Blue Moon
- 3.1-3.6 -

by Donna Lamb

Richard laughed, knowing that now it would more likely make Joel mad than tearful. Mad would be okay. "You are going to sleep with me if you drink much more."

She glared at him, then waved the screwdriver glass in a toast. “You bet your dinkle on it?” She tried to look fierce but managed only tear-stained defiance. Richard was not unmoved, though still confused by his feelings for this new Joel.

“Sure,” he said. He tipped his glass up, drained it and motioned her to do the same. She did and he smiled as he split the remainder of the pitcher between their empty glasses. He’d dated other skinny girls and inexperienced drinkers; each nine ounce glass of juice held about one shot of vodka. Nearly three shots would be enough to get her just past tipsy and half-way to really drunk.

He felt only a tiny bit guilty; she really needed this lesson. Even with the beer earlier and a cocktail on his aborted date, he might have too much alcohol in his body to drive legally but he would be far from drunk. Body mass, male enzymes in his stomach, and experience all tilted in his favor.

She looked up at him and burped. Then giggled.

“Oh so ladylike,” he said. Richard knew that such behavior by a woman came across as sexual aggression more often than that. He also knew that Joel had no idea how such a dynamic worked.

“I should give a shit,” she said, taking care to enunciate. “Even if I sleep with you, we ain’t having sex. ‘Cause I’m changing b-back in the m-morning.”

“Okay.”

She peered at him across the table. “Okay? Okay on me changing back or on not having sex?”

“Either. Both.”

She wagged a finger at him. “You don’t think I can do it!”

“Which? Changing back or having sex?”

“F-f-fuck sex,” she muttered and burped or hiccoughed again. “I know I’m changing b-back f-first thing in the m-m-m-mañana.”

He started on his second HotPocket. She’d forgotten hers and he didn’t remind her. The less food in her tummy, the quicker the liquor would hit her, the faster he could get her into bed. “How do you know that?”

“P-pure logic,” she said. She looked pleased that he had asked. “If this were p-permanent then it’d be unlikely that I’m the only p-p-person it ever happened to. And if it had ever hap-happened b-before then I’d have heard of it, and I haven’t. Ip-ip-hic-so factotum.”

“Ipse dixit,” he said.

She frowned. “Did you call me a tipsy ditz chick?”

“Not yet. But there’s a website out there by people who’ve had just this sort of thing happen to them.”

“You’re shitting me!”

“Nope. Several of them. Several websites, must be hundreds of people. Maybe thousands.”

“For real?”

“Maybe not. One thing these people all report is that they have a hard time convincing anyone they’re telling the truth.”

“Oh, b-b-bullwinkle! You’re just trying to scare me!”

He grinned. “Is it working?”

She nodded then giggled. “Scared the p-p-Pringles right off me.”

“Pringles?”

She closed one eye and looked at him. “I can’t say p-p-penis.”

He laughed more than that deserved and she dissolved into such helpless giggles she almost fell out of the chair. He stood up and helped her to stand. “You need to go to bed before you end up sleeping on the floor,” he told her.

“Are we going to sleep together?”

“Yes,” he said. H e steered her gently out of the kitchen and into the hall.

“B-but I don’t w-wanna!” Joel giggled and hiccoughed, trying to pull her fingers out of Richard’s grip.

“Tough,” he said. “I’m fond of my Pringles right where they are.”

* * *

Richard led Joel to her own room.

“Hey, this is m-my b-b-bed.” It didn’t look like a woman’s room: Full size bed with a wagon-wheel-motif brown coverlet, similar curtains, both donated by Joel’s mom. Ochre walls with framed photos taken from high places around the city, Joel’s sometime hobby. A political poster featuring Barry Aronhaus, Joel’s boss, state representative for a mixed district of urban non-voters and suburban conservatives. A desk holding two computers and assorted electronic detritus. A cheap chest of drawers with neat family pictures on top, a younger, male Joel in a graduation gown standing between a proud older couple who looked more like grandparents than parents. A Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Calendar. It looked like the lair of a neat, even fussy, essentially nerdy young bachelor, which it was.

