shrinking violet or anything; I just enjoy guys pawing me a whole lot more after we've established we like and trust each other than before, and part of that is them not being asshats because I'm not one to hide what yoga and dance do for me!)

I admit, I did agree to a date with the least-objectionable one, but I'm glad the night ended on a silly-seeming pop-cultural argument as opposed to actually getting near a second date.  And that wasn't all bad; the guy I'm seeing now had actually been in the restaurant and mentioned it when a dating app matched us up, saying that I was right and he was impressed at my willingness to call something a red flag.  So not a total disaster.

I'm happy for the newest model Chen-Ai, though.  As much as she's made some solid progress in that identity, Cantonese is a tough language to learn at her age.  Six months ago, she met a nice man her apparent age that works at one of the large UK-based banks, they hit it off, and when he was reassigned back home, he proposed.  And while immigrating to a new country by marrying someone from there is not nearly as straightforward as people assume - I've reap up on this "just in case" - Hong Kong to the UK is apparently one of the easier cases; the new quasi-stepfather says that making it easier for Hong Kongers who held UK passports before the handover easier to immigrate was one of the few good/competent things Boris Johnson did.

This was a much smaller ceremony, as a lot of Chen-Ai's friends have sort of fallen away as she disappeared and returned as someone else who had a hard time communicating with her.  It's good, I guess; she's going to be starting a new life on the other side of the world and being able to make a clean break is probably pretty handy, but she gave me this big hug like I was her actual daughter and thanked me for how much I'd helped her to be able to get by so that she could meet someone like him.

I'm not sure what to do with that, really.  I know that I was often a real asshole before going to the Inn and especially while I was Deirdre, and I don't really recall a point when I decided to stop being an asshole.  Anne likes to point to me deciding Benny could keep my old life as that moment, and, maybe, but sometimes I feel like I was more intimidated than generous there, or what it means that I had to be made attractive or female for me to treat others well.  I like myself more than I did, and it's not just knowing that there are folks out there who want to fuck me.  If the thing I've got going now doesn't work out, I know I'll be okay.

But Chen-Ai didn't have anyone from her old life when she got married as Bingbing; her real daughter and the real Bingbing are men in Montreal and I gather she didn't really have any regrets about their not being there.  I don't know if the original Yuan-wei will come when and if I get married, but she came to graduation and we get along okay.  We'll find a way to explain why my folks are there.

Is there a point to this?  Probably not.  It's just been crazy hot and busy and I've had my weekends eaten by weddings lately and I needed to blow off some steam.

-Jordo

Aidan/Emlia: Congratulations?

Congratulations!  You get to be Emilia H---!  I know, you're probably wondering, what's the catch, but there isn't one.  Me and my friends Monica & Katey have been upgraded to really amazing new lives (maybe I'll tell you who we are someday, although you'll understand if we choose to keep it close to the vest for right now).  But that means you and whoever is in the next room get to be us, no strings attached!

That's how the letter i found in the luggage left in my room at the Trading Post Inn starts.  The guy at the hot dog stand says that's unusual, that mostly they're apologetic or laying out what they would rather you not do, or assuring you that you'll be able to return to your real life.  But, he said, it's not unheard of; a fair number of people as young as I look now tend to be impulsive, especially if their new lives look good, so maybe don't worry about it too much unless we don't hear from them or the folks taking over our lives when next year's slots open.

Sorry for kind of starting in the middle here, but I didn't contribute to the blog when we first checked in since it looked like some sort of scam or identity theft thing.  Conventional identity theft, that is.  This just seems like the weirdest part, at least for this blog, so I wanted to put it up top and get people's attention to see if they can help.  Maybe not to reverse this in some way that cheats whatever is making the Inn do this, but because I'm not sure I've seen anything about anyone in quite our situation.

Introductions:  I'm Aidan, until a couple days ago, a man in my late 40s.  I've got two sons, 15-year-old Rusty and 16-year-old Kutter; we lost their mother about ten years ago, and I never found anyone else, although I didn't exactly spend a lot of time looking, because raising two young boys doesn't exactly give you a lot of free time.  These two weeks at Old Orchard were our first real summer vacation in a couple of years.

