Ch Ch Ch Changes!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (Turn and face the strange)

Ch-ch-changes, just gonna have to be a different man

-David Bowie, "Changes"

I wake up in slow, pain-filled stages. My awareness of who I even am doesn't arise in my consciousness until my body's third or fourth attempt at rousing me from the darkest, deepest, most troubling sleep I've experienced in my 25 years. The first thing I notice is the incredibly bitter taste in my mouth - as though I've been chewing a combination of aspirin and grapefruit rinds. Then I'm falling off my mattress and crawling towards the bathroom of my studio apartment driven my stomach's need to purge itself of whatever toxic mess it holds. Sometime later I reawaken, my head lying on the toilet seat, the bowl reeking of something that smells like what my tongue had tasted. I groan, even that small sound smacking my head like a hammer, and flush the awful mess away.

I spit into the sink, rinse my mouth with tepid tap water and stumble back onto my futon sofa-bed located one corner of my tiny, studio apartment. The sheets are soaking wet when I lie down and I realize that the boxers and cotton tee I'm wearing are also saturated. I'm not sure if its urine or sweat or a combination of both but my body is exhausted and I immediately fall asleep on the driest corner of my bed.

When I reawaken, the September Tucson sun in glaring in through the windows of my studio and the pain in my head has diminished enough to allow me a foggy introspection of my current state and how I got here. I try to recall the previous evening's events... the hazy recollection of being invited out into the desert by a couple I'd met while attending a show at the Club Congress flitters into my awareness. A bonfire in a desert sand-wash... psychedelic music, dozens of bohemian bodies dancing around the fire at different levels of inebriation, starry skies, the smell of creosote, pachouli, cannabis, unwashed bodies, and the taste of some odd tea. I retch at the memory and am just able to make it back to the toilet for my second purge.

I strip off the damp underwear and turn on the shower, the forceful jet is almost scalding me before I'm aware enough to turn it down. I start to shampoo my shoulder-length jet-black hair and that is the first time I begin to realize that something is amiss. As the warm, soothing water cascades down my body I'm confused by how thick and long my hair is - I've always worn it long for a guy - but it seems to be at least an inch longer than I remember and is significantly thicker and curlier as I rinse the smoke and dust from it.

I take the washcloth from its perch, wet and soap it, then start to clean myself as I let the water cascade down my face. I'm utterly confused by the the sensation of the mounds on my chest under the washcloth. I look down and am so shocked by the sight of a pair of petite breasts on my now-hairless chest that my vision distorts and narrows as I feel the blood rush from my head. I manage to sit down on the shower-stall's floor before I pass out. The water sprays over me.. but my body isn't my body. My genitals - a very decent and respectable cock and his accompanying nutty friends are gone! From my vantage I see what appears to be a vagina between my legs.

I retch again and vomit into the shower spray... my vision completes its tunneling and I pass out under the water.

I awaken sometime later... the water is luke warm, but in my part of Tucson in September even the cold water is basically warm from the tap so I'm not freezing. I look at my body and it still appears to be a woman's body. I can't understand this but frankly don't have the energy left to consider it. I turn the water off, dry myself and pull on a pair of sweat pants and a clean tee that hangs off the small breasts it an unfamiliar manner.

The upset feeling in my belly has subsided and been replaced with pangs of hunger. I eat a few tortillas plain, chasing away the empty feeling. Then I feel exhaustion overwhelm me again. I strip the wet sheets from the futon and fall on to the uncomfortable mattress and let sleep overtake me again. My last thought before sleep is a hope that whatever combination of psychedelics I took last night will have worn off and left my system when I reawaken.

When I return to the conscious world I realize it's nighttime. I look at my phone and see that it's telling me its Wednesday, 9pm. But I'd gone out on Saturday night - I've been in this state for the entire time since that psychedelic bacchanal. My head is finally clear though, at least until I look down and see that my body hasn't returned to its former state - in fact, the budding young breasts that I'd observed in the shower have grown and are now pushing out against the t-shirt as though I'm a teenaged girl, well into puberty. I reach down desperately hoping to at least find my dick still dangling between my legs only to find small labia defining a vagina.