“Yup, it’s your bed, your room. Just lay down with your clothes on and I’ll throw the coverlet over you.”

She crawled carefully into the middle of the bed, still wearing the jeans and polo shirt that she’d put back on in the bathroom, her feet bare. He pulled the coverlet loose on one side and stretched it over her then kicked off his shoes and lay down beside her on the top sheet. “See? We’ll just sleep? No sex.” Not this time, he promised to himself.

They lay face to face. The kitchen light shone obliquely through the open door. Her eyes are green, thought Richard. I always thought they were blue, I guess. Maybe they changed. She sure has long eyelashes for a blonde. I wonder what she’d look like with long hair and maybe a little make-up. This is so weird, she’s Joel but she isn’t.

Joel struggled to get an arm free from the covers, wiping at her forehead with it. “If we sleep together, then am I going to be stuck – like this?”

“I think so,” he said, not sure that sleeping had anything to do with it. “Don’t worry about it, there doesn’t seem to be anything you can do. If you slept alone, you’d still be sleeping with a beautiful girl.”

She sighed then looked at him sideways. The light left his face in shadows but she knew his features very well. Dark brown curly hair, brown eyes with a hazel disk around the pupil. She’d always noticed such things, being a photographer, even if her specialty was cityscapes. “You’re kinda cute, yourself,” she said. One eye drifted slowly closed in what might have been a wink.

He raised up and looked at her. She’s more than cute, he told himself. No make-up and she’s been crying for hours and she still looks like a fashion model.

She closed the other eye and continued. “And if you tell me I said that to-tomorrow, I’ll kick you right in the b-b-b-Bullwinkles.” She rolled away from him slightly, to lie on her back.

“I’m sure you would. Now go to sleep,” he murmured. But Joel’s breath already came in the soft and low rhythms of exhausted, slightly anesthetized sleep. Richard relaxed a bit and almost drifted off.

Outside, the Blue Moon sailed down the sky toward the end of night. Richard roused himself and sat up, looking down at his suddenly beautiful–and suddenly female–roommate. He shook his head, hardly believing it. One side of her face gilded in the light from the kitchen, the other side silvered by moonlight through the window, she looked strange – like some creature fallen from the sky.

Sitting up, he murmured what might have been a prayer, “Jesus, God, help me.” He looked back at Joel. “She’s going to need someone to protect her.” Then he crossed himself the way his grandmother had taught him, adding, “Mary, help me,” since the problem involved a woman. Hardly anyone would have believed Richard to be a praying man, sometimes he didn’t believe it himself. But he’d found that in times that troubled his mind or his soul, praying helped. He didn’t have to believe in it; it just worked.

He spent more long moments contemplating the problems the new Joel might have. How would her mother react, her father had died sometime ago? How about her job doing data-entry, filing and correspondence in the office of the slightly conservative Aronhaus? Clothes, make-up, identification? She would need him, she would need a friend. He prayed again, visited the necessity and stretched out beside her on the bed once more.

Feeling better, he soon dropped off to sleep himself, and dreamed of taking his little sisters, twins named Ashley Sean and Sean Ashley, to Disneyland six years ago when they were twelve. Only this time in his dream, Joel rode the scary rides with him, screaming in his ear, his arms around her and hers around him. Both of them safe and happy.

* * *

Hell hath no fury like a demonic drag queen in a serious snit. Sophie Drake spit out the ice from the limo’s mini-bar that she’d been sucking. She couldn’t get it at home without a long trip down to the ninth circle but she was disgusted with the latest turn of events in the little tragicomedy she had initiated. “Mortals always cheat,”she told her driver. She snapped off the plasma screen monitor she’d been watching her latest project on

Bill C. Bubb nodded. “Nil fidelis in viro est,” he said in Hell’s bad Latin. Somehow he’d changed out of his stiffly formal chauffeur’s uniform into a more working class uniform, complete with Yankees baseball cap. They’re not known as the damned’s Yankees for nothing.