We'd actually packed to go home the next morning when we went to bed Wednesday night; I set my alarm for 6am.  When it went off, I bolted upright, and then noticed that it was just a little pain around my chest rather than my back punishing me for that.  I looked down, saw that my undershirt was like a tent and the neckline drooped low enough that I could see I had breasts, then ran to the bathroom to take a look in the mirror.

I'm pretty, though my hair's a mess, and my boxers are riding a bit low on my hips.  I do a quick feel inside and almost pass out.

I don't, though, and remember the flier on the desk that said something about not disturbing or looking inside any luggage stored in the closet unless I really need explanations, and that's when I find the letter Emilia left, telling me about the Inn and details of her living situation.  My head's still spinning, because first I think, well, I can't just go off and leave the boys, then worry that they're going to be attracted to me, and then it hits me that the curse is on the Inn, not the room, and I rush through the shared bathroom into their room.

There's two women in there, asleep.  I guess one is Rusty, because (s)he's thrown all the covers off the bed in her sleep the way that he does; (s)he's Asian-American (half-Korean, we'll later learn) and has a hand resting on a bare breast.  The other must be Kutter; (s)he's laying on his/her stomach, one arm dangling over the side of the bed and snoring, brown hair kind of getting in his/her mouth.

I walk over to him first, pull him hair back and give him a shake on the shoulder.  He groggily rubs his eyes with the back of his wrist, opens them, and gives a kind of confused smile.  "Do I know you?"

"All your life, kiddo.  C'mon, I'll show you."  We walk to the bathroom, I put him in front of the mirror, and his eyes go wide.  He taps the glass with a finger, pulls it back, looks over his shoulder to see Rusty feeling himself up and then over the other to see my empty room.

"Dad?  What's going on?"

"Near as i can tell, cursed hotel.  You remember the weird pamphlets on the desks and the bags in the closets."  He gives me a look like I'm planning some elaborate prank, and I shrug.  "I'm in the same boat you are, kiddo, but we'll get through it.  Now, why don't you go to my room for a second so I can help your brother?"  He nods, and I walk over to Rusty's bed.  I'm about to wake him the same way as Kutter, but decide to cover him with a sheet first.  

It lasts a second; as soon as I shake his shoulder he bolts upright, feels that he's cupping his left breast in his right hand, and looks down.  "What the f---?"  Seeing me in the room,  he uses his other hand to cover the other one, then starts thinking aloud.  "If I've got those..."  He gets what coverage he can with his right forearm and then reaches his left hand into his boxers.  "WHAT THE F---?!"

I don't scold him about language.  "Near as I can tell, the place is cursed.  I'm your Dad, and Kutter's in the other room.  Same thing happened to him.  It turned us into the last people to stay here.  I guess these two rooms were occupied by young women."

"No kidding!" He took his hand out of his shorts, looked around, and saw his clothes from the day before by the bed.  "Uh, do you mind?"  I nodded and turned around until he said it was okay.  He was blushing - he hadn't hit his growth spurt yet, and while he hadn't gotten that much taller, the shirt was tight and hiding nothing.  "I, uh, think I'm going to need some new underwear."  His eyes were also going to what was showing for me.  "I think we all are."

I nodded, and said that this is what the luggage left in the room was for, so we told Kutter he could come back in and that's when we found out that Rusty had become "Monica" and Kutter was "Katey" (I'm not going to give our new or old last names, but Rusty groaned when he saw the full name on the driver's license).  We're all 21 or 22 years old - Rusty had a good laugh at being three months older than Kutter now - graduated from the same college and sharing an apartment in Brooklyn.  All of the letters suggested they really liked their new lives and wished us good luck.

I quickly got the idea that the boys didn't want me in the room as they got changed, and I figured that was reasonable; it's not like I've got any special expertise I could offer them.  I did grumble while getting my bra on the first time, envious that maybe they could help each other out.  I must admit that I didn't really know what to do with my hair until I knocked on the door and saw that Kutter had used one of the elastic loops I thought was worn on the wrist to put his into a ponytail.  We'd all gone for t-shirts, slacks, and sneakers, with Kutter grumbling that Katey had just thrown all her clean and dirty clothes into the same parts of the suitcase and who does that?

The next few days were surreal.  We visited the hot dog stand and the guy there gave us some useful hints, mostly not to worry too much because people tend to accept the obvious reality in front of them rather than pick at something that seems wrong.  The first month of learning your body's new normal will be horrifying, but after that, it's only a big deal if you make it that way.  And almost everyone can tread water for a year.

