By Lora Guy
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A cross dresser is caught up in a sudden, massive group transformation in downtown Boston. The premise is based on the "bubble" concept created by AJ James in the novella The Long Strange Journey of Seth Gates

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I didn't want to move; I didn't want to think. I just wanted to lay there and ignore reality. But the world keeps turning, and it always finds a way to drag us along with it. As it does every day, the sun crept across the sky. Shining through the bedroom window, the light inched its way across the bed until it started warming my toes. It felt good as it moved to the the soles of my feet, but once it reached my naked butt, it started to become uncomfortable. Being curled up in a ball on my side, there was no way to just pull away without moving my entire body. I gave in, rolling over and stretching out flat on my back. The trill of the phone beside my head scared another little trickle of pee out of me.

"Dammit, that's gotta stop!" With my mind occupied by the frustration of my mild incontinence, I picked up the phone and barked "Hello."

"Uh, hi... is ah... is Len there?" I couldn't tell whether Jessie was baffled or worried that a young woman had answered her brother's phone.

I held my breath for a moment. Jessie could be a bit of a loose cannon, so she wouldn't have been the first person I would call to talk this over with. But what the hell. She was on the phone, and I had to start somewhere.

"Jessie, it's me."

"Me who?"

"It's me, Lenny." I knew we were both holding our breath now. I blinked first. "I was downtown this morning..."

"Honey, I don't have time for this right now. Could you just put Lenny on the phone, OK?"

Maybe it was my sister's doubt. Maybe it was the stress. Or maybe it was my reaction to a whole new system of chemistry going on in my head. But just then, something made the dam burst. My jaw started trembling as I tried to get words out between spasms of breath.

"Jess I don't know what happened I was downtown and a light flashed and everything went white and a bum looked like she was gonna start screaming so I ran back to my car and... something happened to me Jess."

"Len?"

"Yeah. It's me."

"My god, Lenny, you were there? Oh Len..." Her voice cracked. She stopped, took a deep breath, and then announced "Stay right there, I'm coming over."

"No! You can't do that!"

"Why not? Ben's still away but the girls'll be fine. They can order a pizza..."

"Oh, Jess. Please." It was a struggle to get words out, but she had enough of a feel for the situation to wait until I could make my point. "You can't come here. Something... I don't know what happened and it might... I'm fine, I just need to think about what to do."

"Lenny, it's been on TV all day." I could hear she was scared. "They're not saying much, just that they've quarantined everyone who was there when that bomb went off. Are you sure you're Ok? I mean, your voice? It's, like..."

My god, she didn't know. How could she know? "I'm Ok. Uh, I think I am, anyway. I'm not hurt and I don't feel sick or anything like that. I just... it's complicated Jess, but I'm OK." Another deep breath, and I came to a decision. "If they're keeping people downtown, I think maybe I should just go back down there."

"I don't know if that's such a good idea. On TV they keep showing shots of the crowds around the roadblocks. People trying to find out what's happening. I don't know if you could get in there." She had a point.

"Ok, well then I'll start making some calls. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was there and left before they blocked the roads."

"Alright. Call me back before you do anything. Are you sure you're Ok?"

"I'm fine. I'll call. OK?"

After a few more assurances, she let me hang up. I didn't want to worry her any more than she already was, so I didn't tell her that my first call would be to 9-1-1. But first things first. The make-up I put on that morning was still on my face. And I wasn't about to call anyone until I at least found some underwear to put on.

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"You have reached the 9-1-1 emergency response center. All of our operators are busy. If you are calling regarding someone who you believe is inside the Boston Quarantine Area, please tune to your local radio or television news for information. If you were affected by the event and you are not inside the Boston Quarantine area, please report to the nearest police station for transportation to the temporary care center located at Boston City Hall. If you are reporting any other police, fire or medical emergency, please stay on the line. An operator will be available to answer your call in ---twenty--- ---two--- minutes."

I hung up. Well, at least there was a clear path laid out in front of me now. Official instructions on where to go, what to do. Confirmation from the bureaucracy that they know something has happened to me and that I need help.

