There was never any love lost between me and my sister. We fought constantly as kids, and now as adults we still drove each other---and everyone around us---crazy. When our spell-slinging grandmother decided to teach us a lesson by body swapping us, our bitter feuding soon led us to a grotesque new form of combat, which before it was all over would get crazy indeed...

"You are gonna have SUCH a headache tomorrow!" laughed my sister as he started banging his head against the wall, grunting with each impact, putting a row of jagged craters into the plaster.

Smashing the nearly empty whiskey bottle across the end of the table, I raised it toward my cheek, tittering, "Gee, it's a shame what happened to your pretty face-"

We should have listened to Grandma. Terrible things can happen when you don't...

PLAY . . NICE!
LAIKA PUPKINO ~ 2008
PART ONE: MUMBO JUMBO

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||| FRIDAY OCTOBER 3, 2008 ~~~

I killed the engine and sat staring at the chemical New Jersey sunset. Unlatched my seatbelt, pried my sweaty back free of the seat fabric. Unless you count my few hurried jots to a restroom or the time I spent idling in the drive-thru line at the Kentucky Fried Chicken, I had been driving nonstop since well before dawn.

She must have heard me pulling up into the drive. Was out on the front porch, holding the screen door open with her back. She waved.

I got out, hefted my suitcase out of the trunk and dragged it up the wooden steps, "Got here as soon as I could."

"I guess so," she smiled, opening her arms, "A hug for your grandma?"

"I'm really dirty. I stink," I warned her.

"I'll survive. I just need a hug right now."

We hugged. I could sense her worry, her tiredness. I asked, "So how is he?"

"They're not saying, except that it's serious. I think once they've figured out what he has they'll be able to tell us more about his chances."

"Chances," I said. Not a word you want to hear in connection with your father, even if he is a world-class bastard. "But what do you mean 'figure it out'? I thought they said it was a heart attack."

"That was me, sorry. I was just guessing. His blood pressure, our family history. He was back in the freezer rotating the cases of veal cutlets when he keeled over. But they said his heart is fine. He's running a high fever, all the signs of a major infection but they can't figure where it is."

"They'll find it. I mean with all the diagnostic equipment they have nowadays."

"God, I hope so! I'd ask you to pray for him if it wouldn't offend your modern sensibilities."

I grimaced in apology, "If I did would just be pretending something. Like I was talking to your 'invisible friend' just to humor you. I don't think you'd want that."

Grandma turned, led me into the house, nodding, "You're right Teodoro, I wouldn't. And I don't hold it against you. I just .......... I think it's sad. There's a big important part of the universe you're missing."

Anyone else, I would have been offended, the condescension of that kind of pity, but she's one of the decent ones. Selfless and non-judgemental, with a gift for looking on the bright side that I wish I had. So when she quotes Kahlil Gibroni or whoever it carries more weight than if some sanctimonious jerk did it.

Her white hair stood out jarringly against her bright fuchsia sweats. Looking down at the back of her head I saw that it had gotten thinner, far thinner than any woman's hair should be. And she seemed a lot smaller now. Where do people go when they get old? And how old was she? I've always been lousy with ages and birthdays, but if Dad was (I was pretty sure) fifty-six, and with what she'd mentioned about "seeing the world" for a number of between college and coming home to marry Grandpa, then she had to be in her early eighties. And yet it was good to see that there was still a healthy spring in her step.

"It's great to see you Grandma Rosa."

"You too. You know you're always welcome here. How was your flight?"

"I drove. That's what took me so long."

"Of course. I guess a big truck with plates that say POOLGUY wouldn't be a rental. You'll have to excuse me, it's all synapses up here any more," she chuckled as she tapped her temple, then looked around crowing in a weak, befuddled voice, "Ehhhh? Where's Poppa? Where's Poppa?!"

I recognized the film she was quoting, a macabre comedy about an old senile woman who caused all kinds of trouble. I laughed, "That'll be the day!"

The parlor was cleaner than dad had ever kept it. The furniture shone and smelled of polish and the bulbs in the chandelier sparkled. I guess her moving in with Dad last year had been a good thing. And maybe seeing his old Ma risking her neck up on a chair had made him get up and help once in a while. Maybe. He busted his ass at his restaurant, and our tiny square sloping embankment of a front lawn was his pride and joy; but any of the ordinary upkeep inside the house, if it was up to him to do it, it wouldn't get done. It wasn't his union.

