“Are you regretting changing schools and majors?” she asked.
“No. I still think this is the right thing to do. I’ve been volunteering at the hospital when I have time to spare from studying, and the more I do that, the more sure I am that I want to be a nurse.”
An hour or so later, cuddling a very satisfied Linda, I felt myself starting to change back into Scott. She murmured sleepily “Jennifer? What are you — oh!”
She rolled over and saw my breasts flattening out and growing Scott’s sparse chest hairs. And then lifted the sheet and smiled in satisfaction at what was growing in further down...
“Miss me?” I said.
“Not as much as you might think,” she said playfully, “but I’m glad to see you.”
We stayed in bed a pretty long time the next morning before showering and going out to get breakfast and bring it back to the room. We didn’t talk a lot about what had happened the night before, but as far as I could tell, she was happy with it. But as we sat in the hotel room, eating bagels and getting ready for one last go-round before checkout time, I asked her: “So would you like to do that again sometime? Not now, because if I change into Jennifer now you’ll have to do all the driving...”
And she said: “Yeah. Maybe next time one of our roommates goes home for the weekend.”
We returned to school without incident, and found several occasions to be together privately, either as Scott and Linda or Jennifer and Linda, between then and the end of the school year. But by then I’d decided to transfer to Clouston University and start their nursing program in the Fall. I wasn’t sure if we could make it work as a long-distance relationship, but we agreed to try.
I drove to the other end of the state to visit Linda about halfway through the summer and we spent a weekend together, spending a decent amount of time with her parents and sister and brother, but most of it more or less alone, out and about from just after breakfast until just before supper on Saturday. I was Jennifer for most of that time, one of only a couple of times I was able to be Jennifer that summer. I used up my last dose of jekyllase the weekend of my parents' anniversary, when they went off on a mini-vacation and left me alone. I still wasn’t sure if I was ready to tell them about Jennifer, or if I ever would be. My dad had grumbled a little about my decision to go to nursing school, but he hadn’t refused me any further help with school, which I’d been half afraid of.
And that weekend of my parents' anniversary was the last time I was able to be Jennifer for a long time. Moving to Clouston University, where I didn’t know anybody, I knew it would take time to get to know people and find out who could be relied on to supply it in a pure, reasonably safe form. Larry Ryman had graduated, and Randall said the other dealers at Newcomen College didn’t have jekyllase, as far as he knew. And I was extremely busy with classes and studying, so I didn’t have a lot of time to meet new people outside of class. I was taking a more than full course load to try to catch up with science and math courses I should have taken earlier, if I’d known what I wanted to do — chemistry, biology, anatomy, statistics, and so forth. It was the chemistry courses that eventually enabled me to become Jennifer again, but I didn’t feel comfortable trying to make my own jekyllase until I’d taken all the chemistry courses my nursing major required, and maybe another advanced elective or two.
My new roommate wasn’t somebody I would trust with information about Jennifer, either; he was as straight as they come. (Straight in the sense we used the word in 1971, I mean, as well as in the sense we use it today.) I gave all of Jennifer’s clothes, her purse, and jewelry to Linda for safekeeping until I could find a new source for jekyllase or learned how to make it myself.
It took me until near the end of my first semester to find any kind of dealer, and he didn’t know where he could get jekyllase, or much of anything else besides pot, although he promised to ask some discreet questions.
I went to visit Linda at her parents' house for a couple of days during Christmas break that year, and confided in her how stressed I was about school, how much I’d missed her, and how much I was still missing Jennifer.
“Are you regretting changing schools and majors?” she asked.
“No. I still think this is the right thing to do. I’ve been volunteering at the hospital when I have time to spare from studying, and the more I do that, the more sure I am that I want to be a nurse. But I haven’t made a lot of friends at Clouston yet. I was at Newcomen six or seven months before I really made friends with anyone, and that was with a much lighter courseload.”
“I miss Jennifer too,” she said. “But I’m sure she’ll be back someday. Is there something else you can do to... I don’t know... bring her out more?”
“Yes, I think so, and I’d like your help.”
Earlier, I’d said that I had no desire to wear Jennifer’s clothes when I wasn’t her. That was easy to say when I could change into Jennifer, if not whenever I wanted, at least several times a month. But now? I missed her personality, but I missed her femininity in particular, and I wondered if I could maybe do something about that. Unsatisfying, maybe, but better than nothing.
Linda took my measurements and went out to buy a few things that might approximately fit me. While her parents were out, I shaved my face, arms, and legs and tried them on. They mostly fit, and though I didn’t look great, it was nowhere near as bad as I’d expected. I put on makeup, trying to remember the lessons Cynthia and Alice had given Jennifer and getting some help from Linda with the bits I couldn’t quite recall. Then we drove to Chicago, and after some looking and asking around, found a place that sold what are now called breast forms and a couple of girdles to give my waist approximately the right shape. Armed with those, we went shopping and bought a few more things in the sizes my male body needed. That was a pretty satisfying weekend; not as good, in most ways, as the times I’d been Jennifer, but a much closer substitute than I could have imagined.
Linda called me Jennifer a couple of times that day, and it bothered me. I didn’t feel like Jennifer. I didn’t entirely feel like Scott, either. After thinking about it off and on all day, I asked Linda to call me Cheryl when I was like that.
The sex that night at the motel outside Chicago was better than we’d had in months, too.
