Marc Green: I never expected to find myself here

Here as in Maine. Here as in this weird old "Inn" that looks like it's seen better days. Here as in... staring down divorce shortly after my 35th birthday.

Laura and I haven't completely thrown in the towel yet, but things aren't looking good. We've been together for ten years and I don't know how else to put it but it simply feels like the relationship has... run out of gas. We've become strangers to each other. We seem to be happier apart. We fight over really stupid things and just walk around pissed off. I think the resentment has just built and built because of certain decisions that I made, but if she can't understand where I was coming from with them, then I don't think it was meant to be. We're several years into this situation and nothing's going to change, besides getting worse.

Someone wise once said if you do what you always do you always get what you've always gotten.

When Laura met me, I was finishing law school. I was clean cut, upwardly mobile, and energetic. She was a budding entrepreneur, and, same as she is today, the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. We had something of a tempestuous dating period, broke up, got back together, got married, and decided to try to find our way together.

The usual sticking points -- where to live, whether to have kids -- troubled us, but there was always love. But I didn't feel right in my life. 80-hour weeks were killing me, I cracked. I quit my job and became a rideshare driver while I tried to figure out what was next.

She didn't approve. That makes it sounds like she's some kind of harpy, but she had a point. We had a certain standard of living and I had pledged to support her business, which was now reasonably successful and self-sustaining but not "lucrative." She chided me for putting in long days on the road making less money than my long days at the desk had.

Then the pandemic hit. You can fill in the rest.

We decided to take this trip... I'm not sure why. Either as a last ditch effort to see what we love about each other, or as a big send-off before we file. I'm trying to be charming and sweet, and take her out to dinner, go dancing, see the beach, whatever she wants to do. Let's leave Marc and Laura's problems back in Boston. There's a celebratory air here, with people hoping for the first "real" summer in this sleepy resort town in years. Let's try to catch it.

Andi/Andy: Weird Christmas Break

For those who feel like I left my last post on a cliffhanger, Andy's date with Len was, sadly, not a disaster. I'm mostly happy about that, I guess. As much as it puts them on a path to having sex before we switch back, it's not like I want Andy to feel like his friend is rejecting him, and I sort of like the idea that he might find me attractive, even if a lot of it comes from actually clicking with his friend. It kind of took talking to Mom and Dad about it to think about it that way, and I don't know if I really fell it, but it could be worse. Andy isn't really that hot on getting that intimate with a guy anyway, so he'll probably be able to take it slow.

Plus, it's created more excuses to hang out with my friend Shawna.  Andy kind of likes to have me around when he and Len are out to kind of cool things off and warn him when he's getting out of character, so we find a way to invite her to keep anyone from feeling like a third wheel.  At first, it was super-awkward - she knew what was up in general, if not the extent of it, obviously, and didn't know what to say to "Andy" when "Andi" and "Len" were focusing on each other, but, hey, she suddenly realizes she can talk to "him"-slash-me.  It kind of works out.

Or I hope it does.  If she's trying to send me signals that I should ask her out...

At least being on break means we're not dealing with school right now.  It looks like there's another round of Covid chaos coming up, but at least it's not spending all day worried we'll get called out for not being nearly as knowledgeable in the classroom as we are on our homework - we try to write our own essays and stuff even if we can't take our own tests, hoping like heck that schools aren't going to weight SATs much because we can't fake that.  It's really stressful trying to be both Andi and Andy depending on the hour.

Especially for Christmas!  Since Mom and Dad know the truth and we weren't Zooming with the grandparents to start the morning, we must have looked weird under the tree, with the guy psyched about the Taylor Swift album on vinyl and the girl whooping at some football player's bobblehead (we're not total stereotypes but we're not exactly the opposite of what you'd think if you saw us with our normal bodies).  Mom and Dad like taking reaction pictures, which look screwy, although we kind of had fun recreating them so that they could have some to post on Facebook.  We kind of hammed it up a bit.

Still, the calls with the grandparents were awkward.  They'd mailed us presents from Florida and wanted to watch us open them, so I fake looking excited at what they got Andy and he acts like the hat with the pom-pom on it is way cuter than it is.  I mean, it's pretty cute, but he's not exactly into cute for himself, so he overdoes it a bit.

Lying to them sucks.  Lying to everyone sucks, but lying to them sucks more, and I hate that I'm kind of relieved that they couldn't fly up for the holidays so that I didn't have to be lying to them full time.

-Andi-with-an-I

Jordan/Yuan-Wei: How Did I Become the Voice of Reason?

I hit "new post" to offer some advice to Andi after reading her post, but just doing that made me pause, because who the heck am I to offer expertise?  Like, I fell into a situation where it seems like I know what I'm doing and have the resources to cushion my stumbles, and every once in a while I get Jonah asking me something like I'd know better just because I graduated college a couple times and now I'm acting like I can just jump into Andi's issues.

But, you know what, I kind of can.  At least enough to say it's okay to be freaked out.

I mean, you look at the way people stop posting individually or sometimes the entire blog gets real quiet for months on end, and you might think that when there's no relationship drama or external circumstances messing with chances to get back to the Inn, you're supposed to just have completely acclimated after a few months or whatever, but it's been seven and a half years for me and it's still weird as hell sometimes - fuck, it's weird more often than not, both because or in spite of being able to let family and friends in.

Anyway, I can speak to her specific situation a bit - go ahead and let a guy suddenly having an interest in Andy-as-you throw you!  Maybe you never though of him that way, but he sounds like he was a big deal and it's totally natural to have trouble with the idea that someone else is being a better you than you could be.  Benny dropped a huge chunk of fat that I'd just accepted and had girls looking at him in ways that they never looked at me, and even before Kareena, I had a lump in my stomach about fucking that up and then was mad about what he'd taken from me.  Yeah, I relinquished it willingly, but I had to, or else I'd be the asshole, right, and in a really bad situation with a good person.

So, it's probably a little too late because your brother went on his date while you were posting, and maybe it was a comedic disaster that will never be repeated.  But if it's not, tell him it bugs you so that he can slam on the brakes before it gets too late.  He's your brother, and I as much as Max would probably be pissed at me for horning in on his dating life just because it intersected with my life, I'm pretty sure he'd listed.

It's probably going to be nothing, though.  I mean, yeah, you see some people get all caught up in their new hormones and rewired brains and meet someone new or see someone with different eyes and just fucking go for it, but most of the time, diving into a relationship is hard.  Like, I enjoy getting laid and even going on dates, but when it becomes something else, I'm still trying to figure out how to make it work.  A lot of my not posting this year was because I met a guy and it was going well enough that I didn't want to jinx it, but it still never clicked.  I'm not trying to be the guy, exactly, but never really seemed to click as the girl, and a month ago he got frustrated with something stupid and we ended it.

Then again, you guys are teenagers and probably crazy with hormones and he might dive right in thinking he's just going to hang with his best friend and gets really caught up.

Probably not helpful, that last bit, but you've got to consider the possibility.

See, I suck at this.

-Jordo

Andi/Andy: Help!

Do I have the order right for my names?  I was born Andrea, but now I've got to be my brother Andrew, and since we're twins, our folks always made the effort not to elevate one of us over the other, but it always trips me up in stuff where order is important.

I don't know if I'm going to become a regular poster here, but I lost contact with Krystle-slash-Mackenzie when I changed "back", and I'm hoping that she reads it or her foster dad does or something, or maybe someone who has been in a situation close to mine, because I need some advice and Mom and Dad are being no help whatsoever.

So let's start from the top:  My family went to the Trading Post Inn at the start of summer - me, my brother Andy, my mom and my dad - and you know the drill; we got changed into new people, another family like us, who I guess were locals who had stayed at the Inn while some repairs were done on their house.  It was weird - Mom and Dad became Dad and Mom, and we had to get used to new faces - but mostly I was a year older and Andy a year younger, so I got to do some bonus college visits, but Winona's life was enough like mine that I could handle it, and Krystle was around if we wanted to talk to someone who wouldn't think we were crazy.  And since there weren't a whole lot of people making long trips and stuff because of Covid, we were able to do the backwards-reservation thing during the same summer, meaning we could put it all behind us, although we had to tell the school we'd gotten positive tests while we waited to switch back.

That should have been it, but SOMEONE put mine and Andy's luggage on the wrong sides of the room, and we woke up as each other!

Now, don't get me wrong, I love my brother.  We used to say that we were best friends even before we were born, although we've each got our own friends now and don't even have a lot of the same classes because he's weirdly good at social studies while I'm better at math and stuff like that.  He's also almost a foot taller than me - or I guess I'm a foot taller than him now - so I woke up with my panties digging into my hips and everything else that goes with it, and we both really freaked out when we looked under our shirts and pajamas and stuff.  But we instantly knew we were each in the same boat, so I wasn't mad at him or the other way around.

So, we went to our parents and said this had to get fixed, but they pointed out that there wasn't enough time to do it before the Inn closed for the season, so we'd have to spend our junior year like this.  Which sounded gross, although they said that experiencing life as the opposite sex had been good for them, which sounded REALLY gross, but we at least kind of understood what they were saying in theory.  Still, that's a whole year!

We made it kind of a game for a while.  We may have each had our own friends, but we all still knew each other, so we didn't trip up, and the fact that we have different strengths made it a bit easier to make excuses, because we each had to work a little harder at school to keep up, so not a whole lot of extracurriculars, and neither of us were stars anyway.  If I kind of suck at soccer, whatever, Andy was only on the JV team and wasn't counting on a scholarship or anything.  He bombed my audition for the fall play, but I've never had a big role, and he likes doing tech anyway.  We kept busy.

Somewhere in there, we started having to deal with health-class stuff, which was nasty, but we handled it pretty well, if we do say so ourselves.

Which kind of gets us in the general area of what I'm writing about.  Last week was our birthday, and though we hadn't really had joint parties for the past few years because that feels like kid stuff, Mom and Dad suggested we do it this year, and we liked the idea.  It winds up being kind of lame - it's cold and even though we see each other at school all the time and know that we're all vaccinated, folks get nervous in basements when we're not masked and it's weird when we are.  It breaks up kind of early, with just me and Andy's best friend Len hanging around playing some video game while he's giving my friend Shawna a ride home.

"Hey," he says, "I'm gonna ask you something and you don't have to answer if it's weird."