"They have all these tests they still want to run on him," said Grandma, "But if this is something a person can lick, he'll do it. I'll say one thing for that boy of mine, he's a fighter!"

I'm sure my double meaning wasn't lost on her when I said, "He sure is."

I slid back the lid over the piano's keys, and started noodling on it one handed. Smiled.

"Well I didn't see any use of having it if it wasn't in tune," she shrugged, "It'll be good to hear you play. How long will you be able to stay for?"

My one handed exercise settled into something, a march of sorts, "I was surprised. I apparently had a lot of unused vacation time. And the timing of this---I mean if it had to happen---was perfect; with us starting into the slow season. So I took it all. Four weeks."

"That's good. Since your father's condition ....... Let's just hope he's home before then, and you can spend some time around here with him."

"That would be nice," I lied. Unless he was a total invalid I intended to head to Vegas as soon as I could after he was released from the hospital. Or (after we'd tied up the most serious loose ends his dying would leave...) after his funeral.

Grandma Rosa's lips were moving. Chanting under her breath. Her "mantra", which I remember from our last visit. Om Nama Sheevi-aye. I stopped playing."You still seeing that guru?"

"No, Sri Hathaway and I parted company amicably. He understood that I needed to get back more into my Witching Arts. Although I'm sure to you that's even more foolish. You hungry? Let's adjourn to the kitchen. The party is in there, if you can call it that."

Of course she would want me to eat. I learned long ago to at least let her put a plate down in front of me. She turned, toward the drawing room's doorless portal, that somehow Moorish arch-with-a-notch-in-the-center shape you find in these century-old homes. "It's this way."

"I grew up in this house. I think I remember."

"Of course. Then again, it has been almost a decade."

"Six years," I corrected her. "Mom's funeral."

"Oh right. Poor Elizabeth. Such a sad day. And so unexpected."

"I know," I said softly.

I suppose it's a bit of a cliché, the Italian guy going on about what a saint his mother was, so I will try not to overdo it. But Mom was so darn smart and funny and full of life; a wellspring of positivism that had been dropped unexpectedly into the middle of the Farranino clan- a clan that (excepting Grandma) generally came off as a bunch of resentful pessimists. My mother's mere presence seemed to improve things. Her "vibes" to use a Grandma-ism.

I always wondered how Dad and Grandpa and the rest of them didn't wear Mom's good spirits down, but now it seems maybe they did. Hidden stresses leading to that aneurysm in her brain, which announced its presence by suddenly killing her. She had acted as a needed counterforce to a lot of what was wrong with this family, and it was really hard losing her. And so now with Dad afflicted with ........... whatever this is...

Fifty-six is just too damn young! I wished like hell there was some kind of diagnosis. I wanted to be told how worried I should be. What to be worried about.

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~ || ~~ || ~~~ || ~~~~ || ~~~~~ || ~~~~ || ~~~ || ~~ || ~
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Entering the kitchen, I sniffed. Who the hell is smoking? Oh God...

"Hello Teddy."

"Oh Joy," I groaned.

"Ha ha. Never heard that one before," Joy said flatly.

I asked Grandma, "Could we get that other fan on in here?"

Joy gave me a dirty look, "Oh like my smoke really bothers you!"

"Of course you would think everything that anyone says is about you. I was talking about for the heat."

"A hundred in October. I'd say the science is in," said Grandma cryptically as she plugged in the old cast iron fan's braided cloth cord. It stuttered noisily to life.

My sister Joy---two years my junior---had gone jet black with her fine straight hair, which was long, a hand's breadth or two from the middle of her back, except for in front where she'd trimmed it into sheepdoggish bangs. She wore a beret and granny glasses, like some kind of cartoon beatnik chick. With that Gaulloise dangling from her lips and her acoustic guitar leaning up against the table all she needed was the black turtleneck sweater. At her age she was a bit old to be dressing up in costumes, but at least she wasn't a goth this time.

"So what are you doing here?" I asked her.

"Why do you think I'm here? Dad's sick!"

I held my hands up, peacemaking. "I just meant ........ I didn't think you'd, uh..."

"Didn't think I would care enough about my own father to come see him?" the scowl she wore added a decade to her thirty-one-year-old face, but it went with the outfit. The tireless crusader, angrily protesting the latest fashionable injustice. Which at the moment was me.