“Shut up, I have to think.” She’d changed clothes,too. Wearing a deep lilac bikini-style lingerie set, she had become the Devil with the Blue Dress Off.

She smiled. “You know, you’re right. Men are never faithful, and this particular man has broken more hearts than a one-handed dishwasher has broken crockery. He deserves a little sauce for the gander.” She laughed. An evil laugh, but that probably goes without saying. “This is going to be such fun,” she cooed.

She flicked the monitor back on and considered what she might do. She couldn’t touch Richard now but Joel had expressed a wish too. And Strangefellows Day wouldn’t be over for another nineteen hours. She could tweak Joel’s appearance, push all of Richard’s buttons; he liked them busty; maybe a pair of 38DDs? She’d made a lazy mistake, letting Joel’s genetics control most of her appearance. Except for height, Joel looked pretty much like what she might have looked like if she’d been born female. And Richard seemed unlikely to fall for a girl with unimpressive measurements like 35-23-34. Willowy didn’t make it in most men’s fantasies.

Ah well, one had to indulge all the vices now and then and it had been sloth’s turn. To hell with that, she’d make his roomie into the sort of confection Richard couldn’t resist. Lust always made a good handle on men. She reached out, twisting reality in the way badly made wishes allowed her to do. Nothing happened. Had that lapsed Catholic’s faith been strong enough to block her from messing with Joel on the basis of some vague protection he’d appealed for?

Her head snapped up. “Why are we slowing?”

“Hitchhiker.”

“On the road to Hell?” She looked out the window. “Damn it, it’s a clarence! Run over the good-intentioned busybody!”

Thump! The extended sedan rocked heavily; the clarence had some bulk, a one-time-bouncer doing a little moonlighting, ex-purgatorius, perhaps.

Knowing the angel hadn’t really been hurt, Sophie screamed out the limo’s window. “Pride goeth before a fall, buddy! You just wanted to gloat!”

Slightly cheered up, she considered her Blue Moon project again. “Hmm. He wants to be able to protect her? Maybe I can arrange things that she needs more protection?” Cackling happily, the Devil in Drag got back to work. “If I do this right, I can break both their hearts and get them to hate each other. Love! What a crock!”

“Sic qua res, nil bonum venis,” said Bill. Just to prove his point, perhaps, he had on a Dallas Cowboys warm-up jacket to go with the Yankees cap.

“You better believe it, Bubb. Nothing good ever came from romance!”

* * *

Joel woke up first,perhaps because of her new smaller bladder and shorter urethra. Squirming a bit,she became aware of a heavy weight lying across her middle, pinning her arm to her side. A similar weight seemed to confine her knees, perhaps a good thing at the moment. Moaning in discomfort, she tried to push her way free but the effort snapped her awake when she felt something stiff and sort of rubbery pushing against her butt.

The sun wouldn’t be up for some time yet, but rosy winter dawn light washed through a north-facing window on the last day of January. She blinked, trying to wake up. Several realizations flooded her consciousness at roughly the same time:

She needed to pee.
She had a headache.
Someone was lying half on top of her.
The room seemed curiously empty, though the bed was full.
The bedclothes were missing.
She was nude.
She had tits.
She remembered turning into a girl last night.
Somehow, it was all Richard’s fault.
Richard was the person lying on top of her.
And that was his dinkle pressing into her back.

Naturally, she screamed. Well, first she screamed – and then she bit Richard on the tricep, just above his elbow on the outside part of his arm. Just as naturally, he screamed, dreaming perhaps, that a malfunctioning roller coaster had ripped his arm off.

More screaming and shouting followed, with some hitting and pinching by Joel on handy parts of Richard’s anatomy until poor Richard fell off the far side of the bed and Joel escaped out of the bedroom, down the hall and into the only room in the apartment with an interior lock: the bathroom.

From the safety of the floor, Richard considered pulling himself under the bed in case Joel came back with the intent of kicking him. While still only half awake, he’d done nothing but try to protect vulnerable areas and push himself away from his enraged roomie. “Ow,” he said.