"Trust me," I say, "I'm okay with weird."

"So, I never thought of your sister this way, but for the past couple of months, there's been something different about her, and I was wondering if you'd freak if I asked her out."

I dropped the controller, obviously.

I don't want to make it sound like I've got a crush or anything - Len's been just Andy's friend for as long as I can remember, and I got so used to him as Andy's friend that I never started looking at him that way even when our bodies changed.  And his sure did change - he got tall quick, he's kind of got a perfect physique for the swim team, and he has to shave about twice as often as I do now.  He dated girls a year or two older than him freshman and sophomore years.  Even if I wasn't Andy's twin sister, he'd be out of my league.

Not that I'm unappealing as myself or anything.  I always figured I was average, but I could be a bit more if I put a little work in - my skin and hair were good and I wasn't totally flat or anything.  A little makeup, a lot of brushing, etc., etc.  Andy hasn't been one of those guys you read about on this blog who dives into girly shit or anything and hasn't really developed in a way I hadn't yet - he's maybe in a little better shape than I was before because he enjoys running, but it's not like he's wearing shorts and belly-shirts to show it off, just wedges and chunky-heeled boots on occasion because he feels short - so it's not like he's suddenly the sort of girl that Len notices.

I stalled, saying that "Andi" was her own person and all that, the kind of thing I'd say to Shawna if she suddenly decided my brother was hot, but it kind of felt like it wasn't me talking.  Len left soon after, saying not to tell anyone, but obviously I grabbed Andy when he got back and told him everything.

At first, he looked like he was going to puke, and we laughed at it, him eventually saying it was a terrible idea.  We decided that we'd play it cool - I'd say I was okay with it as him, he'd say it was too weird for him as me, and nobody gets hurt.  We just made one stupid assumption, that Len would ask him one-on-one.

He didn't.  Len asked my brother out in front of all my friends, who of course all said he had to say yes, so he did, and now they're out having dinner before seeing West Side Story (that he's seeing it before me despite me being the real theater girl would be so annoying even if Len wasn't involved!).

I don't really feel like I should be too worried about anything happening tonight, but are we doing the right thing here?  Is this the start of a slippery slope, or something that just messes with our heads even after we change back?

-Andi-with-an-I

Eddie/Theresa: Being Theresa

As impossible as my life has been for the last three weeks or so, I can't imagine what it must be like for the vast majority of people who go to that place and wind up tossed into a new position which is not only out of their experience, but which itself has been left in the lurch, with nobody to help them except maybe someone else who is equally confused.  As much as it's still a shock each morning to wake up as Theresa Moreau and reacquaint myself with all the female things that I'm not yet taking for granted, I at least grew up in her hometown, and was at least a passing acquaintance, if only because I was a little better in school than people expected and was on the same sports teams with the kids who had some money.  I was even kind of friends with Austin, at least during baseball season, so there's a part of me that wants to forgive him for doing this to me, although I mostly just want him to fix it and make this as painless as it can be.

On the other hand, the people who took the place of Austin and Theresa during the past two years?  They are the literal best.  I didn't mention it in the last post or two, but I get the impression that they were an older couple, and just fantastically organized.  It's not just the new underthings and stuff, but the bedrooms had slip cases containing three-ring binders which themselves had printouts slipped into plastic sleeves, filled with pictures, maps, and relevant information side-by-side.  Even though they must have expected the real Theresa back, the information that they would have found useful - that Theresa's friend Lana had twins named Gil and Phil, or that the frozen custard place had to run a fundraiser not to close permanently - is still helpful to me.  They also seemed to anticipate something possibly going awry, including some more basic information, or putting little tabs in the textbooks Theresa used to study for her realtor's exam so I know what's especially important (although I guess they could just be leftover from when the sub did the same).

(Speaking of subs - I've had emails from the new me.  He seems nice enough - or would "they" be more appropriate, since he or she is uncomfortable enough with sharing information about their real life to the point where they haven't even volunteered that much information? - but I try not to think too much about what they're doing on a daily basis)

All that preparation didn't mean that my first week "back from vacation" wasn't difficult, but I'm trying not to imagine how it would have gone if I didn't have Austin doing my makeup or if I didn't know where Cedar Woods was.  I still got seemingly good-natured jokes about my mind still being on the beach when I was a little slow to respond at times, and certain things about showing houses and condos still elude me, let alone the exact current zoning regulations for when somebody asks about putting a deck on the back of a place.  I've rented ever since graduation, so all of the talk about offers, escrow, and closing feels like a test I'm constantly studying for and having to pass.

That's at least something that can be studied, and I can apply myself.  I've had jobs where I was kind of learning on the fly before.  It's the moments in between, when the phones aren't ringing and the four of us in the office are just chatting that are often the hardest to navigate.  I expected the other young woman to have the strongest opinion on me staying with Theresa's natural hair color, but it's actually the other guy, a few years older than me, and it makes me really uncomfortable.  He's got a girlfriend, and I suspect Theresa turned him down some time ago, so what's it matter to him that my hair is "drab"?  Is he going to be checking out my ass constantly if I ever start wearing skirts and heels?

That's not happening any time soon, though, if only because I kind of feel lost with Theresa's clothes on the weekend, and Austin's helping is sometimes not helping.  The first Saturday, I figured it was the weekend, so I grabbed some shorts and a t-shirt, but it didn't quite look or feel right (beyond the question of how ladies' jeans fit, whether they go halfway to the knee or to the ankle).  I was expecting dressing for work to be tricky, but I suddenly realized that I had thought about women's casual clothes even less.  I just knew a girl looked good or real good, but never paid attention to why, or where the line was between what she wears to a club, a concert, or just hanging around.  We haven't been doing a lot of "hanging out" - needing to read up on this other life is a handy excuse - but Austin's parents have been known to drop in, there's occasional shopping to do, and the Fourth of July was last weekend.

And that's where it gets super-weird.  From the way he describes his last couple years, Austin spent a lot of time on looking good as a girl, but if you think it's kind of creepy when a guy tells his girlfriend to wear, triple that for when that "girlfriend" is actually a guy not totally sold on "sexy" and the plan is to hang out with Austin's family, including his big brother who likes to make jokes about how if they don't get married soon, he's going to steal Theresa from him.  I'm just glad the weekend of the holiday was rainy and unseasonably cool, so I could wear jeans and a long-sleeved tee rather than the U.S. flag crop-top and the tiny shorts that go with it.

I suppose that I'll find a way to be Theresa that also lets me be myself a bit over the coming months - most folks either seem to manage that or get completely swallowed by their new life, and I still can't imagine that.  It's still hard to imagine finding the right middle ground right now, though.

-Eddie/Theresa

Harmon Keller/Alicia Polawski: Assets

The obvious puns that come with my trying to ascertain the value of Alicia's identity are crude, but fitting.  My current measurements are enviable, or desirable, depending upon one's perspective, but how does one properly value them?  I began asking this not hypothetically, but practically - I planned to use relinquishing this shape to one for whom it perhaps came more naturally in order to both start the next phase of my life in a more financially stable situation and to perhaps have more ability to select that next phase rather than have it happen randomly.  One might not believe that the Inn is a marketplace, but it is, much as any place where money is exchanged for a product is a marketplace.  It is simply a highly irrational one:  Most people who arrive at the Inn for the first time have no idea what they are actually purchasing, while the vast majority who return put such a high value on returning to their previous situations that they fail to weigh any other factors at all.

There are those who do treat the Inn as a marketplace, though getting in touch with them can be difficult and the data one gathers scant enough that it becomes difficult to build a model.  Youth, as one might imagine, is the primary variable; though few of the people I have surveyed admit to seeking immortality per se, they will when pressed say that they want as much time as possible should circumstances prevent them from later revisiting, aside from the physical robustness that correlates with youth.  Financial stability is high up there as well, although not so much as one might expect - those who are concerned with it can liquidate assets and place them in a numbered account, after all.  It is a far greater negative influence - nobody wishes to be poor - than positive one.

Sex complicates matters - by and large, there's a noteworthy bias toward male identities being more valuable, at least in this market.  It's not hard to understand why; the biological nuisances and reductions in social status on average can certainly be frustrating.  But appearance can cause great variance, as can things like relationships, real and parasocial alike, more so than men.

"Alicia" is rather well-equipped on those accounts, now.  Although this particular silhouette has never been the one I favored among female companions, I cannot deny that its rounded bosom and buttocks are certainly able to grab another person's attention, particularly when I made an effort to showcase them.  I was, admittedly, ashamed of having this form when I first started living Alicia's life, but over my time as her, it's become easier.  What's the harm of showing some cleavage or using some high heels to accentuate your gait, if it makes men (and women!) more attentive?  One must learn how to set boundaries without actually sounding like one is ruling anything out, but I feel I have done fairly well by that.  Indeed, there are days when I wonder if I have done so well in that area that becoming a man again would have a steep learning curve.

Aside from that, there is the "vlog", which had seemed to have plateaued last fall but which has been gaining audience steadily since then.  Perhaps it has become more useful as people start to seriously consider vacations (or, based upon what I see during the day job, actually travel more), rather than as just a way to experience such things vicariously.  I have also become a better hostess - as much as I have grown more comfortable using my physicality, I cannot deny that my interview skills have improved, and Barbie and I have become better at editing the pieces, on top of my existing skills as a researcher.  We have put together a reasonably popular "show" for the resources we have; it's not unheard of for a new video to get a hundred thousand views in a month.

This makes "_______ with Alicia" an asset that is growing in value, and I am not the only person who has noticed it - various "content networks" have made inquiries, both about the series as it exists and what they envision it to be.  On the other side, I have had others approach me with offers to "professionalize" the series.  Sometimes it is local camera operators, other times editors, other times "producers" whose imagined roles range from the nebulous to the specific and useful.

That is on top of the people representing themselves as "agents", many of whom I suspect are less than legitimate, and other "content producers" who have seen either my series or Jordan's short film and would like me to appear in their videos, generally for "exposure" (looking at the scripts they send, the double-meaning is obvious), but sometimes for money.  Indeed, some of them even appear to have ambitions beyond online videos - short films like Jordan's which they would submit to film festivals, and even a feature-length presentation or two, although I have my doubts those would ever play a theater.

