Doreen snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Did you text Celia yet?”

“I told you yesterday, I have a timeline in mind and I’m waiting to see if the right circumstances arrive before that timeline’s up.”

“You mean you want to see if whatever weird quirk of reality that turned you into a woman somehow manages to repeat itself in the next two days and keeps you that way for long enough to arrange and go on a Sexy Library date?”

“When you put it that way, you make me sound unreasonable”

It’s Thursday, a few days after I went to bed as a man on Friday, woke up as a woman on Saturday morning, got propositioned via bookmark by a cute and smart librarian named Celia on Saturday afternoon, went to bed as a woman on Saturday night, and woke up as a man on Sunday. My friend Doreen is the only person who knows about my change, and the only person who’s seen me both as a man and as a woman - at least, as far as I know. Unless I change my plans, that will change when I make my weekly library trip on Saturday, when Celia, who knows me only as a woman, will see me as the man I usually am.

I figure that’s also as long as I can go with pretending that I haven’t seen the bookmark that she snuck into the copy of Left Hand of Darkness that I was checking out after she wrote her name, number, and “Text me!” on it.

Yes, I know that hoping I somehow turn back into a woman by Saturday is far-fetched, but it seems a lot more likely than “Celia won’t recognize my name when I check out new books” or “Celia forgot about me entirely”, less cruel than “Celia disappeared off the face of the Earth”, and less undesirable than “I never go to the library again”.

I go to grab some more of the Thai food that I bought on the way over to Doreen’s house tonight, but it’s empty. That’s weird - the two of us usually eat little enough that we can split leftovers. “Doreen, you extra hungry tonight?” I grab some water instead - my throat’s felt off tonight, like I was allergic to something in the Thai food, except that I don’t have any allergies.

“Are you serious? Have you not been keeping track of how much you’ve eaten tonight? That’s like your fourth plate! Are you suddenly eating for two?”

Doreen’s been making gendered jokes all week, pretty much from the moment I sent her a selfie of girl-me. Most of them are a bit forced, but I have to admit that one’s pretty funny. And I have felt unusually hungry tonight, almost like I had on Saturday morning and Sunday morning after… oh, yeah.

After.

“Uh, maybe? I think I need to go check on something.”

I head to the bathroom. My voice, the one thing about girl-me I wouldn’t know how to hide from other people, is definitely getting higher. I assume that means the other changes are coming soon? I was asleep both when I changed and when I changed back the first time, so the body of evidence isn’t really extensive here.

In the bathroom, I leave the door unlocked - this won’t shock Doreen, and I don’t know if I’m going to react in a way that would cause me to need her help. I take off my shirt and take a look in the mirror. What I see there wouldn't turn heads on the street, but there's definitely more than what was there an hour ago.

Hmph. My pants feel weird. I unbuckle, unbutton, unzip, and see what there is to see, which is… not much? My penis looks like it’s experienced a month of cold-pool shrinkage, my hips seem to have moved slightly (not that they were that much different when I was in girl-mode), and I have this… crawling feeling all over my body as it makes the gradual shift from male to female.

I bet this is going to cause a whole-body phantom itch for days.

“Doreen?” I can hear my voice cracking further as it gains pitch. “You don’t still happen to have a spare bra, do you?”

———————————————-----------------------------------------------------------------

Doreen did happen to have a spare bra. In fact, Doreen happened to have a spare bra, multiple spare outfits including a long dress, a short dress, a skirt and top (conservative), a skirt and top (slutty), spare jeans that would match either top, spare shoes, purses, and jewelry that matched all the above outfits, and spare second and third bras in different colors.

She has them all ready for me, plus makeup, multiple references for styling short hair, my phone, and the text I had sent her on Saturday with Celia’s phone number, as soon as I come out of the bathroom fully feminized.

I’m not perfect on women’s sizing, but it occurs to me that with four inches of height and thirty pounds of weight on Doreen, she and I, excepting bra (her bra did fit quite well on Saturday) and possibly shoes, could not possibly be the same size.

“Doreen, I think this is the weirdest way that I’ve been told I need to leave someone’s home early.”

“This is only the third weirdest way I’ve asked someone to leave my home early, which means your life is too boring and you need to let me make some questionable choices on your behalf once in a while. Now text Celia, you need to know what she’s doing to you tonight before we pick out your outfit.”

“Don’t you mean what she’s doing with me?”