I lie back and contemplate what I'm experiencing. I feel some mild pain, soreness really, as though I'd exercised too much, in my chest and my hips, but otherwise feel... healthy. I really don't have any basis to understand what is going on. My job as a free-lance photographer doesn't lend itself to rigorous scientific analysis of an instantaneous metamorphosis.

I am able to recollect more of the events at the desert gathering. James and ... was it Julie... had invited me out there after I'd met them at the club. They'd told me they were Wiccans and that their coven was having an 'event' in the desert. They'd mentioned psilocybin mushrooms which I'd tried once before and so thoroughly enjoyed that I set aside my better judgment and traveled with them nearly an hour into the desert. I remember being handed a concoction of some sort soon after my arrival and vaguely recalling that it didn't taste like the mushroom tea I'd had before. I also recalled holding hands with about 10 others as we danced around the bonfire while the Wiccans danced and chanted around us. I try to connect to more of my memories of that evening, but after the dancing my memories become so cloudy and opaque that I'm left clueless as to what happened between then and when I awoke for the first time.

The phone shows almost a hundred texts waiting for me as well as half a dozen voice-mails. I can't be bothered with them right now. I'm starving and I look into the fridge only to find it largely void of anything that isn't spoiled. This means I'll have to go out and get something, but that means I'll have to go out into the world which is, given the current state of my body, an incredibly daunting prospect.

So, I'll need to get dressed. I strip off the underwear I've been wearing since my shower and gaze at myself in the cheap mirror on the bathroom door. As far as I can tell, I'm still about 5'10" and the scale says I'm still my normal, 160lbs. Everything else seems to have changed in dramatic fashion. My legs look like they've lost some of their musculature and seem to appear a bit more rounded and soft. The pattern of hair on my body has also changed. While my shins and calves still have some hair on them its finer and more sparse, while the hair that used to appear on my ass, belly, and chest is all gone and the skin there is softer and smoother. My hips, still aching, have definitely widened out a bit - enough so that I now have a waist that provides my body which used to have a rectangular shape into something more akin to a shallow hourglass. Nothing dangles between my legs anymore... but I am sporting a noticeable thigh-gap! My abdominal muscles, which had been just shy of a well-defined 6-pack are now hidden under a skin that seems just a bit more plump. The breasts look pretty amazing and I think to myself that I'd be a lucky guy if a girlfriend had them. They are about as big as large apples and don't seem to have any sag to them. The areolae are large and brown and seem to be just a bit puffier than the rest of my breast. I jump up and down a few times... enjoying the novel sensation of the way they bounce and feel on my chest.

I giggle at the feeling and am alerted to another change... my voice, or at least my laugh, seems to have changed by at least an octave. I start to talk out loud and the voice I hear is most certainly more high pitched than it had been before all this.

I shake my head in disbelief as I walk with some pain to the mirror over my sink. I glance at my razor and shaving cream lying there and then look into the mirror. My face has changed, but I still recognize it as 'my' face - my eyes are still green and almond shaped. My eyebrows seem to have thinned and narrowed a bit, while my lashes look longer and thicker. My nose is still the same. My lips look a bit fuller and my jaw a bit less prominent. My skin seems to have changed as well. There is no stubble or blue shadow suggesting I'll ever have stubble again. It looks to be softer and paler than it had been, though I wonder if that's because I've been changing in my dark apartment without food for several days. My hair seems to have grown in much thicker and curlier too. I can feel much more resistance when I run my fingers through it, and it is now hanging down just past my shoulders.

I step back again and take in all these changes... my mind starts to reel and I'm utterly confused by all this. I feel fear and despair well up in my chest and the tears start to flow so quickly that I'm shocked by how quickly I begin to sob into my hands. I'd never been one to cry about much before, but clearly something inside me has changed too as I spend then next half hour or so filling tissue after tissue with snot and tears.