What to do with these?  There seems to be little question that accepting the proper offers would make "Alicia Polawski" a more valuable commodity, but so many of them seem to be very risky, and also time consuming, enough so to make finding a time to actually transfer this life to another difficult.  Already, it seems impossible to do in 2021.  And it also sets up a possibility that I may find ironic should it come to pass - that I might build "Alicia" up into something so valuable that the next iteration would seem to be trading down.  I've occasionally been bemused by some of the younger victims of the Inn deciding to stay as they were after a mere year or two, because they could no longer imagine returning to their old lives - as someone older than most of them, I cannot say that being Alicia yet feels normal enough to make my previous life seem alien, just in terms of the weight of experience - but the idea that I could become attached in the process of building these assets up to their peak value sometimes seems both frightening and amusing.

-Harmon Keller

Eddie/Theresa: Hair, Wardrobe, and Makeup

The second time waking up as Theresa was in some ways even stranger than the first, because not only was there an alarm jolting me awake, but I was in someone else's home and bed, completely disoriented.  I didn't even know how to silence the alarm on Theresa's iPhone right away, making me nervous that it would wake Austin up and he'd offer to help.

There would be no avoiding that, but, still, I wanted an hour or so before he was awake to myself.  He'd been either in the room or just out of sight for the past 24 hours, and I was already starting to feel a bit smothered, and though I wasn't really thinking in terms of it being a guy-and-girl thing, the fact that we were in his life and he had experience with both the Inn and being a woman had him tending to take charge.  I don't necessarily feel like I have to be the guy in charge, but between not seeing anyone for a while and the pandemic, I hadn't been spending more time with anyone than a thirty-minute rideshare, so it had felt like a lot.

I stood quietly in the bedroom after I'd silenced the phone, listening to hear if I'd woken Austin.  Apparently not.  I got some of the new underwear out of the drawer and a robe from the closet, and made my way as quietly as I could to the bathroom, quietly shutting the door behind me before looking in the mirror.

Either Theresa gets bedhead too, or there was still some part of me there.  I'd never seen her like that, but seeing half my hair kind of puffy and one side pressed flat made me feel a little more myself.  It inspired me to make a few faces in the mirror, which was kind of reassuring, because I thought maybe Theresa's face wouldn't make the right expressions or something and I'd just look blank instead of looking like I was thinking.

Then it was time; I pulled the t-shirt I'd worn to bed off and saw what I had in the way of breasts.

Given how many people on this site talk about being really big, I guess I am lucky or unlucky, depending on how you look at it.  I'm not quite flat, but I don't look like I've got something attached to my chest.  I had a pretty clear tanline, although my skin wasn't that dark.  I gave them a little poke and even pinched at a nipple a bit and was glad when I didn't just immediately melt into a puddle or anything.

I still avoided looking between my legs more than I had to before taking a shower, which wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.  Yeah, there's a weird moment or two at my chest being soft and I kind of forgot just how much water and shampoo hair can hold when it's this length, but mostly it felt nice to get a couple day's worth of sweat off, even if it meant I was touching things I had no business touching that way and a little unnerved as I felt my breasts squish and move as I scrubbed.

Drying took a little while, and my first time putting on a bra was a challenge, but I didn't want to ask Austin for help.  I'm don't know why the clasps aren't in the front in most cases - is it an engineering thing, or just a women's clothing traditionally having fasteners in the back?  Seems like that would make things a lot easier.

I brushed my hair into a shape that looked more or less okay, put the robe back on, and took a breath as I left the bathroom.

Austin was awake by then, and looked me over critically, said "Well, you look nice, but not work-nice," and then led me to the dining area, where all of Theresa's makeup products were laid out, and apparently the first lesson was mascara.  And it was weird.

Not just the makeup - although using semi-solid gunk to extend your eyelashes is really weird - but the way Austin seemed to change while putting it on me made me wonder what months of being Theresa would do to me.  He had said the day before that he'd enjoyed being a woman and had wanted to be the one to become Theresa, but it had just been a thing he said - he'd seemed to fall back into being more or less the guy I remembered from high school quickly enough, in terms of voice and mannerisms and stuff, but as he went on about doing this to me, his voice was a bit higher, and he seemed to light up a bit.  And it didn't really feel like envy - he really seemed to enjoy just doing this thing and seeing the results that made me look prettier.

I guess it could be worse.  He didn't really seem to be trying to recreate me as someone he'd be more interested in having sex with, and I guess a lot of people who go to the Inn find themselves on the receiving end of lessons in femininity from people who don't look like they should know anything about it, after all.  Just weird.

The whole morning was like that, and much of the week.  He's been pretty good about starting me slow with the clothing, in that I've managed to stay in pants and flat shoes for almost two weeks, although I think he's dropped by to take me out to lunch a couple of times less to ask me about how things were going than to see how the women in the office were dressing so he could suggest that maybe it's time for skirts, heels, and maybe a different color of lipstick, although he's also pointed out that some of them go with a lighter hair color, like the one in the box on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet.  He also seems to take his time figuring out which earrings and stuff go with which outfits.

I'm starting to get the hang of it, but I also get the impression that he's not terribly worried about that beyond my being able to touch it up in the afternoon - that aside from brushing my hair, he's pretty content to be in charge of getting me dressed and made-up in the morning.

That's handy.  But weird.

-Eddie/Theresa

Jonah/Krystle: Not Exactly in the "Never Going Back" category, but...

 ... I've probably pretty close to waiting my last table for a while.

(You thought I meant the Inn, didn't you?  Well, that too, but...)

It's not that I had a bad experience at the Changeling - Moira is still my best friend and Ashlyn is sometimes the only person I can talk to when the feeling of being a huge phony comes over me - though I know that there are a lot of people who were pretty badly exploited in that business.  I'm lucky that Moira, having grown up in her parents' pub in Ireland, brought the idea that servers should be paid a living wage here with her and it's one of the conditions she had on partnering with Ashlyn to open the place.  Lord knows others haven't been so lucky.  Still, they could only pay an hourly wage and shifts were relatively scarce until very recently, especially if you don't have a car with which to do delivery, since it took a while to be at 100% capacity and that means both fewer people working and fewer people to tip per person.  On top of that, tipping has become a real all-or-nothing situation lately:  The folks who demanded that restaurants be open in the middle of a pandemic are lousy tippers, while the folks who are easing their way back into it to the point where they don't take their mask off until they're ready to take their first bite will regularly hit 25-30%.

I'd been picking up what I could when I got a call from the gym, mentioning that they were re-opening and if I'd like to renew my membership.  I wasn't facing the nagging sensation of getting out of shape that Jordan was - you can't slow down that much with an energetic four-year-old - but I wanted to get back to climbing pretty badly.  Sadly, I told them, I couldn't really afford it right now.

I got the feeling that they'd heard that a few times from the sigh on the other end, but then the lady on the other end surprised me by first asking if I was vaccinated and then if I'd like to apply for a job.  I kind of laughed, saying I'd only been climbing for a few months before the pandemic hit, but she said that was good enough for making sure people were strapped into their harnesses properly and, besides, they'd probably start me at the front desk anyway.

So I applied, and I've got an interview tomorrow.  In a week or two, I could be doing that on a regular schedule and even getting benefits.  And the regular schedule sounds pretty good, especially if I can work it around school hours in a couple of months.

That's right, school - Little Moira turned four years old in January, and in Cambridge that means that she is eligible for "junior kindergarten" starting this fall.  And that whole experience has been kind of crazy!  Just forget that I technically never finished high school and it kind of feels like I should have some sort of graduation behind me before having my kid start, but the fact is that I grew up in a fairly small town with one elementary school, so it was one-size fits all, but here there's a lottery and you're expected to make decisions about what direction a four-year-old's life is going to be set on.

It's nuts!  More nuts for me, because if faced with the same decisions, my parents certainly wouldn't have had any way to know that they should prepare their baby boy for being a single mother that everyone thinks used to be a stripper, and here I am, trying to figure out what I want for my little girl even though I know there's just no predicting where life will take her.  It feels so random at times that I can see why some people are tempted to just take care of now and put their kids in the most conveniently located school.

I'm trying not to do that, though.  I suspect that our applications were all kinds of a mess but that it really doesn't matter that much, since I intend to be involved and attentive and all that.  Still, there will be chances to switch things up when we get a better idea of her interests than "she really likes Legos so maybe she'll be an engineer someday."  I'm a little disappointed that she got wait-listed for the Mandarin-immersion program, and hope it's not some "why would a lower-income black girl need to know that?" thing.  Maybe it is a silly bit of ambition I'm putting on her, but Jordan says that languages like that are a lot easier to learn if you start young, and it seems like the sort of thing grown-up Moira could use in 2035.

Listen to me.  2035.  I'm trying to make decisions that will affect another person's life in 2035, when I got here by just falling into a situation randomly and then making one desperate decision that had the exact opposite effect that I intended.  But I guess that's why I'll probably never be going back to the Inn, at least not before 2040 or whenever she graduates college, because it's entirely possible that she may wind up with someone somehow even more ill-suited to all this than me!

-Jonah/Krystle

Eddie/Theresa: I can't say the face in the mirror is unfamiliar

I'm going to guess that most people writing on this blog don't say their shoulder is the first thing they notice as different, but that was the first thing that struck me when I woke up Sunday morning.  I've been doing a fair amount of rideshare driving, and some older gentleman had apparently opted to put a  cinder block in his carry-on, and I managed to strain something between getting it into and out of my trunk.  It wasn't so bad by the time vacation was over, but the first thing I noticed yesterday was "huh, all better".  I stretched a bit, half-noted that it felt kind of weird but not bad in the chest, and then got out of bed and headed for the shower.

That's when I encountered the bathroom mirror, saw Theresa Moreau wearing my t-shirt, and jumped back, making a clatter as I hit the stall's sliding door.  I was briefly embarrassed at the noise, then leaned into the mirror.  Taking a good look at my face.  I'd seen her briefly when I went to Pineland to put Mom's affairs in order - she was one of the agents at the real estate firm I had list the house - and my face looked more or less the same.  My hair was darker than hers had been, and she'd been wearing a mask then, but I'd liked her in high school and this was basically the same face.  I tentatively brought my hands up toward my chest, as the pull of gravity when I leaned in had kind of clarified that the odd sensation while stretching was breasts, but just let my hands hover a few inches out.  Belatedly not wanting to wake anybody, I whispered something like what sort of weird dream was this to myself, quietly enough that I couldn't really hear much difference in my voice.

