I looked Tim’s shampoos over and decided they would not be good things to put on my hair if I had my own bathroom nearby. I could wash my hair later. So I started some water running in the tub to get hot and snooped around the medicine cabinet, drawers and doors to see what I could find.

My feet, boobs and back hurt and I really was looking forward to a nice relaxing hot bath. I bet in my apartment, I had an even nicer bath than Tim, maybe a jacuzzi. And lots of bubble bath, girls are supposed to like bubble bath and I seemed to be a girl. “With a capital GRR,” I said aloud and giggled to hear myself.

First thing just inside the door was a walk-in closet nearly as big as the rest of the bathroom. One side held the usual assortment of men’s clothes, including three blue suits and one black, slacks, polo shirts and dress shirts, shorts, warm-up suits and sweaters. Boots and shoes filled a rack on the floor.

Everything in humongous sizes, of course. I checked one of the shirts and it was a size 22! A 22-inch neck on my boyfriend, it made me shiver, my waist probably wasn’t much bigger than that.

Boyfriend? Crap. Crap. Crap. Luckily, I seemed to have the attention span of a kitten on a sugar high and got distracted before I could worry about my mental slip, too much.

At the back of the big closet, a locked cabinet got my curiosity up but the intriguing thing was the completely empty right-hand side.

It had two bars for half of the nearly six-foot length and one bar with shelves above and below for the other half. And nothing hung from any of the bars, nothing sat on the shelves unless on the very top one where I couldn’t see because I’m so fricken short. I tried to jump up but that hurt my feet and my boobs so I gave it up.

The thought occurred to me that Tim had recently had a roommate who had moved out. Hmm.

I checked and the water had got hot enough to close the drain, pour in some of the cheap bath beads from under the sink and adjust the temp with some cool water. I tried to fasten my more-than-shoulder-length hair on top of my head but gave it up as a bad job. Someone who remembered having been a woman all her life probably could have managed it without a clip or rubber band but I had no clue.

The sound of the water running had changed making me think the bath might be nearly full so I went back and turned the tap off.

I grabbed a bath sponge off a shelf above the tub, clambered over the porcelain rim, and sank into the almost too hot suds with little sighs and giggles as the water touched and penetrated places where I didn’t remember having places. I sank down to my chin, just touching the other end with my toes, holding my hair up with one hand.

For awhile, I lay there, soaking, watching my boobies float amid the bubbles. That felt weird, real and unreal at the same time. Like having a name I didn’t remember, “Constance Catewood.” I tried saying it aloud. Had Tim said, Catewood or Gatewood? It didn’t sound right, either way. “Connie,” I said. Now that.... That was different.

Connie was a name I recognized, my own or someone else’s, someone I knew. I tried a variation, “Connie Catewood.” Still not familiar. “Catewood, Gatewood, Kate Wood.” Kate Wood?

Now that sounded familiar, too, did I know someone named Kate Wood? I think I did, but nothing further about names occurred to me and my hangover headache threatened to come back. Maybe the water was too hot after all.

I splashed around a bit and forgot about holding my hair up long enough that I got the ends of it wet, so I sat up to keep it out of the water. I used the sponge on appropriate parts, it did feel good but I didn’t want to linger since to be honest some places felt a bit tender and over-used. Who knew that could happen?

I thought about what had happened and my reactions for a bit. I still had the conviction that in some way, at some time, I had been a guy. But I couldn’t deny that at the moment, I was definitely female. I looked female, I felt female inside and I guess I acted female since Tim didn’t seem at all put off by me.

The idea that I had been male just might be a delusion brought on by drinking too many tequila and sloe gin shooters. Yuck. I rather wished I hadn’t imagined that particular combination.

But why hadn’t my memory problems cleared up? Real amnesia, unlike the disease television characters get, is usually traumatic, limited and temporary. And where did I know that from?

College. I vaguely remembered attending a college, an ivy-covered institution in “one of those eastern cities” like Connecticut. I smiled.

Tim was so cute sometimes. And I felt so attracted to him it scared me. I hadn’t really been surprised that we ended up having sex, it had been pretty obvious that that’s how we’d spent the night, too. And frankly, from the moment I’d looked at him this morning, I’d been thinking about doing it.

A noise from outside the bathroom startled me until I realized it must be Tim snoring. I rolled my eyes and giggled. It amazed me how fond I felt of the man on only a few hours acquaintance and even after he tricked me by not telling that he’d found my apartment.

Or had he? If I used to be a guy, how could I be this Connie Catewood person? And I didn’t just remember being a guy instead of a girl, I remembered being taller, stronger, older. Older? WTF?

Yeah, older. I’d seen myself in the mirror and looked at my body. I might be as young as nineteen or as old as twenty-nine but surely not any older than that. And yet, I remembered what’s-his-name, the guy with the ski-slope nose and the shifty eyes, being president. Or maybe not, what I remembered was him resigning.

I must have been in grade school then. How old would that make me? What year was it? Who was president now?

The black guy? Shit, there’s a black guy president, I must be fucking ancient. When did that happen? I couldn’t remember and then I did. Nine-Eleven, war in the Middle East, charismatic black guy runs against the establishment and gets elected.

Heck, that’s almost as weird as what happened to me. But thinking of Nine-Eleven made me shiver despite the hot water.

Saved by a short attention span again. I decided that I’d better get out of the tub before I got wrinkly, so I stood up and rinsed off with the shower nozzle thing and climbed out. I’d managed to keep more than just the ends of my hair from getting wet so it should dry soon.

I drained the tub then wrapped a gigantic towel around me like girls in the movies are always doing. It took a couple of tries to get it right but my boobs kind of ended up holding it up. Who knew?

Anyway, I sneaked out of the bathroom, checked on Tim, still snoozing, and traipsed into the living room. The bath had relaxed me so much that I could feel how tired I was now. My arms and legs seemed to weigh a ton.

Well, if Tim could do it, I thought, maybe I should too. But if I crawled up into the bed with Tim, I felt certain what would happen when he woke up. Um. And that would delay us going down to see my apartment.

The last thing I remember thinking was that I could climb onto that big old couch where we had been doing the deed and close my eyes for a bit so I could think about it. Scha, right.