Back in my bedroom, I stood in a pair of jockey shorts, looking through the open drawers of my dresser. Seeing as my options were rather limited, it wasn't too difficult to choose what to wear. I hadn't been a very large man, but not many of the clothes that fit me before were of much use to me now. The best I could do was a pair of track pants, a T-shirt and a hoodie. A pair of tennis shoes with a few paper towels stuffed in the toes completed the look. Picking up my wallet, keys and phone, I hopped in the car and... sat staring through the windshield. "Lenny boy, if you can find the nerve to walk around in public with your family jewels tucked away under a skirt, then this should be no big deal. They know what happened to you, right?" I wasn't really buying my own spiel, but what choice did I have? It took a good five minutes of meditation and psyching myself up before I pressed the button to open the garage door. A couple of deep breaths and I was off.

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"Hey Jess, it's me."

"Oh my god, Lenny, it's about time. I was just about to call you back. I called Kelly and told her what happened. She's bouncing off the walls. She said she tried to call you but there was no answer."

I should have known she'd call Kelly. The symbiosis of sisterhood. One of them simply cannot survive knowing something without instantly telling the other.

"I'm not at home. I'm at the police station on Concord. They said I should show up here and they'd give me a ride downtown."

"Len, she's really worried and I am too. Please tell me what's going on."

"Jess, please... I'm Ok. Really. I'm perfectly healthy, at least I feel like I am. Please just let me deal with this and I'll call you when I can. OK?"

"Alright. You're an adult. You don't really sound like one but..."

"You're a regular riot, Jess. Listen, call Kelly, calm her down, tell her I'll call both of you when I can. I gotta go, OK?" I know it was a bit cruel to leave them in the dark like that, but how do you tell your family something like this? I guess at that point, I was still hoping that this "change" was going to somehow wear off.

There were a pair of cops standing outside the front doors of the Belmont Police station, wearing surgical gloves and respirators. They took one look at me approaching and the one on the right just pointed his neoprene index finger at a large tent set up in the parking lot. "Go right on inside over there, Miss."

Raising my eyebrows, all I got out was "I was downtown..." before the other one interrupted me.

"We know." Pointing at the tent again, he added "They'll take care of you in there."

Over the years, I had spent a lot of time watching how women and men do things differently. There are literally dozens and dozens of little contrasts; some obvious, most of them subtle. I had become a somewhat passable cross dresser by working really hard at imitating those feminine traits. Something else I had put a lot of effort into was making damn sure that I didn't display my "girly tics" unless I was in drag (a guy just does not wiggle his butt walking around the grocery store!) Walking up to those cops, I wasn't in drag and wouldn't have felt right acting like I was. So I suppose it was no great surprise that they knew why I was there simply by looking at my gait. That plus my hair, my complete lack of make-up and jewelery and my four-sizes-too-big sweat pants. But as sure as they were about me, that cop still couldn't bring himself to call me sir. Well, at least they were calm and courteous.

There was a hand written sign hanging beside the entrance to the tent. BUBBLE AFFECTEES ONLY. So that's what they were calling it, the bubble. How cute. And I was an "affectee". It seemed to me that the powers that be had decided to use warm and fuzzy language to avoid creating a panic in the general population. I pulled the flap aside and stepped into the first three days of my new life.

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Being a pair of rookies, the two young policemen had drawn the day's lousiest duty. Standing on your feet in one spot all day would be bad enough, but doing it while wearing respirators made it torture.

"That short one in the track suit... she makes it a hundred, right?"

"One oh four by my count." He leaned in closer to his partner. "Cutest one yet. Did you get a load of the body on her?"

"Miller, you've got a one track mind." He took a quick look around, then added, "But you're right. God damn, I just can't believe that was a guy this morning."

-----

She looked up. "Hi, come on in and have a seat right here. I'll be with you in two shakes of a dog's leg." Her bright, chipper attitude was in total contrast to the way she was dressed. Her face was the only part of her that was visible through the plastic window of her haz-mat suit. She had dialed down the serious nature of the situation by putting a smiley face sticker on the side of her hood. Below that was a label which read, "Hi, my name is CAROL."

I sat down in a chair beside her desk. After a few more clicks on her lap-top, she turned her attention to me. "Are you feeling OK?"

"Other than the obvious, I feel pretty good. A bit of dizziness once in a while, but..."

"That's pretty common. Can you push up your sleeve for me and we'll get a few basics out of the way?" She wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my little bicep and pushed a button on a monitor. A hum started and the cuff inflated. "Can I get your full name?"

"Leonard Michael Williams."

A few taps on her keyboard, then "Date of birth?"

"February twenty-ninth, nineteen seventy-two."