My banging into the shower door had apparently awakened someone, though, as there was a knock on the other door in this connecting bathroom.  "Eddie?  Are you okay?  I know you've just had a shock, but I can explain!"  There was a pause.  "Can I come in?"

I did a quick inspection to make sure I wasn't showing anything someone else shouldn't see, and then answered okay.  The door opened, and I saw Theresa's fiance, Austin Greene, and not the person who had been there the last week.

"Austin--?  What's going on?  Where's, uh..."

"The cute co-ed you didn't even mention in your blog post?  That was me, and I've got to say, I was kind of used to making a bit more of an impression.  As you can see, the Inn is 'cursed'" - he made little air quotes - "and what with the Inn being closed for Covid last year, I got to spend a whole extra 12 months as her before getting back here, and a lot happened during that time, which is why Theresa isn't back yet and we needed to have a sub."

"And you decided that I'd make a good Theresa?"

"No, I figured you'd make a good me!  I've spent almost two years as a girl, and I really liked it, so I was going to be Theresa, but the folks who were living our lives must have slept on the wrong sides of the bed or something, and things got mixed up.  I'm really sorry, but try not to look at it as a bad thing, but that you've got a while to walk in someone else's shoes and see how the other half lives!"

"But," I sputtered, "you can't just do this to people!  I've got a life of my own!"

"But not much of one, right?  We looked at all the people we know and trust, and you were the one who seemed like he'd do well as me and didn't have much else going on.  And who knows, maybe someone else in your spot will build something you wouldn't have thought of!  This whole thing is usually random, but it's good for people to have their lives and perspectives shaken up every once in a while.  And it's totally reversible - the Inn gets booked pretty solid from people who have stayed here before and know how it works, but sometime next year you and the new you and hopefully Theresa will be able to line things up and get back to normal, if that's what you want."

"Next year?"

He shrugged.  "It's a curse, man, not a service!  We're just lucky that someone figured out the pattern.  Now, c'mon, let's get you dressed in something that fits."  He walked back to his room, wheeled in a suitcase, and stood there as he left it in front of me.  I said something about being able to do it myself and retreated back to my room, locking the door behind me.

The previous Theresa - and it was just starting to hit me that the one I talked to last year wasn't the real deal and I'd had no idea anything was off - was helpful.  Both dirty and clean clothes were rolled up tightly, the dirty ones in a plastic bag, with a little note apologizing for not doing laundry before leaving.  There were some items on the other side of the suitcase that I wasn't close to ready for, but most of it was casual.  Taking a deep breath, I let the sweatpants I'd been sleeping in drop, and then pulled my boxers after them.  The t-shirt I was wearing was big enough on Theresa's body that I didn't have to look at what was between my legs as I pulled a pair of still-in-the-package panties with no lace or anything like that up, and then a loose-fitting pair of slacks.  There were ankle socks and a pair of sneakers, too.

I pondered the bras for a second but couldn't bring myself to put one on yet.  There was a Paw Sox t-shirt in the bag, and I took my sweaty nightshirt off while looking at the ceiling, closing my eyes as I grabbed the other one and pulled it on, trying my best to ignore the hem touching my nipples on the way down.  I started to tuck it in, but that made the chest feel kind of tight, but it was loose enough to be kind of comfortable when I untucked.

There was a mirror in my room, and I looked in it.  My shoulder-length hair was a bit of a mess, but I'd worn in that long before.  I didn't look quite right, even as Theresa, but I'd had girlfriends who spent an hour in the bathroom before they felt ready to face the world, and it made me wonder how much of my image of her was either selective memory or her putting on makeup and coloring her hair.  I wondered whether me doing that would feel more like pretending to be her or someone else.

I unlocked the bathroom door, opened it, and saw Austin with a towel around his waist.  It was reassuring, I guess, that I didn't feel any sort of desire, even though fake-Austin had left him in pretty decent shape, and he didn't put a bulge in the towel on seeing me.  "Ah, the casual look.  I remember it well."  He gave a little wink.  "So, feeling good?  They leave Tee in good shape?"

"I guess.  I mean, I didn't look at anything."

"No?  I kind of went straight for the boobs, although, to be fair, they were bigger than Tee's.   Couldn't miss 'em.  Every guy in my group who turned into a girl did, but then, we just thought we'd turned into girls, not specific girls, until we read the letters.  I guess that's different for you."

Different was an understatement.

I just gave what I hoped was an angry look, and he continued.  "So, letters - you should probably write one to help the new you get oriented, and then we should hit the road; turns out they need you in the office tomorrow.  Let me get dressed, and you can start on that."

He closed the door, and I checked the suitcase for a letter to me.  There wasn't one - fake-Theresa must have figured she'd be handing the life back to someone who knew it - but there was a small purse with a wallet, including Theresa's driver's license, social security card, and credit cards.  There was also an iPhone, along with a charger and a note saying the PIN ("change it - better safe than sorry!", with a little smiley face on the letter I).  It had drained, so I plugged it in and started writing.  I was annoyed how quick it went, because that sort of meant Austin was right about my life.  I tried to pack up in a way that matched what the previous Theresa had done as closely as I could, but still found it strange to put my wallet, keys, and phone inside my gym bag and close it, trusting someone else with my whole identity.

Not wanting to go through the bathroom again, I grabbed the bags and walked out the door, knocking on Aaron's.  He saw I had both and said to put mine back, that finding strange bags in the room was a part of the whole Inn thing.  I did, and by now I was kind of numb as we walked through the parking area, by head turning a bit to track my car as we passed it.  After loading the trunk, we both approached the driver's side of Austin's car, and he chuckled.  "Sorry, my car.  Tee's got a cute little Mini.  But while you're here..."

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a little box, and I immediately recognized the type.  "Oh, no.  No, no, no."

He didn't smirk, at least, actually getting a concerned look.  "What, you want me to get down on one knee?"

"Hell no!"  I snatched the box from him, opened it, and held my breath at the sight of the diamond ring inside.  I plucked it out and felt my hand shaking as I started to slide it on.

"Uh, other hand.  Now you're got it backwards..."  I righted it, feeling like fifty pounds was sitting on my finger.

"Good god."

He grabbed my fingers and pulled them up.  "Don't worry, it's a long way away and we can probably delay it again, long enough so I can wear the dress like Tee and I planned.  It's just folks would talk if we came back from vacation and you weren't wearing this."

We got in the car and didn't talk much.  I think I was kind of in shock and running what would happen if I bailed and went somewhere else through my head but not coming up with a better idea than seeing it through.  And though he smiled at me and tried to be reassuring, I sometimes got the vibe that he was angry at me for having the body he'd wanted for himself.

We arrived in Rhode Island sometime mid-afternoon, by which point I was kind of amazed I'd held the coffee we'd bought at the first Dunks we encountered in.  He pointed me to the bathroom and I sat, my body somehow knowing what to release.  I tried to stand as soon as I was done but didn't like the wet sensation, so I sat back down, pulled some paper off the roll, and said "I'm sorry Theresa" out loud before looking down and wiping/patting everything dry.

(I'm not going to describe it; I felt I was invading Theresa's privacy enough as it was!)

The rest of the day was kind of a blur, with Austin pointing out what was different and me silently noting that it was nicer that any place I'd ever lived.

We agreed I'd take the guest bedroom; less on the walls to remind me that the space specifically belonged to someone else.  I spent a couple hours moving clothes in there and arranging them, giving me a look at my new wardrobe.  Theresa doesn't seem terribly high-maintenance; about half is comfortable weekend wear, half blouses and skirts for the office, and a few fancier things but no necklines that go down to the belly button or anything.  She's got more shoes than I've ever had at once, but only a couple pairs have difficult-looking heels.

Just as with the bags at the Inn, the drawers were considerately organized, with a couple week's worth of bra and panty sets still in their plastic.  There was a new toothbrush, and hairbrush, deodorant, and a few other grooming/beauty products I didn't recognize right away.  It actually calmed me down a little.  Just think of it as checking into a really nice hotel.

That said, I still made sure not to look when I changed into a nightshirt for bed that night, although I knew from taking a little sniff of the armpit area that this particular courtesy couldn't last much past morning.

-Eddie/Theresa

Daryl/Magda: Planning for futures

The virus closing the Inn for a year has been downright peculiar - this time last year, I was fretting over being stuck as Magda and losing myself, and I think I had a little bit of a breakdown not long after my last post.  It's the sort of thing I always figured I'd be more sure of, but instead it only became clear in reflection.  J.T. had taken a job shooting some small independent film, and while I'd planned to join him, I got kind of freaked about the virus, never got on my flight, and instead turned that week into a "staycation" where I spent a lot of time in bed eating ice cream and watching Netflix, barely got dressed, and spent a lot of time freaking out because new-Daryl took a while to get back to me when I asked how things were going and seldom had questions.  It seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, especially when the time off ended, my alarm rang, and I put on my uniform and went to work like the past week had just never happened.

And here's the weird thing:  I was more centered after.  Things didn't rattle me as much, and having my planned new life fall through got me to a point where I guess I accepted that I would live my live out as Magda Polawski and was less worried about the real me showing through.  I hadn't really been hiding, but I think I'd tried too hard to show I wasn't a boring middle-aged woman around J.T.'s friends and not to be weird around the people at work, and just doing what I wanted felt like a weight off my shoulders.  This wasn't the life I'd planned, but it was a pretty decent one.  I have someone I love, I have friends, I know that the world is a little more remarkable than most people understand.  Even under weird circumstances, my job was steady and I got to help people most of the time.

Apparently, it showed up in my performance.  I don't know much about the original Magda, but I kind of get the impression that she was dedicated enough to herself and Alicia to pick up extra shifts but that was the end of it, at least at work, and Lindsey was just killing time until she could be herself again.  That's not really me, though, so I'd help the new people, show up a bit early or stay a bit late if needed, and, I don't know, engage more?  So by the time I was working an extra shift on Thanksgiving weekend, a little freaked about how too many people were traveling but doing my best to make it work, I wasn't really worried about being laid off when I was called into an office.

It turns out, I was being offered a promotion.