When the waterworks finally end I'm determined not to let myself get all emotional again so I avoid looking into any mirrors, easy enough to do when I only have two of them. I slip into an old tee, slide on a pair of boxers-briefs which feel tighter on my wider hips than they had before. I find my loosest fitting sweat pants and hoodie and slip my feet into a pair of Chuck Taylors that fit a bit less well than they had. I dare a final look in the mirror before I set out to get food - the baggy clothing basically hides my body enough so that if I were to run into a friend they probably wouldn't notice any of these changes. My eyes do seem to betray my change, so I slide on my biggest, darkest pair of sunglasses, pull my hood over my head and venture out to get food.

After devouring a burrito at a local taqueria I realize that I really should seek medical attention, after all nothing about this is normal. I drive to the University Hospital and walk into the ER. The interaction I have there is as odd for me as it is for the nurse at the desk who is taking my information. I'll make a long, extremely frustrating story short here - a person who goes to the ER after being transformed from one gender to another will end up spending considerable time being interviewed by psychiatrists. They may even do a brief physical exam, but most of what will happen is about trying to determine just how bat-shit-crazy their patient is. What they see is a young woman who has a delusion about having been a man, and this leads them to wonder if I'm psychotic, in turn leading them to wonder if I'm a danger to myself, others, or unable to take care of myself. So I have to convince them that I'm none of those things and they finally let me leave.

So when I finally get back to my apartment I'm exhausted and just as confused as ever. It's past midnight and I don't have any problem falling asleep again.

The next morning I wake, cook my last two eggs and consider my situation. I think about my friends and family and wonder who would be best to help me figure this all out. I quickly eliminate my family - they are far too conservative to be able to deal with a novel situation like this. Of my male friends, there is one guy that I'd trust to talk to, David, but I'm worried that my transmogrification would be too much for him. While I don't have an abundance of close female friends, I do have one that I completely trust and believe would provide good, practical advice. So I call Sarah and ask her to come over as I'm having an 'existential crisis'.

I've never dated Sarah, but I've always had a very strong attraction to her. Her appearance is, in many ways, pretty average. She's about 5'6", probably weighs about 130lbs, has a nice figure with average sized breasts. She wears her long, brownish hair in a pony tail most of the time. She has incredibly attractive blue eyes, and the world's cutest little nose. But what always attracted me to her was her free-spirited nature, her effervescent personality, and her keen, analytical mind which she'd often use to hilarious effect with her quick barbs and come-backs. We'd been friends since meeting in our dorm on the first day of classes our freshman year and I think we'd both contemplated becoming more than friends on a few occasions, but for whatever reason it never happened. I'm grateful for that now as I need a trusted confidant, not an X girlfriend.

When Sarah shows up around 8pm that evening I'm still dressed in my baggy sweats, my breasts still ache, walking hurts my hips, and I've had a couple of beers. I've pulled my thicker, longer hair back into a pony tail, not unusual for me so I'm guessing she won't notice. I'm not wearing my sunglasses when I answer the door and I see Sarah's eyes squint and look at me a bit longer than she normally would, as if she sees something different about me but can't quite put her finger on it.

"Hi Sarah. Thanks for coming."

"No worries Austin... you sounded really upset when you called?" She says as she walks in, goes to the fridge and pulls out a beer for herself.

I sit on my futon (which is usually my bed, but folds up into a sofa) and hug a pillow close to me when she joins me, sitting on the other end of the sofa criss-cross style. I'm finding it hard not to start balling (again), but take in a deep breath and start my story, beginning with my decision to head out to Club Congress on Saturday to see a local band I'd heard about. As I'm telling her the story I notice that she keeps shifting her head and looking at me as though she feels something is wrong. I've gotten to the part in my tale where James and Julie are driving us out into the desert when Sarah stops me.

"Austin, is something wrong with your voice? Do you have a cold or something?" She asks, looking concerned.

"Um... I'll get to that. Just remember that you brought that up, not me, ok?" I respond cryptically, not wanting to tell the story out of order.

I get up to the part where I'm taking a shower explaining, "So I look down and what I see is a pair of small breasts and ummm... my... err.. my dick is fucking missing! So I figure that I'm still hallucinating and go back to bed. And when I finally awoke this morning, I..." I can't hold it back anymore and I start to cry. Actually I start to ball... sobs begin to rack my body and I can feel the hot tears running down my cheeks, snot start to drip, and my chest begin to heave. Sarah doesn't miss a beat and immediately moves in close and wraps her arm around my shoulders and hugs me close - it's exactly what I need at this moment and I'm more appreciative of her friendship in this moment than I've ever been.