Also, we were in a beach town, but none of us really felt like dressing for the beach.  I tried to set a good example of being comfortable by wearing shorts yesterday - it was pretty close to the last clean clothes Emilia left me - but, wow, that's a lot of leg to show and it was stubbly enough for folks to make comments that made me self-conscious despite everything.

Oh, also - we weren't in the Inn for the last few days, because our check-out time was Thursday morning and their texts were very insistent about us being out of the room, saying that the next couple weeks for the Inn were fully booked and "many people are adamant about their choice of room", leaving out the part about it being about turning back.  It turns out that it is cheaper to find a motel and fly "home" to New York today rather than try to get a flight between Friday and Sunday.

That leaves us here, at the Portland International Jetport (I know a lot of people like to use the train but it's almost as expensive to take that between Boston and New York as flying), hoping there aren't more surprises waiting for us in the big city.

-Aidan/Emilia

Daryl/Zee: Where to next?

Stayed in the hotel room for a couple of nights, but I'm not exactly loaded enough to do that long-term, so I went looking for apartments, but as you might expect, that's also crazy in New York, even when you get to lesser neighborhoods.  I found one that looked pretty nice, and then I got Inn-brain and stopped short of signing a lease.

Breaking up with J.T. messed me up, like every breakup kind of messes you up for a while, except that every cell of my body had been changed from what they had been before I met him to facilitate being with him, and while I wasn't going to try and demand my old life back - it had been freely given with assurances about this very situation, and even if I had done so because I hadn't thought it was ever going to happen then, I'm not that kind of person - the thought of becoming a man again was certainly at the front of my mind.  So I figured, let's not commit to anything.

I don't think I'm gong to do that, though.  I've gotten used to being Zariyah Andrews, and while I'm at least the third Zee, so it's not like I've been entrusted this life by its original owner, I've tried to form some bonds with her mother and other people on her contact list because I feel like I've been entrusted with them.  I've been a woman for long enough that I'd have to not just adjust to all the details of a new life but relearn what it's like to be a man.  And, ultimately, after spending six years with J.T. and seeing it end in an afternoon, I'm ready to move forward.

But how?  And where?

I've come to really like New York, and while I could probably spend the next thirty years in Manhattan and never cross paths with someone I knew from dating J.T., I kind of don't want to risk it.  I don't want to accidentally run into Magda-4 or Harmon/Alicia, either.  Harlem is tempting; I've got a short-term rental there now, and I kind of hadn't realized just how much the Black part of my life was missing until now.

Going back home to Chicago is also tempting, but it kind of feels wrong.  I'll be tempted to return to familiar places, but form new relationships there, and drive myself nuts when they aren't quite like the old ones.  That's something I did being three of J.T.'s girlfriends, and it wears on you.  Plus, I might run into new-Daryl, and that's also weird.

A weird thing I kind of wasn't expecting is how many of the friends I've made as Zee find this course of action completely reasonable.  They know my backstory, that I met J.T. and uprooted my life to be with him and were sympathetic to both the impulse and the way it blew up and left me adrift, and it's a kind of funny thing that both sexes will react mostly the same way, but with slightly different different emphasis.  Men and women both find it romantic, but men tend more to "she's setting you up and is going to think it's funny when she dumps you" while women are usually more thinking about he might wind up hurting you without thinking about it and you'll be without a support system.  Not all men (does that rate a "TM"?), obviously, and not all women, but on the average.

So by the same logic, men will hear you talking about moving after a relationship ends and think you're nuts ("don't give her the satisfaction!") and women will be like, yeah, that's kind of extreme, but I get it and have sometimes wished it were an option for me - and are you okay, by the way?  Again, not everyone in a demographic, but there's a trend.

Looking over this, it makes it sound like I think J.T.'s dangerous, and he's not, and I don't think he would be if I stuck around but continued to reject any attempt to reconcile.  I just kind of find this really interesting and worth focusing on, because having been with him for so long, the fact that the end of a relationship can be an especially scary time for a woman is something I've avoided.  But it's something I'll have to keep in mind for the future, especially if I wind up someplace without other Inn veterans for support.

