Karaoke Room (Part 1)

A couple of my bros and I decided to do some karaoke on a Friday night. I know, perhaps not the craziest thing to do to kick off the weekend, but the rooms were private and BYOB -- so minimal public embarrassment while saving a lot on the beer budget.

I was so drunk that I thought I imagined the change at first. My clothes were the same, but I was definitely different. My body now had parts it certainly didn’t have before while lacking others. And yet, I was to drunk to be worried. I just laughed.

Did I really just randomly turn into a woman in the middle of karaoke night? It seemed so outlandish. My mind was spinning.

So Metal

It wasn’t an ideal time for the Great Shift to happen -- though I’m not sure there is technically ever a good time for you and everyone you know to be swapped into other people’s bodies -- but it still sucked.

The club we were scheduled to play at wasn’t huge, but it was bigger than the places we typically played. But moments before my metal band was slated to take the stage, I went from being a guy with deep guttural growl of a voice to a woman who practically squeaked when she talked.

We had all swapped with someone, but we agreed that I had it the worst -- the only one whose new body might affect our performance. We took to the stage anyway.

Somehow we pulled it off. Even though the entire crowd was swapped too. Someone my new voice worked in a way -- sure, it was a bit of a different sound, but it also seemed like people dug it even more.

Smile

After the Great Shift, Ju Won’s friends had all thought he’d adapt to being a woman fairly quickly because he was gay. He had to explain to them that being gay and being trans were not even remotely close to being the same thing, and he was struggling with being a woman just as much as they were. It didn’t help them understand.

Still, Ju Won was interested in pursuing a relationship. He wasn’t sure if his preference transferred over or if this body was just straight, but he was still interested in men. The problem was that none of them seemed interested in him.

The Shift was still fresh and few people were interested in romantic exploration. He had a few moments at the club, but his new body’s busted smile always seemed to turn them away.

Then one time on the street, he got a compliment from a guy. He tried not to smile, but he couldn’t help it. And strangely, the guy didn’t run away. He smiled back...he SMILED BACK. Ju Won was over the moon...

I Swapped Bodies with My Blind Date

Doing Okay (Part 5)

View Part 1 of Doing Okay.
View Part 2 of Doing Okay.
View Part 3 of Doing Okay.
View Part 4 of Doing Okay.

I don’t even remember exactly how it happened next -- what we were even talking about at the moment --when we suddenly turned to each other and started to kiss. It was hard to process all the thoughts that were running through my head; I was kissing my own body!

There was a warmth that spread through my body, but I think the thing that I will never forget was the taste. I recognized it; it was what my mouth tasted like before the Great Shift. Of all the things that had changed when I became a woman, the differing default taste in my mouth had been a weird one. But kissing my own body brought back that original neutral taste that I kin of missed.

I think she liked it too, judging from the smile on our face after we parted lips and just sort of stared at each other.

Liminal Space

Few people have travelled to the liminal spaces of the backrooms; far fewer have escaped; but I think I might be the only one to have mastered them.

You see, the backrooms may seem random, but they are all based on math. If you know enough data and the right calculations, you know why wall X intersects with wall Y at angle Z or why that table is stuck in the middle of a wall. But all that math meant it was at least theoretically possible to re-arrange yourself as well.

That’s how I figured out how to steal Danielle’s body. The proper alignment and the proper timing meant my brain could simply replace hers -- male to female, and all it took was just some simple quantum mathematics. Of course, a slight miscalculation could mean a misalignment or I might’ve ended up in a simulacrum instead of the real thing. But I didn’t feel misaligned; I didn’t feel like a copy. No. This was real, and I felt great! Everything was great!

The Experience

Jeremy hit the ground hard. He expected it to hurt, but it felt good instead. In fact, everything felt good. The floor, the loud music -- all of it was good. People reached down to pick him up, but he didn’t want to. After all, the floor felt so good. But, as it turned out, standing up also felt good as well. Realizing he was in someone else’s body? A woman’s body? Also good!

It took him a few more minutes to realize he was high. How he got high was still a mystery to him, though maybe he was just imagining all of this. The club, the different body -- maybe it was all just from whatever he was on. It didn’t seem to matter right now; he could just enjoy this for what it was -- an experience...an out-of-body experience?

the workplace. (epsiode 2)

View Part 1 of the workplace.

Basic

The thing about Emily was that she was pretty ordinary. I didn’t know anything about her before swapping into her body, but it didn’t seem to matter; I could just sort of fake it with a lot of bland cliches about twenty-something year old women.

Her style seemed basic and unoriginal. When I saw another woman on the street -- I wasn’t sure if she was a friend of Emily’s or not -- but I just sad some things about Taylor Swift and Pilates, and then we both went about our day.

If I had known it would be so easy to be a woman, I think I would’ve stolen the body of one years ago. Then again, maybe it wasn’t all women who were so simple....maybe it was just Emily.

Oh.

Lou still couldn’t believe he was going on his first date since the Great Shift. He was still nervous about it, but there were things that would make it easier. When he arrived at the bar, it was pretty easy to spot Clarice with his own former face, for instance.

It all seemed to be going quite well until he mentioned the date.

From inside his body, she laughed, “Are you serious? We’re just exchanging info here, because we should be friends.”

“Oh,” It was hard for Lou to say much more.

“I mean, my former body is a 3 or 4 at most. But now? I’m like a 7 or an 8! I’m really sorry for what you lost, but a date?” She laughed, “No way!”