After a few minutes of my blubbering I begin to calm and she hands me a tissue that she's pulled form her purse.

"So you had a really really bad trip, huh?" She asks, then adds, "I bet you are really glad it's over, huh?"

I look up at her through my tear soaked lashes and almost lose it again, if only it was over I think.

"Sarah..." my voice is cracking, barely louder than a whisper, "my body did change! I've got breasts, my dick and balls are gone, I've got no chest hair, and I'm an emotional fucking wreck!" It comes out sounding pretty pathetic and quite desperate. I'm quite certain that she does believe that I'm an emotional wreck, if not the other bits.

Our eyes meet as tears continue to leak from mine. I feel my lower lip quivering and my body feel so depleted - as though I've expended way too much energy and am running on empty.

"Austin... I don't understand. You're a dude... I've seen you swim. I've talked to your girlfriends about stuff and they never mentioned you having tits or lacking a dick. What you are saying is ... impossible!"

What she is saying to me is right. It is one hundred percent true, and at the same time equally false. The look in her eyes that telegraphs something akin to 'my friend has lost his marbles and gone nutso' is completely appropriate given the circumstances. I sit there looking at her for a long moment, completely overwhelmed by my emotions and desperately wanting to convince her. I realize that I can talk about this until I'm blue in the face and I'll just frustrate both of us, so I do the one thing I can do to convince her.

I stand up, go to each of the windows in my apartment and draw the shades as she watches and sips her beer. I then stand in front of her in the middle of my tiny apartment and quickly yank off my hoodie, then pull down the sweatpants I'm wearing.

"Austin... what in the fuck are you doing?" she asks, her voice calm, but tinged with uncertainty.

I look at her in desperation as I pull the old tee off my body and then, just as quickly pull the boxer-briefs down and let them fall to the floor. The full Monty for my friend's edification.

If I'd thought ahead a bit, I'd have made a video of Sarah's face as she looked at me standing nude in front of her. Her face pales from its usual healthy glow to something akin to a white sheet as her mouth drops open. I see her look at the breasts that now curve gracefully outward from my chest to the patch of triangular hair pointing towards the empty space that she was expecting to dangle a penis and testicles. There is a long long silence as she looks me over.

What's odd is that I feel no shame showing her my morphed body. Had I still been sporting my male parts I would have instantly tried to cover myself, or made a joke, or more likely grown erect and made a move on her; but none of that happens. Something inside me has seemingly changed along with the more obvious external changes - I was as comfortable showing her the female body I was now in possession of as I would have been standing in a gym locker room changing with other men a week ago. As my mind processes that analogy and I'm thinking of dudes in the locker room my mind has a hard time setting the image aside - my mind's eye drawn to the memories of naked men and their masculine physiques is actually a bit pleasant for me.

"Whaaaat the fuuuuuuuckkkkk?" she asks softly, drawing it out, and then making a spin-around motion with her hand.

I comply with the request, realizing I hadn't really looked at my bottom yet. I get a glimpse of it in the mirror on the bathroom door and notice that it has lost all its hair, seems more rounded and full than it had been.

"Do you believe me Sarah? I really really need you to believe me." I ask as I gather my clothes, slipping the sweat pants over my bare ass and then slipping back into the tee.

Sarah nods, but then looks at her beer, and then at me. "You didn't put anything in this, did you?"

I shake my head, but she knows even before I do that this is real. I sit beside her and let my head rest on her shoulder. She wraps her arm around me and we just sit there for a long while, trying to wrap our minds around this impossibility.

She breaks the silence, "I believe you Austin. Do you feel ok? I mean, are you in any pain, or feeling anything odd in your body?"

"My chest hurts, and my hips are really achy. I'm confused as hell and feel like crying almost constantly, other than that? I'm golden!" I giggle a bit.

"What are you going to do? I mean, are you going to live like this, or see a doctor, or talk to the police? Do you even know how to find those Wiccans?"