Nick had considered himself a lucky guy, until now. Today he was Meredith complete with curves, high heels and a bitch of a backache. This hadn’t happened in years, and he thought he had solved his problem way back when with thousands of dollars to an infamous psychiatrist. But today there was no denying it; he was Meredith. His luck had run out. He had won at scratch cards a few times, and raffles, door prizes, and concert tickets off the radio. That was luck. This was not luck, this was the opposite of luck, this was negative luck.
He knew as soon as he woke up that something was off, but it was a familiar off-ness. The feeling flooded back, and he felt different in his body, in his mind. He reached first for his face, which was the safest place to start. His cheeks were smooth, his lips full, and his eyes still sticky from makeup remover. He felt his neck, also silky smooth, and a hollow where his Adam’s apple usually protruded. He gulped. He could feel the gulp with his hand at his throat. Slowly, with dread and fear, he worked his hand down toward his chest. His touch was light, he could feel the drag of his long curved nails run along his upper chest and then move outward with the curve of a breast. When he came to the nipple, hard beneath his camisole, he stopped. He circled around the nipple, slowly, and felt damp all over his body. He stopped and withdrew his hand to above the covers. His heart raced. He was an unlucky man today. Or, should he say an unlucky woman today?
The few other times this had happened he had never been anything other than a man. He had awoken with different names, different homes, and even different bodies. He thought with relish about the bodybuilder’s body, he had never known such strength! Oh, how the ladies loved him then. But he had never been a woman. He couldn’t move, his body was immobilized in bed. The sheets felt suddenly cold, then hot. He was sweating. The names always came to him, as if they were ingrained in him. Meredith just felt right. As he said the name a few times in his head a slow smile crept across his face. I am a woman, he thought. This was like Gregory Samsa waking up as a bug, but a million times better. Maybe I am actually the luckiest man alive.
His sense of manliness slowly ebbed. This always happened. He lost himself, and everything he knew about himself, as he became someone else. He knew, or hoped, that he would return to this same sense of self at some point, usually a day or two later. But he never really knew that this would happen. He always worried that he would lose himself completely, and never return to the self that he knew. As the last inklings of memory and identity disappeared he looked around at his room with desperation. Already the baseball posters were fading, replaced with blue and white striped wallpaper. He saw his sneakers fade into black high heels, discarded after a long night of dancing. He surrendered his terrycloth bathrobe that hung on the back of the door for a silk slip. And then everything was fuzzy.
When she awoke, Meredith looked at the ceiling. Last night had been amazing, dancing and margaritas until four and a meandering cab ride home with her three girlfriends, looking at the moon reflected in the river and calling out to the prostitutes who lined the streets, telling them how gorgeous they looked. She didn’t remember coming home, or falling asleep. She didn’t remember her dreams very well either, but she thought she might have been a man in one and could almost feel the folds of a terry cloth bathrobe and the sweaty smile of Babe Ruth, bat in hand, striped baseball cap at a jaunty angle. But then it was gone. She rolled onto her side and looked at her clock. She had ten minutes to catch her train to work. She sighed, and then moved the covers aside, kicked her high heels under the bed, and went to the closet. She pulled on jeans and a Black Sabbath t-shirt. She pulled sneakers from the floor and tied the laces quickly. She had just enough time to brush her teeth before running down the stairs to the train station a block away. A man in an orange plaid coat at the station looked her way and smiled. She frowned and looked away, eager for the train to come.
She tried to remember back to a few days ago when her boss had yelled at her for being late. He was on old friend, and the yelling was only for show. But she couldn’t seem to remember the conversation. It was an almost-memory, the kind where the more you think about it the less real it seems. She tried to think about something else, hoping that the conversation would come back if she pretended not to care. She thought about the groceries she needed and the funny old lady with blue hair who worked at the corner market where she shopped. No luck, she couldn’t remember. The train was late. She moved toward to the track and realized she had stepped in gum. The pink strings between the wad and her foot elongated as she lifted her shoe. She scraped her foot against the ground, hoping the concrete was rough enough to get the gum off. As she moved away she could feel her sole was still sticky. This was not a lucky day.
The train came and Meredith boarded. The seats were full so she held onto a vertical metal pole as the train bounced into darkness. People were reading newspapers and drinking coffee, eyes half closed, still partially lost in the trundles of sleep. Meredith looked at the floor, wary of more gum wads, and then glanced up and met the gaze of a man who was staring at her. She thought of Babe Ruth. She saw the man swallow and his Adams’ apple bounce twice in quick succession. He looked away. His scruffy cheeks seemed familiar. She looked back and he was gone. People swarmed around her, clamoring for the exit as the doors snapped open. A moment later they closed; the train was quieter and she was carried off into the darkness once again. She reached up and rubbed her tired eyes. As her hand fell back down to her side, she caught the scruff of her cheek against her thumb. She reached back up and fingered the coarse hairs. They felt familiar.
At the next stop, a girl with a Black Sabbath t-shirt got on the train. He admired the image of bright lights and painted faces silk screened on the front with jagged letters underneath announcing tour dates. He had been at that show. The woman sneered at him and he realized she must have thought he was looking at her chest. He blushed. This was not a lucky day.
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