It's weird for an Inn Person(tm)!  Like, I've known several that have quit jobs or changed paths to something more suited, and some weird relationship situations, but being told that I am actually better at some parts of being a middle-aged white lady than an actual middle-aged white lady?  It's mighty disconcerting, but not actually bad, once I considered that my priorities clearly aren't the same as Magda's were, and that some of it was probably because I'm not entirely a MAWL - ability to connect with multiple generations makes me a better leader.  Send your management candidates to the Trading Post, corporations - they'll get a ton of new insights!

Anyway, I'm not a spiritual person, but I do kind of wonder if finally settling in as Magda, accepting that I could see a life as someone other than myself, has made the universe more willing to smile upon me, because Pete found me another candidate for a new life.  Zee's in her early 30s, presumably mixed (clearly Black but lighter than either Elaine or I was), in nice shape, and pretty much a blank slate - her parents aren't in the picture, and she's between jobs but has some savings.  I initially said he should just settle down that way, but it's almost like having the same DNA for two years after spending so long living other people's lives has made him antsy, like he wants some guardrails even though he's unmistakably Pete no matter what face he wears.

I downloaded the pictures to my phone and showed them to J.T., asking if he'd break up with me for her, and bless him, he recognized what I meant right away, especially once I said there was no reason for "her" not to move to New York.  I made a joke about how maybe I could use my new position to recommend her to the airline, and he said he didn't necessarily want people to think he had a thing for airport workers, and, besides, it was a chance for me to get back to doing what I'm good at.

(And then he showed that he still found this shape attractive, thank you!)

I told Pete yes, and we've been exchanging emails.  She seems nice, and has a clean bill of health, but I don't know everything about the real her, though I don't need to.  I get the impression that she's white and younger than Zee from some of her emails, like she's always enjoyed being looked at but it's not necessarily the same when she goes to her favorite places as a Black woman, and from how she was kind of stunned that I'd basically accepted losing 20 years.  Still, from what I can tell, I could enjoy being her.

It does mean making plans not to leave Magda's life a mess, though.  I've put in vacation time for August, and I'm trying to figure out how to stay cordial with the folks I know (they're good friends, by and large) but not actually commit "myself" to anything that next-Magda wouldn't necessarily want to be part of.  I've also been looking at apartments, and holy shit, but New York rent is insane!  I thought the old place in Oakland was crazy for what it was, but New York City is a different level, and that's just basically pretending like much of Manhattan doesn't exist.  Staying in J.T.'s nice place for the past three years has kept me kind of isolated from that, but there's a good chance that next-Magda might find herself in Jersey, because even if I might be happy with a cozy one-bedroom, she may be bringing someone else along, and I don't want her to feel like this life is a prison with no room for the rest of her.

Because it's not, even if I am looking forward to having two shoulders with a full range of motion again.  Being Magda for three years has been a bit of a test, but it's not something one needs to get past.

-Magdaryl

Eddie: Can't just have a vacation

Some holiday weekend, huh?  Hot and sunny during the week, and then you get to the beach and it's 60 and rainy.

I guess you get what you pay for; there's no way I could really afford a vacation right now, but this was an inheritance, I guess; I got a letter from Austin Greene saying Theresa had found the reservation in my mother's things, and figured I should have it.  I haven't seen Austin or Theresa Riggieri since high school, ten years ago, not even when I went back there a year ago to try and put my mom's stuff in order.  Everyone was locking down, of course, so it's not like we were going to bump into each other getting coffee or something, and there wasn't a real funeral.  Not that Austin and Theresa would attend; Austin and I had been on the baseball team together, but we didn't exactly move in the same circles otherwise, and I maybe had one class with Theresa.  And Mom, well, Mom was a mess way before the virus hit, part of why I hadn't been back there in so long, and was kind of just there long enough to see her cremated and have her house listed with a realtor.

Maybe I should have moved back there, but at the time, I thought I'd get my old job back once things blew over, but we all remember 2020, and nothing blew over, and a look at the job market in Pineland, Rhode Island didn't make it look that much better than Worcester, MA.  So I stayed, tried to stretch rideshare and delivery gigs as far as I could, and just waited for news that the house had sold so that I'd have a bit of money to start somewhere else.  Hasn't happened yet.  I suspect that Austin and Theresa must have found me on Facebook and seen I wasn't doing well, because the letter wasn't pitying but certainly didn't presume I had money to burn for a vacation.

I didn't have nothing to do, so that's why I'm here, in Old Orchard, watching the rain come down, wondering if I want to head to the drive-in tonight, even though the movie playing doesn't look that great.

I suppose that's not exactly what the folks who set this computer up in the front hallway as an online guestbook wanted to hear, in terms of who we were and how we were enjoying our stay here, but I've got to admit, it feels weirdly good to get that out.  I may send someone an email to get rid of it later, but I can't be the only one who's had the last year or so play out like this.

-Eddie

Jordan/Yuan-Wei: Pandemic Pounds

Huh, it looks like everybody just sort of laid off at some point last year.  Can't blame them' the Inn apparently didn't open at all last summer, and at a certain point, when you're staying in and taking all the appropriate precautions - and I suspect that once you've been through the Trading Post Inn experience, it's really fucking hard to say that the odds are against anything bad happening to you - there's not much to talk about on this blog.  Oh, sure, there's your "regular" life, but to the extent you're talking about that online, you're doing it on Instagram or some other social media app or just a group text, and I'll be damned if I'm going to write about the same thing multiple times.

So why am I here?  Well, I gather the Inn is opening for Memorial Day, and that means there's going to be a new Chen-Ai soon, and I've got no idea what to expect from that.  They're not going to be a mother figure for me of any sort, of course, but the very fact that there will be someone in that spot means that all the people who may have thought something was suspicious a year and a half ago but either lost interest or couldn't spare resources to dig are going to get interested again.  I'm not looking forward to that, and I kind of wonder if anyone else is in the same situation.

Mostly, though, I'm sort of trying to figure out what it's like to be Yuan-Wei again.  Like I said back in October, working from home and not going out and being social got me back into a lot of pre-Inn habits, especially with food.  I know I'm not alone in this among people who have been able to work from home, but I had a lot of days where work wasn't necessarily holding all of my attention, but I didn't want to just walk away from my workstation, and the kitchen is the closest room to the home office, so I'd get myself a snack or a soda three or four times a day.  That didn't really happen when I was Dierdre - something about her body just rejected eating too much viscerally - and I think some of the memories of feeling like absolute shit when I tried to eat too much carried over into being Yuan-Wei.  Then I kind of liked the way I looked, and had the sort of metabolism I would have killed for back in my first life, but I guess it's been slowing down even as I started living that way again.

Not that I got fat the way the old me did - women's jeans will tell you that you've put on weight and the yoga isn't cutting it - but I guess I found myself accepting it more as the pandemic dragged on, since it would be weeks until I was with other people regularly and going up a size was no big deal.  I went up and down a bit over the winter, and wound up being "up" a bit when we started coming back to the office.  I wasn't going to wear a crop-top or anything, but I had enough of a muffin top going on that I made sure I wore a top that covered it, and when we went out for drinks afterward, I couldn't help but notice that there were certainly women my age who hadn't let themselves go at all.

It's frustrating, because I know it's stupid to feel this way.  I've been fat, and this isn't the same feeling, but I also know that even when I stood no fucking chance, I'd look past girls who just had a couple extra pounds like I do right now.  Plus, I like being hot; it's fucking gratifying to know you look great in a bikini or naked and that people will put out some effort to have sex with you.  I don't entirely mind that I'm going to have to put a little more effort into it for a while (as long as it doesn't involve that running bullshit), but I sort of feel like I should have learned a lesson or have some perspective after all of this that makes it all make sense, you know?

-Jordo

Harmon Keller/Alicia Polawski: Next Steps

I had a decision to make over the course of the "off-season" as to whether I would return to the Inn or continue developing this life I am leading into something with a bit more value then when I found it, perhaps as a means to finance the next phase of my life.  Apparently, for many that the Inn has cut off from the lives they were born into, a curvy woman in her mid-twenties with a thriving social media presence would be ideal, and work as an air hostess only more appealing, apparently not realizing that the vast number of people who think that way leads to a rather low rate of pay.

Instead, there was a pandemic, which not only made a return to the Trading Post Inn unlikely, but disrupted my sources of income - far fewer people were opting to fly, which meant that some flights were cancelled and others needed less staffing.  Given that most flight attendants are not salaried but paid by the hour, we started to feel the pinch almost immediately.  The union makes laying people off difficult, so that means very few of us get enough work to live on.  In some ways, it is a fascinating study of resources thrown out of equilibrium - fewer people are traveling, so there are fewer flights, and since there are fewer people allowed on the flights, there need to be fewer people assigned to each, but the lower capacities also mean that the number can't be scaled back quite as far back as one might expect.  Demand is highly variable as well, and even the people who book a flight often change their minds, sometimes bringing the passenger count below the point where it makes more sense to cancel the flight, especially earlier on.  Given that attendants on this airline are not paid for cancelled flights, even if they show up and are helping to prepare for boarding, it was often frustrating.

It would, logically, have been a good time for "Alicia" to make a career change, but as mentioned, her job likely lends a certain value to her identity as a commodity well beyond what it brings in directly, and that is before considering that this job is also no small part of the appeal of the YouTube channel, both in its travel theme and the idea that there's something ineffably sexier about my making these recommendations because of this job, even if I've been advised to not actually wear my employer's uniform, instead dressing in a dress that suggests it, while also wearing one of those silly scarves and putting my hair up.

Options for that have been slimmer, what with so many potential subjects of new episodes are closed, and I have had to learn to do more of the production myself since Barbara took a leave of absence to look after her ailing father some months ago.  It has been especially frustrating since we had just started to get some meager advertising revenue for our trouble, and even been contacted by certain locations interested in being featured.  The first one or two of those we shot were actually quite enjoyable - no security or police saying we could not film somewhere, people willing to talk rather than finding us a nuisance - although some of the negotiations have been peculiar:  No cash changing hands, but a fair amount of discussion of exchanging links, specifying their website in the video and making it clickable.  There have also been overtures about product placement and endorsements, or an online storefront, but research seems to indicate that many would-be "influencers" find themselves with more inventory and debt than profit as a result.