"I was going to say that I didn't think you'd be able to get away from you job," I told her, "But now that you mention it..."

"Oh, and you're supposed to be The Great Son? At least I never assaulted him."

"Assaulted? I pushed him. He was right up in my face, screaming at me! I could feel little drops of spittle landing on me! I mean-"

"Hey, you two! Give your old Granny a break. And sit down, Teodoro."

Though I'd been driving all day I seated myself at the formica table in one of the old chrome and vinyl chairs. Things didn't get replaced around here just for going out of style. Being surrounded by all these ghosts from my childhood filled me with a sense of nostalgia that was alternately comforting and disturbing.

Joy took a last angry hit off her cigarette and ground it out in the candy dish ashtray. Let the smoke out slowly, muttering, "That job at Earthsmart Natural Foods is over with anyway..."

Amazing ........ that's three jobs this year. How did a fannullona like her ever come out of this family? I couldn't help but laugh, "And let me guess ........ You 'just happen' to need a place to stay for a while."

"You are both welcome to stay here," said Grandma Rosa, "I just wish you could-"

Joy's voice rose, "Well excuse me if I'm not a robot like you, Teddy. Same job for fourteen years, wearing your little name tag and clip-on tie. Selling wading pools, for God's sake!"

"They're above ground swimming pools. Five feet is not a wading pool. And what name tag? I'm a distributor, not some retail flunky."

"Whatever ........ I'll admit it, I couldn't do that. I like to try different things."

I laughed nastily, "New and interesting ways to get fired?"

Grandma tried again, "Come on kids. I really don't need this right now!"

She started rummaging through the drawers under the drainboard for something. At the same time Joy was digging through her rat's nest of a purse, no doubt for another cigarette. Jeering, "Are you actually that stupid? Do you really think you have some kind of security because you've been at the same job all that time? They'll downsize you in a heartbeat if they get a mind to. That's the nature of the beast! Then where will you be? Huh?!"

"No place you've ever been, apparently! I'll have a solid resume. I won't have to make up a bunch of shit on my job application. Like where it says: 'Have you ever been convicted of a felony?'"

"That was an ACCIDENT-"

Suddenly a godawful harsh screeching noise filled the kitchen! Grandma had found what she was looking for---Dad's old coach's whistle---and held it was clenched between her teeth, blowing angrily.

She stopped, "Now look you two. I'm not putting up with this! When I called you, and you came here, the idea was that you were supposed to be helping me, not bickering like you were still a couple of ten year olds. 'Gramma! Gramma! He put my Barbie down the garbage disposal!' Well you're not ten years old. And I'm NOT going to put up with it!"

"But he did put my Barbie in the disposal!" whined Joy.

"Well you kept calling me Monkey Face! And I told you to quit it, and then you and your stupid friend Amber started-"

Another angry blast from the whistle! Grandma asked slowly, coldly, "What did I just say? Did you even hear me? I guarantee you, you don't want to piss me off right now."

"Sorry..."

Grandma shut her eyes, took a deep noisy breath in through her nostrils---slowly, slowly---and let it out through her mouth with a sigh, slumping theatrically. She chuckled sadly, "What's ironic about this ridiculous feud of yours is that you aren't all that different than each other. You two have a lot more in common than you think."

"Give me a break!" snorted Joy.

"No, I mean it. You're both hopelessly pig headed. Always have to have the last word, to always be right. Oblivious to the fact that maybe no one else wants to hear it. I mean, my Jojo is in the hospital, for all we know dying, and you can't put this nonsense aside for a few days? For my sake? Do you have any idea what I'm going through? Do you care?"

Jojo?? It was strange to hear the sour and humorless Joe Farranino called anything so cutesy, but I suppose trotting out old forgotten childhood nicknames is a mother's perogative.

She continued down the list of our faults, "You're each in your own way extremely vain, and both damn self-centered. Joy more obviously so than Teodoro, but I swear you have your moments, Teddy! You're both quick to lash out with some hurtful remark, but fall right apart if someone does it to you. But most of all it's your auras ........... If you could see them, you'd be amazed at how similar they are!"

"Oh Christ..."

"Oh Christ what?"

"No-thing," murmured Joy in a singsong voice.

"No, really. I came down pretty harsh on you two just now, so let's hear it."