Smiling through her plastic shield, she offered "Well, Mister Williams, isn't this one heck of an early birthday present?"

Through a crooked grin, I came back with, "You could have just got me a tie. And call me Lenny."

"OK Lenny, height and weight?"

"Well I used to be five-eight and a hundred-fifty pounds. I don't have a clue what I am now."

"That's Ok, they'll check that out downtown. So, where exactly were you when it happened?" She didn't need to explain what she meant by "it".

I had never admitted to a soul in the world that I liked to slap on a skirt once in a while, and I wasn't about to start now. I didn't want to have to explain why I had run away so fast that morning... so I lied to her. "I was waiting on a red light. I'm pretty sure I was at Tremont and Bromfield."

Her machine stopped humming and the cuff on my arm started deflating. There was a steady beep that I assumed was my pulse. "Well Lenny, from what I've been told, you were right on the edge of it. If that red light had been green, you probably wouldn't have any reason to be here right now."

I tilted my head, raised my eyebrows and quipped "Well, Carol, some people get all the luck."

She smiled again. Her cheerfulness, her light banter and the way she was treating all this as perfectly normal was going a long way towards keeping me calm. They must teach this stuff at natural disaster school, I thought to myself.

"OK Lenny, we're all done here. Just go on through that door right there and have a seat. A bus will be around in a few minutes."

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I took a seat in the next room. There were about forty girls scattered in the fifty-odd available chairs. They ranged in age from around fourteen to eighteen years old. One glance around the room and it wasn't hard to guess at how each of them had woken up that morning. A group of five were sitting together, chatting away while their thumbs flashed over the buttons on their phones. Their hair, make-up and well put together outfits identified them as being teen girls who just happened to be downtown this morning. Almost half of the rest of the girls in the room were wearing women's clothing of one style or another, sitting with legs and arms crossed. No doubt that they were women who had been caught in the bubble. The rest of us fell into the third category; guys like me. We all looked like we were dressed for sloppy day at the girl's school. Our ill-fitting clothes, bad posture and men's hair cuts said it all. We were the "affectees" who had the most to deal with. Other than the chatty-Cathys in the corner, everyone was lost in their own thoughts. Some quietly crying, most of us just silently existing in our heads.

-----

Two things ruined it for me. I could have fooled myself into thinking that it was just another perfectly normal day; that I was getting on that bus to go to a Pats game or something. But word must have gotten out. A television news crew had set up with their camera about fifty feet away, filming us as we walked the twenty steps from the tent to the bus. That in itself was unusual, I'd never been on TV before. But then there was the bus driver. He was wearing a haz-mat suit just like Carol. I was definitely not on my way to Foxboro.

Taking a window seat, it wasn't long before a girl sat down beside me. She stuck out her hand and said, "Hi, George Garneau."

I shook her hand. "Len Williams. Call me Lenny."

"Pleased to meet you Lenny. Any theories on what the hell happened to us?"

"Yeah, I heard something, but you gotta keep it to yourself." I glanced around to make sure no one else could hear me, then whispered, "I have it on good authority that the Salem witches have come back to life. They're pretty pissed, and they're taking it out on us." I glanced around again, then whispered "Mums the word." We both burst into quiet giggles. Once it started, there was no stopping it. It felt so good to laugh. I leaned back into my seat and looked up at the ceiling. With a smile on my face and a tear rolling down my cheek, I turned and asked, "Shit George, what the hell are we gonna do?"

George just smiled back at me and said "Make lemonade." When I didn't respond, she went on. "Lenny, I'm sixty-eight years old. My heart was so bad, I was out of breath just taking a piss. Now look at me. I'm a kid again. I feel like a million bucks. So my dick is gone. I really don't care... I'll trade a useless dick for a good ticker any day. I've got my fingers crossed, Lenny. If this is a dream, then I don't want to wake up. Because I'm gonna watch my great-grand kids grow up." She wasn't just smiling. She was glowing.

I was never so glad to meet anyone in my life as I was to meet George on that bus. Make lemonade. That sounded like a fantastic idea.

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Hi folks, still with me?
This took a while to write, and even though I enjoyed writing it, the truth is I was excited about the comments people might leave. I'll admit it, I'm a feedback junkie. So if you enjoyed reading this and would like to see me write more, please leave a comment. Please?
Oh, and a big thank you to everyone who took the time to comment on chapter one!