This apparently tends to be treated as a dirty little secret; I attended a meet-up of various online personalities in the area a few weeks ago and the mostly-young people there had very little to say about monetization or cash flow other than to comment that some "change in the algorithm" had hurt them.  I doubt many of them will last, as the bulk seem to have found a hobby briefly turning into a profitable business but have little idea of how to approach it as one, though they at least have the advantage of being born into this era and having some amount of unthinking instinct into what will work.

On top of that, the landscape can be rather treacherous.  Some fellow who is apparently paid money so that people can watch him play video games suggested that, if travel became too much of an obstacle, I at least have the sort of appearance that would allow me to do well on "Only Fans".  I nodded, said that was an option that one had to consider, and then looked up the name when I had a spare moment alone in the ladies' room.

Suffice it to say, I do not see myself using that platform, although I also wonder if this young man was propositioning me as much as suggesting a future plan of action.  The idea did make me start to think a bit more about how I use my sexuality and even sexual availability in this area, somewhat - while Jordan put me in a tight costume and directed me to speak in a certain way, I haven't necessarily been doing this as well as I could on "_______ with Alicia", especially since Barbara left.  I can walk in heels and stuff my bosom into an elevating brassiere, or undo a button or two in nice weather, but I have not spent much time on learning how to create certain effects with cosmetics, or given much thought to personal fashion choices beyond what generally complements a woman with this body type.  These things, from what I can tell, tend to enhance a woman's appeal to other women, which I have perhaps been ignoring.  Moreover, I tend to rely on the generally-valid assumption that not only will men simply be attracted to this body, but that a woman's lack of reciprocal interest will only make her more enticing.  Two years of Alicia's job have shown that many men are not that complex, and simply want to see a woman eager to be with them sexually, rather than believe that they might be the one to melt the ice queen if only she had a chance.

Integrating this into Alicia's online presence is, I suspect, the sort of thing that will make Alicia's life a more valuable asset at the point when I decide to leave it, though the building of it will likely not be as pleasant as it must appear.

-Harmon Keller

Cary: Shh! It's her birthday

Just saw Jonah's post about celebrating Krys's birthday and wondered if maybe people might be a bit curious about how it was going on the other side.  It was, as you might expect, kind of a low-key event.  I took her into Portland for a nice meal just like last year, but it got a bit uncomfortable; the distanced tables and relatively quiet room has a way of letting you know you're doing something wrong.  Not that it really bothers Krys - as much as she kind of enjoyed the initial harder lockdown because it meant very little time pretending to be 13, she pushes hard against people who tell her what to do almost by reflex, and sometimes I've got to be the dad and remind her that it's not the world trying to make her feel like a powerless kid.  You can imagine how that goes.

That said, she's in a better place right now than she has been in a while.  You've probably never seen a young girl so happy to find her body changing - she whooped when she had her first period, she's grown fairly tall for her age, not quite the girl who's a head-and-a-half taller than every boy in her class but not far off, and she is already wanting to know when she'll outgrow her first training bra, only half-kidding when she says she's been researching which brands of chicken use the most growth hormones and to please buy that.  I tell her that her genes make it unlikely she'll ever get near what she had before, and she grumbles about stupid white-girl genes and how it's bad enough that she needs insane amounts of sunblock to go to the beach, and I generally avoid pointing out that they are also responsible for her red hair, which she kind of loves:  It's straight, long, curls easy, and makes her the center of attention wherever she goes.  I apparently got off very light in terms of black-woman hair care as Elaine, both by having her around and having it be fairly straight.

Aside from that, though, she's also reached a point in school where she's starting to find herself challenged, a bit.  You don't necessarily get amazed that someone who previously graduated high school finds themselves no longer able to coast when returning to junior high some fifteen years later, because the world moves and changes so fast these days, but it's been interesting to watch Krys grapple with it.  She's not really one for regrets, but she's smart enough to know that a lot of things could have gone differently for her.  I don't really know what her high school years were like at all, but I'm thinking she got the idea that she'd be able to get by on sex appeal early, and never really had someone make a case for other things being just as exciting.  You gather she also notices that even now, there aren't that many people like the real her in the books she's assigned to read, although it's getting better.

We're still trying to find something she really loves, though.  She took piano lessons for long enough to learn to play well enough that she can tap something out, and sometimes you'll see her fingers moving when listening to music (not that she listens to a lot of stuff with keyboards, so far as I can tell), but her teacher stopped giving lessons in the spring because of the virus and Krys hasn't been interested in picking them back up.  She doesn't think she'll wind up doing it for a living, so why should she spend so much time practicing?

You don't really have an easy time finding an answer for that.  She doesn't really want me to be her dad beyond making appearances, so I can't really use myself as an example and say that I became a jack of all trades and master of none, because she seems to think I'm doing pretty well.  You try asking if she'd liked dancing or if she just did it for money (not a comfortable conversation with someone who looks 13), and she starts talking about maybe doing cheerleading, which kind of seems like a path back to trying to count on being pretty.

It's hard to know what to do so much of time time.  With Elaine, the job was just to help her do the things people wouldn't let her do for herself, letting her look like a kid and helping her escape when being an adult in a kid's body made her uncomfortable.  That's all Krys says she wants from me, most of the time, but I also know that she doesn't want to make the same decisions as before, which means starting over as a kid, and kids need parents, and I don't know if I can be that for her someone who may be half my age but is still 28.

-Cary

Jonah/Krystle: Surprise! It's Your Birthday!

It's funny to see Jordan write about how the pandemic has made him feel a lot like he was back in his old life, because it's been the opposite for me:  The longer this goes on, the more I feel like my old life is a dream.

I don't mean that as any sort of metaphor or whatever, but because even after five years, I'm still usually a guy in my dreams,  I'm stuck at 16 in those dreams, still in high school, even though the person going by my real name is old enough to drink and I've just turned 28, as far as anybody but a few people is concerned.  I don't remember those dreams very often, just enough to occasionally have a reminder that even though I'll never give up being Moira's mommy and I can get through all the female stuff on autopilot these days, some part of my head won't let go of being a guy.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the fact that we're not really doing anything new means that Momma Kamen is often reaching into the past, especially when Moira does something new, relating it to how the original Krystle was as a toddler, or Karla's kids, and after seven months, the stories have been repeated enough that I recognize some of them, and it's not really awkward bluffing to get her to say more.  Her or Karla - we don't see her in person very often, because she's living with her boyfriend and there's baby-daddies that makes her circle pretty big, but she skypes with her mom a lot, and likes to see her niece, and since it's not a very big apartment and I don't want to cause trouble, it means I get pulled in, and there's more reminiscence.  And I'm not sure how to put the rest of it, because I didn't finish school and all, but if you look at Krystle's life and mine as one story, the way it must look for them, they've kind of filled in the gaps of how "Krystle" went from a rebellious girl who stripped for money to a church-going woman who slipped up one night and got pregnant but has mostly played by the rules otherwise.  Like, there's a path from one to the other that makes sense to them, and even if I'm nothing like the Krystle they knew before, and the more they do that, the more it makes sense to me.  I still know who I am, underneath, but it's also starting to feel like I've always been Krystle.

And then there's stuff like my birthday.  Or hers.  Momma K put it up on the big calendar in the kitchen, because everything in her datebook goes up on that, and when I was writing that I had a job interview coming up, Moira asks what I'm writing, then has me pick her up so that she can point at things and ask what they are.  When I get to the one that's just my name, I'm like "Krystle - oh!, my birthday", kid of half-surprised.  Her eyes get big, though, asking if there are going to be presents and cake.  I don't know if we can afford presents, I say, but I suppose we can arrange a cake.  That, obviously, becomes the biggest event of the month, as far as she's concerned.

It's fun.  I let her help with frosting and blow out the candles, she has a huge sugar rush all night, and Momma K laughs when she finally goes down, saying that she remembers "me" being kind of a brat about "my" birthday, demanding presents, and it's funny to her that I'd apparently forget it.  I've had a bit of wine, so I'm a little less guarded, saying "well, it's not as important as" and only stop myself because, at least for now, Krystle's birthday has bumped mine out of my head.  I recover with "as important as hers is" while remembering December 28th, but I've kind of got to pause and count on my fingers to figure out how old I actually am.

After that, Krystal calls to wish me a happy birthday, which is nice.  Still, it's got me feeling stressed, so I head out to the fire escape to get a little time alone, outside of that apartment.

I'm not the only one; there's a man on the same level but a couple units over who's also out there, and just looking at him, I feel kind of like we've got something in common.  "Hey," I say, "you look like you wish you smoked too."

He's confused.  "What?"

"You know, how in movies, people will take a break to do that but what they really want is to get away from their family for a moment, or other stuff that they're not supposed to want to get away from?"

"And meanwhile we look stupid doing that, especially since we apparently both forgot our phones?"

"Exactly!"  We both laugh, and I extend a hand despite it being way too far to shake.  "Hi; I'm Krystle."

"I know.  You've, um, grown up, but I recognize you."  He leans over the rail and extends his hand too, and between doing that and the way he says "grown up", he winds up paying some more attention to my chest, making me want to zip my hoodie up without being too obvious about it while also noting that he's actually been staring less than most guys do.

Still, I groan, though it probably sounds more embarrassed to him than me hating that I've walked into this when I was trying to escape people acting like we had history.  "I'm sorry!  I don't remember your name!"

"It's okay; my mom left my father when I was thirteen and we weren't exactly running with the same people at school back then.  I'm Gabe.  Uh, Gabriel."

I give him a good look, hoping he'll think I'm trying to remember him when I'm really just scoping him out for the first time.  He's a bit taller than me, wears glasses, has short natural hair and a beard.  He's wearing short sleeves and from what I can see of his arms, he doesn't spend a whole lot of time in the gym trying to get bulked up.  There's a company name on his t-shirt I don't recognize.  Seems pretty harmless.  "Okay.  Yeah, Gabriel."

He smiles a big toothy grin.  "You don't recognize me at all, do you?"

"No... I'm sorry!"  I hate the way I draw out the "no" and how my voice kind of tends to squeal when I apologize; it started out as me imitating how I thought girls sounded and it stuck.

"That's okay; Mom moved us back to Georgia and I never got closer to here than New York since, but that's as close as anyone else was when the Covid got him, so it wound up being on me to make arrangements and go through his things."