-Zee

Jonah/Krystle: Just a bridesmaid, not yet a bride

 ... but it's good to see things from inside.

(Doesn't exactly rise from just rhyming to poetry, does it?)

So, I don't talk about the family I was shoved into a lot these days.  Part of moving to New Orleans was that being part of someone else's family is weird, after all, and it's not fair since Momma Kamen and Karla and the rest don't know that they're part of this weird identity-switch thing so they shouldn't be too much a part of the blog without knowing.  But it sometimes means I'm probably not fair to them; Karla, especially, probably got a raw deal because I still kind of looked down on women like her, raising multiple kids from multiple men and moving back in with her mother, when I first became Krystle, and even when my life started running on a similar track, I had a tendency to see it as God teaching me humility, which can kind of let you still think less of someone, like the important lesson is "don't be a jerk about it" as opposed to actual empathy.  That she kind of enjoyed her little sister getting knocked down a peg didn't exactly make things easier.

But things are better between us now, and not just because we're far apart and our kids liked each other.  She's also really gotten her life together as well, and while I certainly know a lot better than I would have before to say it's because she's got a good man in her life, Rakim's presence has not exactly hurt.  They both seem to think so too, because (as I'm sure anyone reading this has guessed by now), they got married on Saturday.

Also obvious:  I was a bridesmaid.  It's kind of weird, because I'm not really her sister and I don't know if I would have been just a few years back when we saw each other often, but I suspect she might have included her sister Krystle just to please her mom even if she or I had been fighting.  Which meant that I took a full week of vacation for this and flew up to Boston with Moira last Friday.

We got there ahead of Gabe, so I checked into the hotel he had booked and took Moira to the Children's Museum, which isn't far off from where his train would get in at South Station.  I'd kind of expected this to be a group thing, figuring that when I told Moira we were taking a trip back East, she'd want to see some of her old friends, but she never mentioned them.  It's been two years, I know, an eternity for a little kid, but she had left her old life more or less completely behind.

Eventually, Gabe got in, and we made an early night of it after getting some dinner because even one time zone change can hit a kid hard when bedtime is supposed to be 8pm.  Sitting in the hotel room with Gabe that night was kind of a strange sensation, because we hadn't arrived a week early just so that we could see the fireworks on the Fourth - we were going to be introducing him to a fair number of people, and wanted to do it early enough so as not to look like we were stealing the bride's thunder.

And we did.  Of course, Saturday was already spoken for, as Karla had made an appointment for me to actually try on my bridesmaid's dress so the shop could do any alterations.  She clucked a bit about forgetting how muscular climbing made my arms - I really like it, but I readily admit that anything sleeveless really highlights them and anything with sleeves looks tight unless it's fairly loose, and because of my chest, anything too loose makes me look fat; even when I'm not going to a wedding, I try everything on before buying, which I never did as a guy - but she rightly cooed about how adorable Moira was in her "junior bridesmaid" dress.  Seven is apparently too old to be flower girl, and Rakim has a younger niece.

Then we spent most of the day with Karla, her kids, Rakim, Momma Kamen, and some other Kamen family I've probably never mentioned.  Some of them had met Gabe before, but either before I was Krystle or during the height of the pandemic, so it was basically new.  They all seem to like him, although there were a lot of questions about whether he knew about "my" wild past, and thus a lot of cutesy "I'm a whole different woman these days".

Sunday was a chance to see "Big Moira", who remains completely taken with her namesake and joked about how if she'd known that all it took to get me to visit was someone getting married, she'd have started looking harder for men who aren't complete shite years ago (leaving Little Moira confused as to whether or not she'd said a bad word).

After that, it sort of became a blur.  My parents came down to see Moira and meet Gabe, which justifiably left him a bit confused as to why I almost seemed more excited to see them than my mother and sister, and I said it was complicated, that they'd been a big help when I was pregnant and continued to be even though things were really complicated between me, them, "Jonah", his girlfriend, etc.  Hopefully he'll never have any reason to really dig into the chronology of it, because we all kind of stretched the truth a lot.

While Gabe and Mom were playing with Moira in a park, Dad chuckled, saying he never thought he'd be telling me I'd found a really good man, then awkwardly mentioned that he didn't know if he and Mom would have been okay if it had come to that without all the Inn weirdness.  He likes to think he would, but it's taken them a long time to really come to grips with it, especially since he really didn't understand if I was trans, nonbinary, or what now.  I said I really didn't either, that I know some people in the same boat who have gotten into what the Inn does to our gender identities, but I've just been trying to take it as it comes, and eventually Gabe was part of what came.