"Okay then. You were doing fine until you brought up auras. If you want to take people to take you seriously you might want to lay off the New Age bullshit. You're just embarrassing yourself when you do that!"

"What you call 'New Age' isn't new at all. It's a synthesis of all the great teachings from the ages. Are you saying the Bible, the Tao te Ching, the Book of Wicca are all bullshit?"

"I don't know. Maybe not the books. But the way you do it, it's ........ It looks silly. Like how you only wear that pinky purple color. People notice, and they know something weird is up. Like you're in one of those 80's cults."

"This color is a profession of my faith. I've had some great conversations with strangers that I wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm sorry if it embarrasses you to be seen with me."

"It's not that."

"Really? Then what is it? And what about you, Teodoro? Am I just some babbling old Shirley McClaine dingbat?"

"It's your life. What's important is if it makes you happy."

My sister sneered, "He won't give you an honest answer, the suck up!"

"That was an honest answer," I protest.

"Oh yeah? You should hear the things he says about you, Grandma. You want to know the clever name he gave your guru?"

"HUSH!" commanded Grandma, "Good Lord, Joy, you are such a tattletale brat! It's always been one of your least endearing traits..."

When she did the yoga breathing thing again, I used the opportunity to stick my tongue out at Joy. Who returned it, her eyes crossed goofily.

Grandma Rosa said sadly, "It figures that this would be the one thing you can both agree on, something so wrong. I've learned a great deal in my studies, you'd be surprised..."

"Wasted a great deal of money is more like it," sighed Joy.

This comment of my sister's struck me as profoundly telling. I jumped on it- "There, that's it! That is the main difference between me and you. It bugs you, doesn't it? The money."

"I hate to see her giving it to those phonies. It's so stupid, especially since otherwise she's so darn smart. I mean it would be one thing if she was some trailer trash cracker-granny out in the sticks..."

"There are some wise women out in the sticks," said Grandma.

I leaned forward, accusatory, a prosecuting attorney from some bad tv show, "But that's not the real issue, is it Joy? Everything she or Dad do, you think of in terms of how much you're going to inherit some day. So naturally them spending anything on themselves horrifies you-"

"THAT'S A LIE! If you can say that you don't even know me. Just because you're totally materialistic you think everybody else is. How dare you!"

"Materialistic? You go through money faster than I do. It's just that when I spend money I have something to show for it. It doesn't all go up my nose."

"Indoor voices, please!" Grandma pleaded.

"I don't care if they spend their money. I was only talking about her and that-that FAKE in a bedsheet."

"What about the boat dad wanted? Was that Cris-Craft dealer a fake in a bedsheet? You were so worried about how 'expensive' it was; And somehow you managed to talk him out of it."

"I was worried that it wasn't safe! That's the difference between us. You're always, 'Go ahead Dad, go on vacation in Iraq! Bungee jumping? Sure! Break your neck, I always hated you anyway. Here, let me punch your lights out again!'"

"Punched? I was eighteen! And how many fucking times are you gonna bring that up? Yeah, things were pretty bad between me and him then, but I got over most of that. So did he."

"Swept everything under the rug, you mean! But I do one thing wrong, and I'm this evil, evil person!"

"It's called growing up. I suggest you give it a try. I swear you're such an immature bitch sometimes."

"Who you calling a bitch, you yuppie cocksucker?!"

"Well I can see that diplomacy isn't going to get us anywhere," sighed Grandma. She cleared her throat and began to chant, loudly, in a voice that was eerily commanding:

"Mumbo Jumbo Rhubarb Rhubarb
Tikketi Bubarb Tak Tak Tak!
Drizzel Drazzel Droozel Fubar
Yakkity Smakkity Yal Geet Bak!"

"Call the men in the white coats. Granny's lost it!" whooped Joy, and began laughing deleriously.

Grandma just looked at her. Sternly, but mostly concentrating on the words she spoke:

"Eenie Meenie Mekka Lekka Heenie
Devo Cerebro Frikken Frakk
Phree Dakalo Estimoo Emalo
Gozeran Hozer Smoo Kabola Krak!"

Joy kept laughing, snorting and snotting, pounding on the table until her coffee sloshed out of the cup. And I guess it was an awfully goofy rhyme. I thought maybe it was some little mindfuck trick that she had learned in her peace activist days, for defusing a confrontative situation. It never even occurred to me that something so nonsensical could be a magic spell. I said, "Come on Nona, a joke's a joke..."