“Oh,” Lou repeated.

Allergic

One thing I didn’t anticipate when swapping bodies with Nikki was the effects of her female hormones on my male brain. I never expected to start finding cute guys attractive, and I certainly never wanted my heart skip when just the right one looked at me. Yet that was exactly what was happening to me.

But it wasn’t my own shyness or any kind of social norms preventing me from talking to any of these guys, it was another aspect of Nikki’s body -- her allergies. Why did every cute guy seem to own a dog? And why did Nikki have to be so allergic to animals?

Then again, I had a body swapping machine. I didn’t have to stay in Nikki’s body to remain a woman, I could literally be any woman who would be willing to swap bodies with her. I just had to find one without allergies...

Sit. Stay. Swap.

Hotwire

It was a rough neighborhood. While Nathaniel had grown up here, it was a place he had told himself he was never coming back to. The Great Shift had other plans.

It wasn’t just that he had found himself thrust back into one of the roughest areas. It wasn’t just that the Shift happened in the middle of the night. He also found himself in a woman’s body. All those things added up seemed like a recipe for disaster, and Nathaniel decide he wasn’t going to stick around.

Of course, growing up in a bad neighborhood ha given him some useful skills. There was the time some guy taught him how to hotwire a car -- he was certainly using that skill now. He knew it probably wasn’t ethical, but feeling safe while in a strange, unknown body was a higher priority right now.

The Swap (Part 1)

Freshman year. Right after coming back to campus after winter break. The swap happened. It had been three days since that swap. I was in Li’s body, and she was in mine.

“Every day I see you, it looks like you just woke up. A little makeup wouldn’t hurt, you know?” She said while staring me dead in the eye.

“Pastels?” I asked, basically responding with my own criticism of how she was dressed in my body.

“Your mom sent it.”

“It’s fine. It’s passable.”

We both knew we were pushing the limits of what would be an ‘acceptable’ look for the other. Neither of us really wanted to embrace our new bodies; we just wanted to swap back!

So Much Worse

A few minutes ago I had woken up in a weird lab in the body of a woman. It felt so strange, and I immediately started complaining and cursing. The mad scientist seemed to appear out of nowhere, telling me to shut up or he’d make it so much worse.

I wish I had listened.

I soon found myself waking up a second time. The world was blurry and the colors were muted. Things seemed bigger. I saw the body that I had been in not long ago -- I could recognize the clothing. It was acting strangely -- panting, making whining animal-like noises.

Then I realized exactly what kind of animal the body was acting like, because I realized what kind of animal I had become! That mad scientist had put me into the body of a dog! Maybe being a woman wasn’t so bad after all!

Continuum Medical Services

Dude!

“So, you’re saying that on this website, you can literally modify your features to make you look in any way you want? And people will always think you were like that? I dunno. It seems a scam to me.” Mike mused as he looked a the laptop open in front of him.

“Dude!” His roommate Jason exclaimed, “Look at me! I pushed that thing to the limit and turned myself into a chick! The only thing I didn’t realize was that it was one time only, and now I’m stuck like this!”

“You haven’t...always looked like that?”

“It may change what you look like, but it doesn’t exactly transfer the needed life skills over. I had to figure out how to put on a bra this morning, Dude! And that’s still the least of my problems! I need to figure out my cycle and birth control pills and so many other things I wish I didn’t need to know.”

Unearned

The Great Shift had happened hours ago, swapping the bodies of all the locals and tourists on the small island. Most people had gone home or returned to their rooms, but Austin just sat on the edge of the resort property the entire time since the Shift. He hadn’t budged.

It had only been a few days prior when he realized a truth about himself -- or perhaps herself would be more apt -- the realization of being a trans woman. She hadn’t started any sort of process yet; she hadn’t even picked out a new name. As a result, the sudden shift of being in a woman’s body was still...difficult.

The problem wasn’t with the gender of her new body -- that was obviously the good part. The problem was that the body still wasn’t hers and it didn’t feel like hers; it felt stolen, unearned, and fake. Austin didn’t miss her old gender in the slightest, but she did miss her body...

Experiment in Empathy

It was meant to be an experiment in empathy, a way to help their failing marriage. It had been three months now since Beth’s husband, Mac, had been turned into an exact copy of Beth. The only problem was that the copy of her body also meant he had a copy of her brain. For all intents and purposes, he thought he was Beth and always had been.

As a result, they often argued about who the real Beth was and who was really Mac. And the fact was, they didn’t really know. Beth began to question her own identity. Maybe she was really Mac, and she just didn’t know it -- though she’d never reveal she thought that to him. Mac (of course) had the exact same thought. So they both kept insisting they were Beth -- the REAL Beth.

Even the scientists weren’t sure which was which, and refused to force either of them to go back to being Mac for ethical reasons. The marriage continued to be just as tense as ever.

Could Be Pretty (Part 3)

View Part 1 of Could Be Pretty.
View Part 2 of Could Be Pretty.

Josh began thinking about all the things he was going to do for the next month while in Sabrina’s body. Then the pain hit.

Suddenly, he wasn’t interested in doing much of anything. He just wanted to put back on Sabrina’s sweatpants, curl up in a ball, and moan in anguish -- except he wasn’t even sure he could muster changing clothes at this point.

Why did it hurt so much!? This was inhumane!? Was he dying?

Of course, Josh had no way of knowing this was just Sabrina’s monthly visitor; he had obviously never felt one before. It would surely be a learning experience at the very least...