He was being very careful about asking whether, in the moment Gabe had proposed, I had felt like I could tell him the truth.  I knew that part of the question was that if I had, I'd be able to tell him who Mom and Dad really are to me, and it probably hurt them a little that I hadn't.  I told him truthfully that I was overwhelmed in the moment, and that as I thought about it afterwards, I wasn't sure.  Gabe's not homophobic or transphobic, to the point where I've seen him tell a guy that hit on him that he had a girlfriend, but, hey, it can't hurt to ask, but I don't know if I want to because it's hard to kick out one of the things a relationship was originally built on even if we've created a much more solid foundation.  He understood, and understands that I hate lying, but hopes that maybe I'll see it from another perspective sometime.

After that, there was Karla's bachelorette party; I haven't had that much to drink in a long time, and I've really glad that I legitimately don't know any embarrassing stories about her youth, because maybe I'd have spilled them.  Karla seemed to appreciate what she saw as my restraint, though.  We rented a canoe to watch the Fourth of July fireworks from the river, which was a thing everyone should do at least once even if it's not exactly easy to be part of a mob returning small boats to a dock in the dark at 11pm and then another mob getting on public transportation.

Then Saturday, an the wedding, and my God, am I going to have to be in the middle of that next year?  So much makeup, and hair, and calling the venues to make sure everything is okay.  I've never been this close to the center - I was a last-minute plus-one at the only one I've been to as a woman and barely remember any I went to as a kid - and I absolutely understand why "wedding planner" is a business.  I manage a small franchise location, which is like a half-dozen employees and maybe a couple dozen guests at a time, and while a lot of the concerns are the same, it's like ten times as many people, everyone is emotionally heightened, and I've probably got more experience in management then most people who suddenly have to plan a party for a hundred folks who will try to take advantage of being your good friend or family do.

But, Karla looked beautiful in her dress, Momma Kamen cried about how strange it was to be really on her own for the first time since she was in her twenties (although I ribbed her about the silver fox she'd brought as her plus one), we danced into the night, and, boy, was Gabe really still full of energy when we went back to our hotel because Moira was ready to drop.  Spooning afterwards, he asked if I still wanted to go through with that, and I honestly said that, yeah, I did, although I'm still trying to talk myself into a big life-change requiring you work yourself up about it so much.

Sunday morning, we all had a nice brunch before Karla & Rakim jetted off to their honeymoon in Bermuda, and then we parted ways at South Station as Gabe got on a train and Moira and I headed to the airport.  Hopefully, we're not going to be parting at the end of a weekend much longer; he's visiting NOLA early next month so we can look at neighborhoods even if we're not exactly looking at specific houses, since he trusts me to be the person on-site while he looks through the phone's camera.

I guess that's our next step, just a year behind Karla.

-Jonah/Krystle

Daryl/Zee: You Would THINK This All Counted for Something!

I still think of myself as pretty young, because not only does Jonah/Krystle have a point about your self-image kind of freezing as you were the first time you went to the Trading Post, but I was Magda for four years, and even after almost two years as Zariyah "Zee" Andrews, I still know what it's like being past menopause, feeling a little worn down, and having people look askance at you and your younger boyfriend.  I've been feeling like I imagine a young woman feels.

Except, well, I'm not, entirely.  When I talk to my "mom", she asks if I'm ever going to give her grandchildren.  I've started wearing reading glasses on occasion.  Younger people in the office say I look good "for my age".  And, I admit, when I saw that Jonah's boyfriend had proposed, it kind of hit me that I had been with J.T. for over six years and we hadn't really talked about it.  Well, we kind of had, but we'd more talked about talking about it - this is my fourth face, after all, and before I got it we kind of needed to be able to uncouple and recouple without a lot of fuss.  It hasn't been that way for a while, though.