She thrust one clawlike hand toward Joy, one toward me:

"Ooblek Prozac Brubeck Noneck
Brattus Brattus Rebar Remonstratum!
Raggmopp Ragnarok Spiritus Neirtoo Us
Presto Change-o; Transcorporatum!!"

There was no flash, or sense of motion, but suddenly Joy was gone and I was sitting across the table from a guy who looked so much like me that I rubbed my eyes, not quite believing this.

Maybe it was all the drugs she had taken---that she is used to reality jumping around on her like this---but Joy caught on to what had happen way before I did. All I knew was this looks-like-me-dressed-like-me guy was staring back at me with his bearded jaw hanging slack. Then he lept up screaming, patting at his clothes, the front of his shirt like he was on fire.

Then he lunged toward my grandma like he was gonna hurt her! "YOU BITCH! PUT US BACK! PUT US BACK! PUT US BACK!!"

It was only when I jumped up to protect Grandma Rosa from this big crazy goon that realized I was in an alien body. My height as I pushed off of the table and stood up, and this large volume of soft fatty tissue protruding from me, shifting inside the brassierre that I seemed to be wearing.

I was relieved to note that my doppelganger had stopped just short of Grandma, seemed content to look down at her, shouting, calling her all kinds of vile names! And since she was clearly holding her own---arms crossed, unimpressed---I was able to take stock of myself, frenziedly performing the same disbelieving stations of the cross that this stranger had just done, oh God oh no, feeling parts of my body, and then my face; which for some reason seemed the most disturbing change of all! Not the comfortable protective mass of my beard but baby-smooth skin, dainty cheeks explored with dainty hands.

"Holy shit!" I squeaked.

The man nodded, grinning toothily at my shock and astonishment; enjoying my predicament if not his own. "Hey, Big Brother."

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.

And then Joy and I were both shouting at once. Demanding, reasoning, begging, whining for her to please goddamn it switch us back! While Grandma just sat there, holding all the cards and grinning from ear to ear, content to let us wind down...

This voice I was speaking in sounded so strange to me. The impulse was to keep clearing my throat, to make it come out "right", but I knew this wasn't going to help. As calmly as I could, I told her: "I'll admit it, I'm amazed. Completely amazed! 'More things on Heaven and Earth' and all that ............ I mean Wow! Magic is real, and we were as wrong as you can get. With our skepticism, the things we always said, we were just proving over and over that WE were the ignorant ones, and you ......... Well you've made your point. Eloquently and, uh- inarguably. This was an incredibly impressive demonstration Grandma ........ I am humbled to realize that I have so much to learn. So now please-"

My grandmother sounded offended, "Do you think I'm doing card tricks here? I wasn't trying to impress you, to prove you wrong. A practitioner who's reached the Silver Wand level doesn't do magic without a better reason than that. And I'm not changing you back right away, so you can save your breath about that. There is an actual purpose to what I did."

Joy stood there, fingers crimped around the point of her beard, "Purpose?"

"You two have been at each other's throats for years. Maybe this is something you enjoy, and I would say more power to you. Have at it! Except it affects this whole family. Like at Uncle Angelo's birthday party."

Remembering that fight in Aunt Vera's kitchen Joy started laughing. It was weird to hear my sister's annoying billygoat laugh coming out in an unfamiliar masculine pitch.

"Oh yeah. Real goddamn funny," snapped Grandma. "Did you ever wonder why that was the last of the Stefano's gatherings this side of the family was ever invited to? Thomasina's confirmation, I missed that thanks to you two slapstick comedians! I love that little girl..."

"I guess we were pretty horrible," I admitted. "And the way we fought in here tonight, it was awful. Thoughtless and rude. I'm so sorry. So how do we make amends? What do we have to do before you'll change us back? Whatever it is, I swear we'll do it."

"Do? There's nothing you really much you need to do. Let's see, it's the Third of October? Well of course- Halloween! Always real easy to cast spells then. So if you could both try to stay alive until midnight of the Thirty-First, that would be helpful. Other than that ........ A month of 'walking in each other's shoes' will either teach you something, give you a little empathy for each other, or it won't."

"And if it doesn't?" asked Joy apprehensively.