The fall had definitely woke him up and now he noticed the curious echoic quality of the room. From down the hall he heard Joel’s continuing, crying, screaming and cursing, interrupted now and then by her difficulty with words beginning with p, b, m, w, f or v.

“You b-b-bozo! You dick! W-w-what did you do to me? Where’s my stuff? M-my clothes! You b-b-better not have f-f-f-f-f–screwed around! OH! SHIT!” She got a bit quieter. Then in a small voice she said, “I think I p-p-p–w-w-w–tinkled on the floor.”

At this moment in time, Richard decided it would be wisest not to take any notice of his good friend who, after all, had reason to be upset. He sat up to look around. Someone had stripped the room, as if Joel had moved out months ago. The framed photos and calendar were gone, though the political poster of Barry Aronhaus remained. The personal items from the top of the chest of drawers, the computer stuff from the desk, even the bedclothes and curtains had disappeared.

Joel’s voice came down the hall. “None of m-my stuff is in here either, my toothbrush, my razor, m-mouthwash, shampoo, all gone. Even my dirty clothes from the hamper are gone! Richard you evil b-b-b-bastard!”

Knowing he had had nothing to do with the disappearance of Joel’s stuff, Richard, still dressed from last night, checked the drawers and the closet in Joel’s room. Nothing left but a few hangers, some scraps of paper in the desk and the shiny extension tube from some old vacuum cleaner that had been in the room when they had moved into the apartment years ago.

“I’m gonna kick your ass, Richard,” Joel wailed. “why were w-w-we naked? What did you do to m-m-me? Am I p-p-pregnant?”

Wincing a little, Richard eased out into the yard behind the duplex. Joel being locked in the bathroom had driven Richard to expedient solutions before. Still got mine, he thought with a little relief and a lot of satisfaction. Careful that no one could see him in the semi-dark, he pissed on a cedar bush near the walkway around the carport.

While he was so close he checked. Only the long, sleek Lincoln limo he’d driven home from work yesterday occupied the open structure. Joel’s Corolla sedan should have been parked on the driveway in front of the carport where Richard had parked it after borrowing it to go on Joel’s date. Nothing.

Even outside, Richard could clearly hear Joel’s tirade. “Except for the noise and the naked chick in the bathroom, you’d never know the poor guy had existed,” he said out loud.

Something occurred to him and he went inside to his own bedroom to check. As he passed the bathroom door, Joel screamed, “Richard! Are you out there?”

“Yes, I’m checking for stuff.” A few other things were probably missing, some of the kitchen stuff had belonged to Joel but so had the couch and it was still there.

“Have you got any clothes that m-might fit me?” Joel asked in a small voice. From the sound of it, she might be leaning on the bathroom door.

In his own bedroom, Richard shouted back. “I’m looking. One of my girlfriends left a suitcase behind once.” He’d tried to get it back to her but she wouldn’t answer his calls. He pulled it down from the top shelf of his closet, a small lavender-and-gray-paisley case of the size called a weekender.

“Oh God,” moaned Joel. “Girl’s clothes! I can’t w-wear girl’s clothes.”

“Face it, Jo-babe,” said Richard, putting the suitcase in the hallway, “you’re a chick now. If you don’t dress like a chick, people are going to figure you for a lesbo.” He went to the kitchen hell-drawer for a screwdriver to pop the lock on the suitcase with.

“Don’t call me that!”

“What? Lesbo?”

“No, Jo-b-babe. I’m not one of your b-b-babes.”

“Joel is a silly name for a girl.” He looked in the suitcase; women’s toiletries, undies, tees and shorts. All the clothes smelled of old body odors and mildew. “Shit,” he muttered.

“Okay.” Joel obviously struggled not to sob. “You can call me Joe.”

“Jo?” said Richard. In the bottom of the suitcase, he found a plastic bag and pulled it out.

“Yes, okay, Joe.”