I started to fret about it with a girlfriend, being vague about some things and trying to come up with "equivalent lies" for others, and she pointed out that I had, from the sound of it, made the first move throughout our relationship, so maybe that was just our vibe.  It felt like a really obvious thing when she put it like that; after all, I'd been the guy and he was Elaine when we met, I had gone to him when I was Elaine, had made the huge gesture to let fate decide if I should get another body, moved to his city (twice!), and sought out this younger shape myself.  He had gone along with what I wanted and was ready for, and it wasn't just dropping hints.  I was going to have to ask him.

So I went to a jeweler, let them think that I was proposing to a girlfriend, and bought a pair of matching engagement rings, both with small, kind of subtle diamonds.  We both wear jewelry, though it's more often just an earring or a pinky ring for him and I'm not a lot fancier.  Yesterday afternoon, I got the call that it was finished, and I told my co-workers that I'd be knocking off early to pick it up, and would check in later in the evening.  I got the rings, headed back to the apartment, and smiled a bit as I heard the noises from the bedroom.  This is going to sound stupid, but J.T. has been on this Euro-sleaze kick lately, "research" for a film that thought it would be fun to cast the former teen idol as the svengali figure, but also because they're kind of dumb fun, which is why I didn't think anything of opening the door and asking what he was watching.

Only to see him fucking Harmon Keller-slash-Alicia Polawski-slash-Harmony Kelton on our bed.

He was on his back and she was riding him cowgirl, so he saw me come in and pulled his hands from her breasts and tried to push himself away, and she looked over her shoulder and smirked, nonchalantly pulling away from my boyfriend's cock, picking up her uniform and slipping it on over her head, then grabbing her high heels but not bothering with her underwear as she used her other hand to grab the roller bag from the corner of the room.  She blew him a little kiss, mouthing "call me", then favored me with a quiet "bye mom" as she sauntered to the door and then the elevator.

As Magda, I'd given a probably-reasonable but probably also unhealthy amount of thought to what I would do if J.T. ever cheated on me, and the answer turned out to be cool anger.  As he reached for his boxers, I stepped on them so he couldn't pick them up off the floor and stared downward.  "All the actresses and models you work with, the girls who had a crush on you as kids, all the other women in fucking Manhattan, and you do this with fucking Harmon Keller?"

I was apparently angry enough that he feared I would do something violent, because he moved his hands to cover his shriveling, now semi-erect dick.  "Honey, it's not like that!  I mean, yes, Harmon can kind of be a pain, but she's like us, and was nervous about embracing this part of womanhood, so when we met while she was doing an audition for something while I was shooting in the same building, she asked for some pointers, and--"

"She was at an audition?  I talk to Magda, asshole, and I know she hasn't been trying to get into show business beyond her YouTube thing for a year and half!  How long has this been going on?"

He repeated the sound "I" a lot.

"It started while I was still Magda, didn't it, and she was me but with a perfect ass and nothing sagging and buttering you up about how she still wasn't sure she knew what she was doing but you were such a good teacher and nobody else would understand, didn't it?"

He lowered his head.  "Yes."

"And you probably ate it all up, didn't you?  And you know what, I'll bet she's been pushing you to do stuff that made it more likely you'd get caught, right?  She's hated me ever since I told her I'd be moving out of that apartment in Oakland any more and probably figured blowing up the thing that took sabotaged her easy little life would be good revenge."

Apparently suggesting that she wasn't primarily into him was the thing that would get him to react.  "Honey, it's not about you--"

I leaned in.  "It's about me even if the bitch didn't mean it to be.  Do you not understand that I started completely new lives twice for you?  That the only time I've talked to my original family in six years was at Elaine's wedding, and that was just small talk from a former co-worker?  That instead of Magda, I could have become somebody who wouldn't make it through the winter?  All so you don't have to sacrifice one bit of your comfortable situation!"

"Look, I never asked you to do any of that!"

"Oh, but you let me, and said how lucky you were to have someone who loved you that much!  And this is how you repay me, going behind my back with that asshole!"  Angry, I walked over to a closet, pulled out a suitcase, and started putting some clothes into it.

His expression shifted a little, like I sometimes saw at work from someone who figured I'd left myself open.  "Come on, let's talk about this!  Where are you going to go?"

"It's New York, there are hotels.  Not like I can exactly crash with Magda, is it?"

"Come on, you said yourself, we've got so much invested in this!"

I turned around.  "I said I have a lot invested in this.  You, apparently, just have a couple of closets!"