"It would be another of life's opportunities you wasted, and not terribly surprising to me. I'll still change you back, you have my word. In the mean time, what I want from you is the same sort of stuff I wanted before I swapped you. Help out around the house here. Help me and your father get through this, whatever he has. Could you do that?"

"Sure Grandma," we both said.

"We'll do what we can. But it might a little harder, might be kind of awkward for us, being like this. Getting adjusted. Learning to be a girl or-" I nodded toward Joy, "a guy. We might be more helpful in our own bodies."

Grandma's laugh told me what she thought of my stratagem, "Oh, I guarantee it will be awkward for you, 'getting adjusted'. And I'm not going to be doing a lot of watching you, guiding you, giving advice. I don't have the energy for it. My time and my efforts are going to be spent on casting a healing spell for your father with some of my Sisters. But each of you has the life experience the other lacks. The sensible thing, Teddy, would be for you and him to tutor each other."

"Him? I'm not a guy. No matter what you did to us!"

"I know that, Dear. But you should get used to using the terms that go with the bodies your in. Mostly for when you're out in public. We call you 'her', looking like you do now, and people are going to think you're transgender."

"Eewwwwwww Gross! Those weirdos!" cried Joy, the teeny-bopperish inflection making her sound and look like a big transgendered girly-man; an incongruity that would have been comical if it wasn't for the bigotry of the sentiment. I happened to know a transsexual woman, and would prefer to have her---Elsa---as a member of my family any day!

So it was not only ignorant of Joy, but she was taking credit for the "virtue" of having developed normally, something that she'd had absolutely no hand in. I had a whole lot of things to tell her about this, but she and I weren't supposed to be arguing. So instead I just said, "That makes sense, Grandma. I'll try to keep that in mind..."

Joy started doing stretching exercises. Twisting her torso- uh, his torso left and right.

"Y'know, this is kind of a trip. Kind of like how peyote makes your body feel, where everything's just a little out of phase from normal. Or, uh, I mean I read that. Look, I can touch the ceiling! Well almost ........... Whoah!" he cried out sharply, and sat down. "I'm dizzy. Are you sure you did your magic right, Grandma?"

"Don't worry. Sudden vertigo can happen in the first hour or so a Class A transcorporation spell. Like you say it is disorienting. Although most people don't enjoy it. I remember when you were three, Joy. You couldn't get enough of me spinning you on the merry-go-round at the playground. Make me dizzy, Grandma! Make me dizzy! Boy, that should've told us something. Oh well, it is what it is..."

"There are classes of spells?" I asked.

"Class A is the simplest. Human-to-human, with a waiting host. There are others, but most ethical practitioners don't mess with them. You risk damaging a human consciousness trying to put it into an animal brain, the risk increasing as the brains get simpler. And human-to-inanimate, people who have been pulled back from one of those are never, ever the same."

"Wow," said Joy, "So you can really do all this Harry Potter shit! Why didn't you ever tell us before?"

"I might have, when you turned thirteen. That's the usual minimum age for both Initiates and Fellow Travellers. But by then you were both proving to be the kind of people that you don't tell about the craft."

This hurt. "You could have confided in me. I wouldn't have told anyone."

"Maybe, Teodoro. Maybe not. I had to go with what I was seeing. And the way you were around your sister ............ You both should've outgrown this a long time ago; learned to accept the fact that you don't see eye to eye on things, to cut each other a little slack. But you're thirty-one and thirty-three and-" she completed the sentence with a tired shake of her head.

Joy frowned,"You could have at least helped me with my acne. I mean if you can do this!"

"Life's adversities---if you can call a few zits an adversity---are supposed to teach us things. It wasn't really your telling someone I was worried about. I was more afraid that if you knew you would be expecting me to wave a magic wand at all your problems. Help me get an A on my history test, Grandma ....... There's this cute boy at school, could you mix me up a love potion?! I could just see it going on and on. And in fact, if I hadn't lost my temper, you wouldn't have ever known."

Joy and I digested this. The low regard she had for our development as human beings. Her utter lack of faith in us...

The clock on the wall said 9:02. Unseen, a car moved slowly down the block, rap music thumping loudly from its open windows. The fans whirred, only putting the barest dent in the heat. Joy must have read my thoughts. He sighed, "I can't believe you don't have AC here!"