“Or maybe Joey?” suggested Richard. “It’s only one letter different.” He unrolled and unzipped the clear plastic bag. It held that ultimate modern female article of clothing, the little black dress made of wrinkle-free, miracle knit. Richard shook it out, “Might be a little short,” he said.

“You think Joe is too short? I guess Joey is okay, too. Well, no,it isn’t b-b-but….”

Something fell out of the dress when Richard shook it: A pair of lacy black panties. Richard smiled. “I found something for you to wear.”

Joel, or Joey, said nothing for a moment. Then she whimpered in a very small voice, “It’s a dress, isn’t it?”

* * *

Richard took the dirty clothes to the washing machine in the little building out back shared with the other half of the duplex. Joel, or Jo, or Joey, dragged the rest of the suitcase into the bathroom and re-locked the door.

The black dress lay across the top of the suitcase and the black, lace panties lay atop the dress. Jo handled everything as if it might be infested with radioactive lice. She put the dress on a spare hanger and laid the panties on the stack of towels behind the toilet.

Everything that wasn’t in a plastic bag smelled like gym socks filled with dirty kitty litter. One plastic bag turned out to contain brand new bathroom needs like they keep in the travel aisle of the drugstore. Miniature soaps, tiny shampoo bottles, a folding toothbrush still in the blister pack, Well, it’s something, thought Jo.

Another bag held a pair of soft folding shoes, flats. Jo made a face. Reluctantly, she also salvaged the bag of makeup supplies and then unlocked the door, pushed the redolent valise back into the hall and locked the door again. “Put this thing out for the raccoons,” she called to Richard.

“You want some breakfast?” he asked.

Jo looked at herself in the mirror, then at the dress, then back at the door. “W-what time is it?”

“Almost seven,” said Richard.

“I have to be at w-work at eight.W-will you drive me?”

“You’re going to work? Like… as a girl?”

“W-what else can I do? I need my job and somebody took all my stuff,” she tried not to start crying again.

“Well.” In the kitchen, Richard scratched his head. “Well, you gotta eat. Toast, egg and coffee? You’ve got time if you don’t dawdle.”

“And you’ll get me some more clothes?”

‘Yeah, yeah. But you could call in sick. Does that stuff even fit?”

“I haven’t….”

“Well, hurry it up if you want to go to work. Women always take too long in the bathroom.” Richard grinned as he got out bread, eggs and coffee.

“Oh!” squealed Jo. “F-f-f-screw you, Richard!” She heard him laugh. He’s having fun! Somehow, she was still sure this was Richard’s fault but just how, she couldn’t quite work out.

She looked in the mirror again. Her short shaggy do looked like a boy’s cut but nothing else about her was at all mannish. She sighed and tried on the panties, snuggling the lacy thong into place. “Wow,” she said out loud.

She stared at herself in the mirror, wearing just panties made her seem more – sexy. She snatched up the dress and pulled it over her head like a tee-shirt. It settled against her curves as if coming home. She looked in the mirror again. “The dress doesn’t f-fit!” she shouted.

“Probably too short, huh?” Richard shouted back. “You’re four or five inches taller than Melissa. Miranda? Whoever she was.”

“Way too short,” complained Jo. In truth, the skirt managed to be a micro-mini but not much more.

“Let me see.” Richard dished out over-medium eggs and well-done wheat toast. “Soup's on.”

Jo unlocked the door and padded out into the hall, pausing at the door to the kitchen. “Um?” she said.

Richard looked. He whistled then he said, “Sit down and eat, Jo. You look good.”

“I do?” She walked slowly to the breakfast table.

“Your hair is a disaster and you’ve got no makeup on but those legs!” He poured coffee for both of them.

She glanced down.

“Sit, eat,” said Richard.”Keep your knees together, you slut.”

She glared at him.

“I’m teasing,” said Richard, “but, really, keep your knees together or other people will be saying it.”

She sat, carefully. “I’m starved,” she said. “And you’re a Dick, Richard.”

“I know, ain’t I lucky?”