I didn't wait for a response and took about the same path Harmon had toward the elevator, and realized that I didn't even really have a travel app on my phone on the way down - J.T. had taken care of any vacations we took, and the couple of times I've traveled for work, the office handled it.  I wound up just looking for hotels on Google Maps, which I suppose is fine, but probably cost me.

Anyway, this is my second night in this room, and I'm not sure what to do.  J.T. has left a few voice mails and text, but I feel like he should be trying harder to get in touch with me?  Is that just crazy woman brain, crazy guy brain, or me knowing just how central this relationship is and expecting it to be valued similarly?

-Zee?

Ande: New nickname!

Well, at least I'm going to try giving it a spin.  Don't know if I like it yet, but maybe the weird combination of letters nobody else uses will help make some stuff feel normal!

Anyway, like I mentioned last time, my twin and I are working at the same place this summer - a colleague of our dad's retired, opened an Italian restaurant, and hired us to work there.  I started the other night and did a double take we got into the car and I saw the "Andie" nametag my brother-slash-sister was wearing.  "What's up with that?" I said, giving it a tap.

"What do you mean - oh!  Of course, you wouldn't have known to change the contacts on your phone just hearing it!  You know how it is, it's always weird writing our names and feeling like we're impersonating each other, right?  We did it for the last two years of high school because people would give us weird looks if we changed it, but it's weird, right?  Like,  whenever I try to sign 'Andi' with an I in cursive, my hand feels like it's doing something wrong."

I gave an uh-huh.  I don't know if other folks who've been to the Inn have that sensation, or if it's just us, because our names are so similar and I often find myself correcting myself midway through the word.

"Right, so I figured, heck, I don't need to do that at a new school, and adding that extra E, and for some reason, that doesn't seem like I'm forging your signature, or trying to lay claim to everything you've done, or, you know.  It's, like, mine."  She kind of mumbled that last bit.

"Huh."  I just sat there for a moment, thinking.  "Shit.  I don't want to be a Drew."

She laughed.  "You are so not a Drew!  And you're really not a Dre!"

"Oh my god, can you imagine me going back to school in the fall and trying to get people to call me Dre after being Andy for a year?  Everyone I know would mock me and I would deserve it!"

"Maybe you could go with two Ys or something?  Or E-E?"

I gave a fake-pensive look and said that maybe one E would work.  "Andie" liked it, so I'm trying that out and accepting that a bunch of folks are just going to call me "And".

The job's okay; I'm mostly busing tables while Andie is up front as the hostess, which means she can sort of stay put rather than walking around.  I'm not sure which of us has the better job - I've got to move a lot of stuff around but she's got to deal with people who are irate that they can see an open table and she can worry about the people who have a reservation in 15 minutes if and when they arrive - but I do kind of wonder if I've got the right attitude for hers these days.  I've done a pretty good job getting the testosterone and bad temper it can cause under control, I think, but I do kind of appreciate not having to do that sort of thing.

It's funny to watch, though - like I said yesterday, I don't necessarily feel the need to turn my maleness up at any point, even if I'm kind of absorbing it, but I do see Andie kind of turning girl stuff on and off, or at least adjusting her levels.  I asked her about it on the first drive home after work, and she shrugged, saying that I know it's something all girls have to do in a male-dominated world and and that she has to do it even more, both because of how she grew up and because she's consciously been trying to work out who and what Andie's going to be ever since she found out about the long covid.  She doesn't know if there's really a version of Andie that she'll ever be all the time, even more than other women who have to have their guard up.

When we got home, I asked Mom and Dad if they'd known about Andie doing the name thing and if "Ande" was silly, and they were just as surprised as Andie that I hadn't realized she'd done that.  They immediately changed their contact lists to show "Ande", though, and felt encouraged that we were staking out their own new identities.  I'm not sure how rare that is, and how much of it's because the Inn left us like this, but there are a lot of folks whose parents are not nearly as supportive of figuring out who they are and want to be, and I do appreciate that.

-Ande

(BTW: I kind of want to apologize if I've given the impression that Andie is stupid or foolish in my posts.  She's actually quite smart, even with brain fog sometimes slowing the process down a bit, and this kind of thing is more in her wheelhouse than mine, which I'm especially well-aware of from trying to take classes in her intended major last fall.  I blog when mad or frustrated a lot, and it doesn't always tell the whole story)