"Sorry, no air conditioning. But I can do this-"

She made a gesture like she was tossing a ball up, and suddenly it was snowing in the kitchen. Not hard at all, just like those first few hesitant flakes of a snowstorm. They materialized a few inches below the ceiling and melted as soon as they landed on something. It felt wonderful. And all too soon, it stopped.

"Do it again! Do it again!" we cried.

Grandma shook her head, a firm refusal. Smiled, "Don't worry, this heat wave can't last too much longer. So are you kids hungry? There's some left over meatloaf."

"Now that you mention it, I'm starved," said Joy. He cast me a reproachful look, "Damn, Teddy! Didn't you eat at all today?"

Grandma stuck the meatloaf into the microwave and portioned it onto three plates. It was
excellent. None of us said much as we wolfed it down, each lost in his or her private thoughts...

Eager to start proving myself to Grandma, I washed the few plates and cups we'd used. Reaching for things was weird, I kept misjudging distances, the reach of these shorter arms I now had, the span of these small hands. And with every motion my breast made themselves known. Under my denim blouse, a drop of sweat slid down into my cleavage, startling me. This was going to be a strange month.

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.

Joy and Grandma went upstairs to sleep. When she knew we were coming, Grandma had moved all her stuff into Dad's room and allotted us each one of the smaller bedrooms. I knew the rooms here, I would find out what sort of accomodations mine now had when I turned in. I hoped it wasn't that damned hide-a-bed sofa.

I sat watching television. It figured; This huge fancy hi-def tv and no cable. I knew Dad's reasoning for this, that with running Il Vesuvio he was never home to watch it, but it still sucked! He did have a lot of dvd's, but they all tended to be WWII movies, spaghetti westerns, heist or gangster films and I wasn't in the mood.

Feeling vaguely fidgety, I eased Joy's little wire-rim glasses off my face and inspected them. Just as I was about to find something to clean them with I noticed that they were clear glass. Weird. I'd hated my own glasses enough to have laser surgery done, and I set hers on the table next to me, happy to be rid of them...

Now that the initial shock of my transformation was wearing off, I was becoming very resentful. Even if I had known about her abilities, I would never have guessed that Grandma would do something like this to someone! She called herself an "ethical" witch. Where was the ethics in taking someone's body? Even worse, she had loaned mine to a known drug user. To a person who had totalled three cars, each in an accident that had caused the arresting officers to say, "Damn, I can't believe anyone could survive that!"

But Grandma just went ahead, without permission, on this high-handed mission to teach me something. The way she did it was far worse than the fact that I was suddenly shanghaied into this alien flesh, althought the fact itself was no walk in the park. It all felt physically wrong. Everything I did...

My transsexual neighbor Elsa had printed out a story for me comparing growing up transgendered to always having your left and right shoes on the wrong feet. As moving as this little parable was, it think it was a MAJOR understatement! This was like being sewn into some bizarre unweildy costume! Although I suppose the abruptness of this made it a lot different then her type of gender dilemna.

Intellectually I told myself this shouldn't matter. I'm not some macho motherfucker who would find it inherently dishonorable to be turned female- the notion of "less than a man". It is a slightly different inventory and configuration of parts; nothing more, nothing less. Also, you might ask, what's the harm in this if it's temporary?

And yet it did matter. A huge part of my ME had been stolen. Grandma was way more into my business than she had any right to be!

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Angry and full of self pity, I jabbed buttons on the remote, looking for something watcheable on sucky broadcast television ......... When suddenly the garish green grass of a baseball stadium filled the screen. Top of the second. The Dodgers and the Mets out in L.A.

The Playoffs. I had forgotten all about this game .......... Perfect!

I ran to the kitchen cupboard, found a can of pretzel sticks, grabbed the half a six pack of Michelob that Dad had out of the fridge. I returned to the living room settled back into recliner chair (which through some unspoken proprietary code was always mine to sit in when Dad wasn't using it), hefting my oddly small and dainty feet up onto the padded platform, and smiled.

27 days and two hours to go until the old witch switches us back...

Two beers later. One hour down, 649 to go...

I knew I couldn't do it for a whole month, but for right now I didn't want to think about this new body of mine. I was still dealing with the oddness of taking a piss a while back ....... I had known the approximate proceedure, to sit down, and about where I would have to wipe, but the process had felt alien and ......... untidy.