“Didn’t I just say you needed to let me make some questionable choices on your behalf?”

——————————————————————------------------------------------------------

Celia wants to go to a used book expo this weekend. With Doreen’s help, I convince her to go to dinner tonight first, with an option of a bookstore visit after - I don’t know how long I’m going to be a woman, and I don’t want to miss this opportunity.

I also have to negotiate with Doreen, but about my outfit. She argues for “skirt and top (conservative)”. I push for “jeans and top (slutty)”, thinking that agreeing to a slutty top might get me out of wearing a skirt at all. Doreen claims that jeans on a dinner date is an Unserious Choice, since it combines casual clothes with a casual event. I think she's making this up, but instead of saying that, I point out that a skirt is a bad idea because my spontaneous sex changes have not come with spontaneous body hair removal and my legs have literally never been shaved.

This is, as it turns out, an unwise gambit that leads to Doreen seeing more of me than I had intended at the start of this process. I try to argue against shaving in general because we don’t know if my legs would still be shaved when I revert back to male, and Doreen counters that when I’m a man, nobody’s ever looking at my bare legs anyway. This is why, when arguing with Doreen, a redirect is better than a refusal.

Shaving doesn’t get a degree of smoothness either of us are happy with - which doesn’t surprise me, having shaved off a beard before - so we end up going with the short dress, accented by a pair of opaque colored tights and two-inch heels that I’m fairly certain, like the other clothes she had available, would never fit Doreen. I know her well enough to know this is an “ask later” question.

Doreen does my hair and makeup for me, telling me that on Saturday she will help but I will be doing this myself, and sends me to the bathroom to see what I think.

I head to the bathroom. Holy shit that woman is an entire goddess and a half she could do whatever she wants to me and I would ask for more. Her short dress hangs perfectly on her tall frame, accenting the few curves she has but not faking ones she doesn’t. The top of the dress plays a mild game of peekaboo with her bra straps and shows enough cleavage to perform her gender, but not so much that leaning too far over would put on a show. Her short hair is parted to the side, framing her face and eyes exquisitely, and as her eyes move up and down, examining my body, I…

Wait.

Fuck.

I think I've been checking myself out. Did I really just turn me on?

I wave, the entire goddess and a half makes the same motion - reflected, of course - and blushes deep red through her perfect makeup. Yay, I get to check something else off on my Weird Gender Shit bingo card.

When Celia picks me up (because I absolutely will not drive in any heels without practice or, jokes about trans-friendly or trans-uncomfortable cops notwithstanding, in a dress and full makeup with a driver’s license identifying me as male), she doesn’t doesn’t seem quite as taken by me as I was, which is fine by me - it’s uncomfortable enough having me think about girl-me that way, I don’t think I’m ready for anyone else to. I can tell that she isn’t quite as dressed up for the date as I am - she’s wearing a top and long skirt that have the same “feel at home here” vibe as what she wore at the library last Saturday - but her hair and makeup look really nice. I tell her, and am a little surprised at how… small my feminine voice sounds, like I’m afraid she won’t like my compliment or I’m not complimenting the right thing.

I gotta get this voice under control before it gives everything about me away.

Doreen and Celia introduce themselves to each other, and then Doreen practically pushes us out the door. “Have fun, ladies! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” She slams the door before either of us, I assume especially me, has a chance to reply.

————————————————————-----------------------------------------------------

“Sooooo… what wouldn’t Doreen do?” Celia asks as soon as she pulls out of the driveway.

“Ugh, I have no idea. She and I have always operated on a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, although to be honest it tends to end up as more of a ‘I’m not asking, please please please stop telling’ policy,” I reply.

Celia laughs. “Well, that’s going to be a problem, isn’t it?”

“Uh… why?”

We get to a stop light. She leans in. Oh my God I think she’s wearing the same perfume as my ex-fiancée how could she possibly know that nobody here knows that pull yourself together this has to be a coincidence just a sexy sexy sexy hot coincidence

She smiles and leers at me in a way that makes me feel very exposed, but it's very alluring as well. “Because now we have no way of knowing what we aren’t allowed to do tonight.”

It’s a line. It’s not even a good line.

But damn is it, and the perfume, and everything else about this woman, working for me. I never felt this way about someone when I was a man, not even when I was getting ready to marry them.

I squirm a little, smile, and cross my legs. Because apparently my instinct is that tightening up my vagina is somehow going to keep my urges bottles up until I can figure out what to do about them.