* * *

Richard shook his head. “That dress is a small, you may be tall but you’re a teeny-tiny girl.”

“Don’t say that!” Jo protested. She’d retrieved the black flats from the bathroom and put them on. They seemed very flimsy but all of her own shoes were missing. The soles felt paper thin as she tried walking in them.

“What? Teeny-tiny?” Richard knew perfectly well what Jo objected to.

She glared at him, knowing that he knew and that he knew that she knew he knew. “I lost almost forty p-pounds! Besides all my stuff!”

“The shoes fit?”

“I guess, they seem pretty cheap, like they’re going to f-fall apart.”

“Melinda’s emergency pair, I guess. Like the dress. They’re a size eight, I looked.”

“Guess my feet shrank, too. I used to w-wear a nine.”

“I don’t think men’s and women’s shoes are measured the same. A women’s eight is smaller than a men’s eight.”

“How do you know that?”

“Three sisters and forty-leven girlfriends.”

“Mmph!”

Richard grinned. “You’re cute when you pout like that.”

“I am not!” Jo paused. “I am?”

He shrugged. “You can’t help it. By the way, you look younger, too. Like nineteen maybe, no way you look twenty-six.”

“M-my ID is gone, too. Oh! F-f-fudge b-brownies!”

Richard laughed, not helping. He handed her something black.

“W-what’s this?”

“Purse, you’ll need one. Found it in the back of my closet. I stuck some money in it, too.”

The tiny black clutch held some tissues, cosmetics, pens and twelve dollars in cash. Jo tried holding it in one hand and then the other. “Thanks, I guess. What’s wrong w-with p-p-pockets?” She debated removing the cosmetics but instead just snapped it closed.

“Dresses with pockets are for gardening grandmas.“ He looked at her critically. “You should have shaved and worn hose.”

“Shave?” She rubbed the smoothness of her cheek then followed Richard’s gaze down. “M-my legs?”

“Pits, too, probably. No time now, but this is your first day at work, you want to make a good impression. I dunno if you can wear the hose without shaving. Oh, shit. Those hose were for Merrilee, you’re too tall. So, no help for it.”

Jo looked and felt relieved. “I’ve worked there for four years, since B-barry won the seat. Nobody is going to expect me to shave my legs.”

Richard shook his head. “How do you think they’re going to react to you showing up with tits and wearing a dress?”

“P-probably not good at first. B-but they can’t run the p-place without m-me. No one else knows computers. They’ll have to let me keep m-my job.” Jo looked convinced.

Richard did not. “If you’re that sure, call in sick and we can shop for clothes.”

The idea of taking time to buy some pants that fit tempted Jo but she shook her head. “No. Tomorrow is payday. I gotta go in, and – and prove I’m still m-m-me.”

“To who?”

She looked away from him. “Can w-we please just go?”

Richard looked her over again. “Jo-baby, they’re not going to believe you’re you.”

“Don’t I look like m-me?”

“Well, you look more like you than my sister’s look like me, I suppose. But that’s a measure of what a wuss Joel was.”

“W-wuss!” Jo felt her lip tremble. “B-but I know everything about that office, they’ll have to b-believe I’m me! W-w-wuss?”

“Yes, Jo. But that’s okay now, you’re supposed to be a bit wussy – you’re a girl, it’s allowed.”

“Don’t say that!”

“Say what?”

“W-w-w-w-girl! I’m not a girl, I just look like one!”

“Right.” Richard decided that the way to handle this was to give her exactly what she wanted. “Okay, let’s go. I’ll drop you off at the office, then do some shopping for you. I’ve got a fare at eleven and probably Patch will have something else for me in the afternoon. I guess, you can take the bus home if I can’t make it in time. Huh?”

“B-b-bus?”

“Let’s go. I wanna show you how to get in and out of a limo wearing a dress before you get downtown and cause a riot with a beaver shot.”

“B-b-b-b-b-b-” But Richard pulled her through the hall and out to the carport before Jo could say Castor canadiensis.