Staying immobile, immersing myself in the game was an escape into something that was familiar to me, comforting in its banality, in its utter divorce from any reality outside of its very limited rules and objectives. Damn, he shouldn't have swung at that! Why don't they take that pitcher out, can't they see he's done for tonight? And like that.

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I thought that the vague anstiness I had been feeling over the past half hour was some side effect of my transformation. Or for all I knew women ALWAYS felt this on edge. Some might say that this explained a lot. But whatever it was, the weird anxiety kept increasing.

It was during one of the commercials---a public service announcement---that I finally figured out what it was. A man in a suit and tie skulks out of his office building to have a cigarette in the designated area. He lights up, takes a deep drag, and proceeds to cough so hard that he expells all the main organs affected by smoking. By means of computer animation his tongue, his larynx, his lungs and finally his heart go flying out of his mouth to land on the concrete with a sickening splat, a collection of gruesome diseased blobs.

And I thought: Aaaaaaahhh! THAT'S what I need!

It all made sense now. I had quit smoking five years earlier, on my sixth attempt; so now that I had a mental framework for it, it was a very familiar sensation. The way my mouth watered at the closeup of the butt that lay there next to the caved-in looking dead man, fuming deliciously.

Joy's body was addicted to nicotine. So I would sit here suffering her withdrawl symptoms, while she was upstairs in my body, probably sleeping like a baby. It was the sort of situation that had Joy written all over it...

Her purse still sat on the kitchen table, and I'm sure she had some of those nasty French ciggies sitting in there. And it wasn't like it would be MY lungs and such I was polluting. But I didn't want to re-familiarize myself with all the rituals of the habit. The spongy tube poised between the fingers, the hand to mouth motion, the paraphernalia of lighters and ashtrays. My five failed attempts to quit had all been done in by "just one" or "just today". I would just have to tough this out...
...
...
...
...
... SHIT!!!

Suddenly a big bowl of ice cream sounded really, really good! That pint of Haagen Dasz I had seen in the freezer. I got up and checked it out. It was Perfect Peach, my father's favorite, and it was unopened. Yay! Back in Dad's chair, which seems to have grown since my trip to the kitchen, I slid the spoon into the gelid pinkish goo.

The sugar hit my system like an opiate. The high pitched moan that escaped me was a slatternly sound, eerily remniscent of the women in porn films, which jarred me back to an awareness of my transformed condition. And then I shrugged---(It is what it is)---and went back for a second spoonful.

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The Mets had beaten the expatriate bums, and were one step closer to the Series. Could we actually do it this time? Or come to think of it, did I even care? Baseball had suddenly moved way down my list of priorities ........ My father in the hospital. Bushwhacked by Joy being here. Magical transformations. What a weird and fucked up day. I knew that I'd better try to get to sleep before the nicotine jimjams returned...

When I got to my room and saw the convertible sofa, I swore. They should have thrown it out years ago. When the bed was pulled out there was this horrible steel bar running right under the middle of the thin mattress, that gave me a backache every time I used it. Only now, instead of being six-foot-two I was five-four, and I discovered I could lay across the bed sideways, avoiding the evil back destroyer. So okay, that was one definite advantage of being stuck in this body.

Hot night, windows wide open, sleeping in my usual semi-curled-up position wasn't too strange- except for the odd and sweaty sensation of breast lying atop breast. But sensation is fading fast. I am grateful that this swap happened at a time when Joy's body seems to be free of meth and such...

As I drift off I consider the irony of my situation. The fact that this should happen to me; who---while hardly some "bear"---loves being a guy and doing guy things ........ when there are people like my friend Elsa who would give anything to have this happen to them. It hardly seems fair.

I remember when Elsa first came out to me and Ricky. It felt good, heartening that she had chosen to confided in us, correctly assuming that he and I would be accepting and supportive. I don't think she was aware yet of the enmity many gays and lesbians feel for the transgendered, the belief that they must really just be gay people who have adopted an extremely convoluted sort of denial, to avoid the stigma of-

OH SHIT! RICKY!

I had promised my boyfriend that I would call him as soon as I got here. But this voice I now spoke with did not sound remotely like my own, and it was going to be like this for a whole month. So I could either call and give him my unbelieveable story, try to convince him it was true, or just drop out of contact with Ricky until I returned home in November as a male.

Either way, I got some serious 'splainin' to do to...

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TO BE CONTINUED...