"Oh no!  I--"

"Don't apologize; you didn't have anything to do with it and if you're lucky the most you ever knew him was saying hi in the elevator.  He wasn't exactly a great guy."

"Uh, okay."

"Yeah.  Anyway, don't wanna go back in there, can't really go that many other places, so here I am."

"Here you are."

We stood in silence for a while before he asked about me, and I told him about Moira and how I've been furloughed for six months and was starting to look for other jobs in case The Changeling never came back all the way, but didn't really want to because even though it was just waitressing it was also my best friends.  "But I can't do it forever.  I turned 28 today, have a 3-year-old girl, and still live with, y'know, my mother."

Fortunately, he picked up on the "today" bit.  "It's your birthday?  Congratulations!  What's the best place to get some nice baked goods and sit six feet apart?"

"Whoa!  That's, uh--"

"Krystle, I buried my father two days ago, there's a pandemic, and this is the closest thing I've had to fun since I got here.  Let me buy you a cupcake."

I started trying to come up with some sort of polite reply, but was saved when he heard his phone ring inside.  "Gotta get that.  But it was nice to see you again."

"You too."

I went inside to see that Momma Kamen was still on the couch, watching some CBS crime show.  "I hear that Gabriel boy has a nice job in Manhattan."

"How would you--  It's not like that!  His father just died and he clearly just wanted someone to talk to."

"Uh-huh.  Still, happy birthday to you!"

Just what I need - Krystle's mom trying to fix me up with someone from so far back in Krystle's life that she's probably forgotten him herself.

-Jonah/Krystle

Jordan/Yuan-Wei: Different sorts of weird

Hey, it's been a minute, and I can't even really say that the last year of my life has been screwy in ways that don't involve the Inn, because I've still been in contact with Chen-Ai/Bingbing about stuff, and she still acts like she wants to be friends. Like, the sort of friend who charges you ten thousand American dollars to sign documents so that nobody goes looking for Chen-Ai because she didn't file her taxes on multiple continents, but still a friendly sort of mercenary.  We're helping each other out, so I should be happy to kick some cash her way!  Really, she says, I should just let her hire herself as her own business manager.  I'm actually not sure why she hasn't just gone and done that anyway, beyond maybe not wanting to have an ugly confrontation when the Inn spits out a new Chen-ai.  I half-suspect that she had someone lined up, but she's gotten cagier since the pandemic, because who knows when there will be enough people at the Inn to trigger the curse?  It didn't happen at all this year, from what I can tell, and I have moments when I think we won't be out of the woods by next May.

I never thought I'd be thankful for travel restrictions, but she absolutely would have come to visit "friends in California" this summer if that had been a thing.  Of course, on the other side, it's been a tricky thing with my visa.  VFX work is still going on, so I've got a job in California, even if CGI is not as easy to do from home as you might think - the 3D scanners and powerful render farms are at the office, so I'm a bit limited in what I can do at home and there's lag.  Plus, the amount of work has tapered off as studios push movies out and thus need less overtime to hit a date, and a lot of film and TV just hasn't been shooting, which means less work is coming in.  Ironically, a lot of what is coming in is from China, which raises the question of maybe me working from "home" in Hong Kong.  There's been talk, but the lag would really suck unless we opened an actual office there, which the guys up top aren't quite ready to do.  Plus, if I leave here for Hong Kong, who knows when or if I'll be able to come back.  My passport as Yuan-Wei may be Chinese, but in my head and heart I'm still Chinese-American, and not being able to see my family or anything would just suck.

Not that I don't occasionally think of picking up stakes and settling in Hong Kong for good.  It's not like I didn't notice racism for the first twenty-five years of my life, but when you're a big guy who has lived in Queens all his life, your voice says you belong there, you've got places you can go to escape it because everyone's Asian there, and I was kind of tough to beat up.  I didn't know much kung fu, but I was fucking difficult to knock over at my size.  Being fat isn't much fun, and makes you another sort of target, but I didn't get kicked in the face like the skinny guys did.  It's something I didn't have to deal with a whole lot after becoming Yuan-Wei - I spent my time in good environments and the creeps just thought I was exotic and might be excited to fuck any white guy - but ever since people started in with that "China virus" shit, there have been a whole fucking lot more people yelling at my ass, and some of the worst are in the nice neighborhood where I live.  Like, Wuhan is as far from Hong Kong as L.A. is from Texas or something, but they don't even need to see me pull out some sort of ID that shows me as legally an immigrant to figure that I personally brought the virus here and my having a house is stage one of some communist conspiracy to kill all the white people and take over their country, but I guess these guys have always been rich white assholes and they are not handling the first time they've ever felt unsafe or restricted very fucking well at all.

They need a trip to the Inn, every fucking one of them.

I don't know if that would really change them, though.  Like, I always used to think that the last few years have really changed me, but seven months of mostly staying in has me wondering how much the stuff I thought was different really was.  Sure, I've got a clitoris which has a direct line of communication with my pleasure center, and I'm kind of at the point when whatever chemistry happens in your brain when you're around a guy with the right pheromones is starting to train me to find them attractive even from a photograph, but, shit, that's just chemistry.  I'm back to hanging around the house, working on a computer all day and then either shifting it to gaming mode or finding something on Netflix after that, pretty much like before I went to the Inn the first time.

It's starting to make me feel like I'm seeing a stranger in the mirror for the first time in a while, too.  Especially since I'm not really using that time to make the girl in the mirror into what I want from her, unless I know I'm going to have a video call with upper management or a client that day.  The rest of the time, there's no point in makeup, and I'll just slip into a t-shirt and either some loose shorts or some leggings, and flip-flops for shoes.  I haven't worn heels in long enough that I went to the closet and made sure I could still walk in them while writing this.  A lot of my female co-workers have said that they're not looking forward to having to wear bras again when this is all over, but I'm not quite with them on that; my tits are just big enough that it stops being fun after a few hours.

I haven't quite eating too much or stopped doing yoga, and I've even started swimming a bit in the little slice of ocean I've got behind my house on occasion because I do like seeing a narrow waist in the mirror, but it's an effort and between that and my period, I'm starting to wonder what the point of being Yuan-Wei is if I don't get to hang out and be with other people.  It seems to be a whole lot more fucking work just to be the person I used to be!

And it makes me wonder how much this Inn stuff really becomes normal.  Annette and I have talked about how we're not like "regular" trans people because we figure that the part of our brain that determines gender identity also gets changed by the spell, and we just have to catch up the same way we do with who we're attracted to, but I'm starting to wonder if I ever really accepted being a woman, or if it just seemed like an okay trade-off to having a chance to go back to college and be popular and have lots of sex this time, even if it was the other kind.  Now, though, I'm starting to wonder if I'm actually comfortable with being a girl, or if I just like being attractive and popular.

-Jordo

Val: Long stories short

Sorry if these posts have become so few and far between but when the world changes so fast it becomes a mite bit hard to figure out when to stop and talk about it. Over the last two months, talking about my own sorry life has been real low on my list of priorities, but I feel a little calm and comfortable now, and am just a bit in need of distraction, even if we as a city and country ain't nearly out of the woods yet.

After the wedding, Ariel and I both kind of recognized that what had happened between us was a one-off - two women in need grabbing a little piece of excitement from the best possible source. We had a single conversation loaded with nervous laughter where we both agreed to admit we had expected it a little based on all the buildup we had had, but that there wasn't more to it than that.

The idea was, we were going to go back to our normal lives. Ariel would give herself some time to move on from her relationship with Charli, and I would go back to pining over irritating men.

Then COVID happened, and suddenly we were all we had for company.

We both recognized early on the potential for danger here. We were two of each other's closest friends in the world, confidantes and emotional support at a time when everyone needed someone to fill that role. Complicating it could be a disaster.

True, I said, but in my experience, denying yourself something you want is a complication. It's simpler to give in and deal with the fallout later.

She smiled and said that's why I like you, you say stuff like that just when I need to hear it.

I added, it's more fun, too.

So began our sexual odyssey. We gave it a few weeks before confirming to Maddie what we were up to. She took it strangely, like she was disappointed in me, but understood it was my business. Eventually she adjusted, but she always maintained a weirdly conflicted attitude about it. Maybe she didn't like us becoming a faction. Maybe she was insecure about her formerly-supposedly-straight friend falling in with a girl, and her sister's ex at that. Part of me hoped it was because she wished she were in Ariel's place, but I pushed that aside and tried to appreciate the girl I had.

At times I had doubts myself. I had been pursuing men for so long it hadn't occurred to me to be with a woman in this way. I think because I felt such guilt over myself for my past relationships with women that being with men exclusively felt like my... punishment? Realizing I am bisexual as a woman was actually a hard step to take because I had to try to figure out whether I was just faking it to feel like Tyler again, or if I, Valerie, like this girl. And the answer is I do, because there is a lot to like.

I mean, she's beautiful, with tan skin and great hair and a really great fashion sense. And an incredible figure. She's funny, she's smart, she's informed. A joy to be around. She makes me feel good and - and I don't say this lightly - I feel like I can be myself around her.

After a few weeks of casual sex, we began to morph into an actual couple with the closest things you could think of to "dates" in lockdown. Movie nights, special dinners. She would light candles and read me poetry she loved (that would mostly go over my head). I would tell her long stories with no real point and make endless breakfasts. And at the same time we had all the perks of being girlfriends - long talks, fashion advice, gossip.

Sometime in May, it became a little tricky for me because I recognized I was on the verge of becoming vulnerable. I did some math and realized it had been years since I had really been in a relationship of equals. That would be Meg. At times my relationship with Kitty felt that way but it always had that element of just playing house, occupying time until we moved on to other things. This was the first time in a very, very long time I was with someone, fully and unambiguously.

It scared me. I became a little sensitive to relationship things. Wanted some space. Maybe even snapped at her once or twice.

And then something crazy happened.

We talked it out.

Without revealing that I used to be a man called Tyler who was victim of a magic Inn, I explained my past as best I could and how badly behaved I was in some past relationships, and how I was seeing similar behavior in myself again and I'd understand if she wanted to cut her losses. She told me she wanted to work with me through it, if that was what I wanted, and I broke down crying admitting, I do, I do. We kissed and made up.

I was falling in love.

So in June, when the world erupted in chaos and violence and protests about racial inequality, my Black girlfriend was insistent that I make fighting for what was right part of our relationship. And admittedly, I was a bit stuck in some of my old backward ways thinking this was all a lot, but she brought me up to speed and told me that this was her life, where she came from and what she is, and her need for me to see all of it and make her struggle part of mine.

It was one of those "Wow, I really am not Tyler anymore" things. Not that he was a racist, he just... didn't get things. The person I once was would probably never have put himself in danger even once, but it took me very little convincing.

I do feel guilty about how it all had to come about - relying on the person I am dating to explain the fine details of "systemic racism" to me, but I figure growth is a good thing by any means. And she seemed happy to help me because she wants me to be good.

It has been an overall turbulent few months, which I have summed up as quickly as I can because I don't have as much "alone time" to write in a blog anymore, but this is all to say in this crazy fucking world... I have found love. I am in love, I am loved, in ways I never expected. And yeah it's a little surprising that it's with a woman (which maybe that's still surprising that that's surprising but after everything I really saw myself with a man!) but if you know this woman you would not be surprised at all.

I don't know if this is the end for me at this blog. I know I have had a long-ass journey to get to a place where I feel this good all the time. There is still more to do to make me the Val I want to be. But if you don't hear from me again know that I left off on a good note.

Love and peace

Valerie

Steven-Shona: Hit hard

Georgia was one of the states hit hardest by the pandemic (51K cases in a state of 11 Mil, aka 5% of everyone who lives here) largely thanks to what I would characterize as insanely poor leadership, but I did not come here to get political. Only to talk about the toll it has taken on on me - as the floor manager of a Big Box store, I have spent the last two months in the trenches as people fought for the last scrap of toilet paper, water, and for some reason flour (you all people know you can buy bread, right?)

We're through the worst of it now, although unfortunately that has led the news cycle to focus on even more harrowing things, but in March and April things got way worse than I ever expected when I took this job. "Lower management at a superstore? I have an MSc from Georgia Tech." Little did I know more lives would seemingly depend on me while I'm wearing a gray polo than when I wore a lab coat.

I saw the worst in people. Frenzy, panic, frustration, abuse heaped on our underpaid and overworked employees, many of whom took this job as an after-school position because they're, you know, teens. Entitlement, ignorance, and outright flouting of the rules as time went on, as if this disease weren't taking more and more people into the hospital for two months, many of whom never came out - and a lot of whom never made it there in the first place.

I don't want to harp because we're past it now and things have moved on, but I saw awful things. I saw 15-year-old girls spat on for trying to enforce the posted limit of certain items per customer. I saw one of my brightest workers, an honors student, shoved down and nearly trampled. I've seen disadvantaged folks and seniors not being able to get things they need because - and there "ain't no rule" - the same wealthy people come back day after day to scoop up what they want. It hurt, and many days I would just go home and hold my head in my freshly-washed hands and hold back tears.

Amidst all of this, three things happened that have changed the trajectory of my life.

One was a chance encounter with an old classmate of mine from high school. Ricky West. Ricky was practically the king of the school, or at least the prince. He was an offensive first-stringer on the football team, was in homecoming and prom court, married a teen pageant queen from our school at 18. All the guys envied him. The worst part is you couldn't even really hate him because he was humble and kind, and not that dumb - no genius but not dumb.

So when I saw him in the liquor aisle of the store, still looking just like an older, more tired and potbellied version of the handsome guy from high school, I momentarily forgot myself and gave him a smile - "Heya Rick!" Oop. The moment it came out of my mouth I remembered - not Steven. And Shona didn't grow up around here.

So as expected, he looked at me sideways. "I know you?"

"Oh uh, not personally, but we have friends in common. I'm Shona. I... used to date Steven Blassie."

He scratched his chin. "Oh, uh... yeah, him." I could tell he only dimly remembered me, if at all. Saying we had "mutual friends" was a big stretch but not a total lie.

He looked rough, his hair unkempt, unshaved, and like maybe he wasn't sleeping good. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Well, I don't really drink, but uh... that whisky is looking real good."

"Tennessee's finest," I said.

"I uh... I just got laid off. Been with that company for eight years. It took them a week into the pandemic to decide I wasn't worth paying."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "You're just gonna drown your sorrows?" He looked rough, like maybe he was on his way to rock bottom.

"Don't have much of a choice. Nobody's hiring."

"Well, we happen to need some help on the loading dock - these are really tough times you know. Why don't I get you an application?"

He backed off. "Hey, I don't want any charity..."

"It's not charity," I said, "We need help. And I can't give you anything except an interview. You have to get yourself the job."

He stepped forward and went to hug me, but I backed off - "Woah, pandemic remember?"

He turned red. "Oh yeah. Sorry about that."

Well, he did get the job. And he was good at it. Nice guy, friendly, hard worker, lively conversation. And I think he always had a lot of gratitude to me for reaching out because he always made sure to talk with me, check in on me if I maybe needed help or someone to vent to. He became somebody I actively looked forward to seeing during my day, probably because it felt so good to be on friendly terms with the prince of high school, even if those days were long past.

And I was the same for him. He was working long hours and it led to a lot of disagreements with his wife, and he felt like, he's out here trying to put food on the table and why can't she just accept that? And I said that being a woman doesn't mean I understand them, and he laughed.

And then one night, after yet another stressful day, it was just him and me finishing up some receiving and paperwork, and we're talking about what we're going to do when we got home - which was not much since it was nearly 11. Then he said we might as well sleep here and I said yeah, let's make a bed out of toilet paper.

And then he kissed me.

And I didn't stop it. I didn't know how to react in the moment. It felt right even though he's married and I'm not who I look like. In that moment it felt good to be wanted by somebody, and extra good for it to be him. As Shona - being as big as I am - a lot of men don't look at me as a sex object, and the ones that do think I should feel lucky that they do, not realizing I don't want their attention or care. But this guy... he has a beautiful wife at home and we struck up a bond that felt real and... well, my head was spinning.

I had a split second to decide what happened next and... I had sex with him, right there on the loading dock floor.

I'm not proud of it, and it has been weighing on my conscience ever since, but in the moment I needed the release badly, both because of how overworked and stressed I was, and because I thought the opportunity would never present itself again, and because of... the second of the other two things I have yet to explain.

In March - not long after the pandemic started and Ricky was hired - I received a letter from Shona. It read in part:

"Dear Steven,

It has come to my attention that for the past several months you have been inhabiting my former body and living as me. Please know that this was in no way my intended or hoped for outcome, even when I learned that the Trading Post Inn had transformed me into a new person. But I'll admit it is not the worst outcome in my eyes. I was so afraid that whoever got that body would hate it, disrespect it, resent it or harm it. and i know you would do none of those things. You had always claimed to love how I was, and I hope you are capable of bringing that same energy to the challenge of being me.

I had made my peace with the physical fact of my body since I was 14, with how it was to me and how the world treated me. But I never made peace with being me.

I felt guilty for accepting your love because I never felt the same way. I did not love you the way you loved me, but i did my best to convince myself to try. You are a good man and treated me well, and it's nobody's fault those feelings aren't there on my side. I stayed with you so long because I felt you were the best I could do, that I could never hoped to be loved more than you loved me, and never hope to find someone I loved that way too.

I am so sorry to tell you this, especially under these circumstances.

My friend Reby, who knew of the Inn's magic, and knew of my inner conflict, took it on herself to arrange the trip for me. I resent that, but I know that if she could have explained it beforehand - if I could imagine it were real - I would have agreed. This is what I want.

I will always remember you fondly.

-Sho"

This was accompanied by pages of directives on how best to live as her and other notes, some of which would have been very helpful months ago.

To learn, this far in, that the woman I devoted my life to, whose legacy I now proudly wore, was lying to me for years about her feelings, felt she was settling for me and never truly loved me, destroyed me. I carried that with me, privately, for weeks, trying to suppress the hurt and confusion as I navigated the high pressures of the pandemic world, until finally it exploded that night with Ricky and we both made a major mistake.

FWIW - It's completely immaterial whether the sex was any good because it was so WRONG to do, but I do have thoughts that I would like to share someday in a more appropriate venue, and maybe when I have more "data." Which may never happen, or it may.

I spent days afterward feeling completely ashamed, unable to look him in the eye, and he seemed ashamed too since it took days for us to work up the nerve to look at each other again. In his case, he let me know that he was feeling bad about it, and how he was going through so much and I said clearly, it was a mistake we both made - nothing excused it (although he desperately seemed to want to justify it by talking about issues in his marriage, which... get those sorted out yourself.) I said it would be best to just pretend it never happened and he said it would try.

"I just want my friend back," I said. He seemed to agree.

Then he muttered something about asking whether there were any "loose ends" that needed to be tied up. I did a double take at that but realized what he was saying. I had opted to take a morning-after pill the next day because being that it had happened so fast neither of us had any contraceptive handy and didn't exactly stop to ask questions in the moment (if we had, we probably would have come to our senses.)

That brings us to the last thing that happened, in April. I was notified that, due to COVID-19 causing all out-of-state travel to be cancelled, my reservation to the Inn would be refunded and I would have to re-book for a later date.

I was unsure exactly what this meant but I could feel safe in assuming that, since I was relying on going there at a certain time to recoup my body, that whenever I did end up getting there, my body would no longer be available.

Not knowing exactly how the Inn works, only having what I've read on this blog as "evidence" it seems like I have completely lost my chance to become Steven in body again. Perhaps ever. How long will it take for the Inn to find someone to transform into me? Has it already happened? Is there some kind of holding pattern for when there is less than enough people to trigger the change, or can it only stay dormant for so long before it just... randomly starts assigning bodies? I guess we'll have to watch the news out of Old Orchard Beach for that but I doubt the local Bangor CBS Affiliate covers body swapping.

Damn it. Damn it all. Honestly after Shona sent me her letter telling me she would never be herself again, it's not like I thought that was my cue to stay as her - it was still not a life I wanted to lead for myself, even if I wanted to ensure that her body was respected per her wishes. I was too hurt by what she had said about our relationship. Honestly, I hoped I could go back to being myself and abandon this body to fate, out of spite and hurt a little bit. But now... well, if I ever get back to Maine, why should I bother? Why leap into the great unknown when history has shown that I would probably just end up someplace worse, still female, probably not as free as this?

So... am I Shona forever?

I honestly don't know. I feel lost.

-Former Steven