For almost a year longer, occasional weekends of visiting Linda, dressing up as Cheryl and going out were the only respite my feminine side had — besides studying nursing in classes where, as I finished my core classes and got into major classes, nearly all of my classmates were women. I was slow to make friends with the women in my classes, though. Some were interested until they found out I had a steady girlfriend at another college, and then lost interest; others weren’t interested in talking to me at all. By the time I decided I knew enough chemistry to try making my own jekyllase, my closest friend at Clouston University was Tim Clipsby, a nursing student almost a year younger than me. He was an occasional toker, though not often enough or copiously enough to interfere with studying, and I spent some time over at his room relaxing from the stress of studying — and the stress of hanging out with my own roommate. And I decided to trust him when I prepared to make up my first batch of jekyllase, partly because I knew he wasn’t going to be judgmental about moderate drug use, and partly because he was better at chemistry than me.
“Say, Tim,” I asked, “have you ever heard of jekyllase? Or tried it?”
“I’ve heard a little about it, but never tried it,” he said.
“I used to have a regular source for it back at Newcomen,” I said. “I haven’t used it since my source there graduated. But I’ve been doing some research, and I think I can make it with the resources we’ve got here. None of the ingredients are all that expensive or hard to get, much less illegal.”
“You used to use it, then? What’s your other self like?”
This was the moment of truth that might destroy my fledgling friendship with Tim. I took a deep breath and said: “A girl. Her name’s Jennifer, and I haven’t been her in a year and a half, and I miss her.”
“Huh,” he said, and then nothing else for half a minute. Then: “Freaky. What’s it like?”
“She’s more cheerful and outgoing than me,” I said, taking his question in a different sense than he’d probably intended it. “So bright and optimistic and friendly. Since I first changed into her a couple of years ago, I’ve tried to bring some of that out in my everyday life, but I don’t think I’ve succeeded all that well. She’s the reason I got into nursing, actually — that’s the biggest change I’ve made because of her. And seeing what it felt like to breathe with her healthy lungs got me to quit smoking — even after all this time, my lungs aren’t as good as hers, but they’re better than they used to be.”
“But what’s the sex like? I mean, if you used to change into her regularly, you must have been getting some, right?”
“Oh, yeah, the sex is amazing,” I said, descending to his level, and immediately hating myself for it. He pressed for more details, but I didn’t want to profane what Cynthia and Jennifer had, or Linda and Jennifer, by talking about what they’d done in that way. It seemed as if it would be a violation of Jennifer’s privacy, as well as Linda and Cynthia’s. And Emily’s. So I kept it vague, saying: “Female orgasms are pretty great, but... I don’t want to go into detail. It wouldn’t be doing right by my partners.”
“A girl doesn’t kiss and tell,” he said. “But a guy does. Which are you?”
“Both,” I said after a moment of hesitation. “Mostly a guy, but I don’t want to give up being a girl once in a while just because the dealers on this campus don’t want to carry jekyllase. Do you want to find out what you’ve got inside you?”
I bought most of the supplies myself, dipping into the university’s chem lab supplies only for stuff we needed only a tiny amount of that wouldn’t be missed. Tim and I worked on it under cover of an extra credit project, and more than half the time we spent in the lab together was actually devoted to the project we’d come up with as cover. The boost to our grades couldn’t hurt.
And in the end, we had a hundred doses of jekyllase. I got three-quarters of it because I’d done the research on how to make it, and bought the supplies, while Tim got the other quarter for his help making it and being a second pair of eyes to make sure I didn’t miss anything. We did tests to make sure we had the right stuff and that it was pure, and then we divided it up, finished up our extra credit project, and went back to our dorms.
Jennifer’s clothes were in storage at Linda’s parents' house, and there was no convenient way to get at them before Thanksgiving. The Friday after Tim and I finished making the jekyllase, I made a trip to a nearby town where nobody knew me to buy clothes in Jennifer’s sizes, and later that evening, we got together in Tim’s dorm room with his roommate, Chuck Shelton, and Chuck’s girlfriend Nancy. “Tim, you should take yours first,” I said. “On the rare chance that your hyde is violent or self-destructive and needs to be restrained, I’m a little stronger than Jennifer, and Chuck looks like he’s stronger than you. If your hyde is okay, and Nancy’s, then Chuck can take his next — the rest of us together could restrain his hyde if necessary — and then I’d take mine last and change into Jennifer.”
“How likely is it that I’d change into a girl?” Chuck asked. “I’m not quite sure about this.” He was a music major, and sometimes used harder drugs than me or Tim, but not often enough to get himself kicked out.
“Vanishingly unlikely,” I said. “Of all the people I’ve ever heard of who took jekyllase, only three changed sex, me and one other guy and one girl. I’ve read every paper on jekyllase that’s been published in the last seven years, and picked up a lot of rumors about recreational use.”
“Admit it, you’re curious,” Tim said, and nudged Chuck.
“Yeah, I guess I am. Not about being a girl, though I guess I do wonder what that would be like, but about what else I might have hidden inside me. Go on, Tim.”
Tim chugged the orange juice with jekyllase dissolved in it and soon began to change. His muscles got denser and he got slightly taller, as his body redistributed mass in a similar way to what I’d seen with Cynthia a couple of years earlier. Tim had had boyish good looks, marred by a few acne scars, but this guy was more ruggedly handsome. He looked down at himself, then around the room at us.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Scott, what’s your name?”
“Dean,” he said, and put a hand on Nancy’s knee. “You’re next, right, babe?”
We should have waited and gotten to know more about Dean first, or just taken a hint from his behavior right there, but Nancy just scooted away from him closer to Chuck, and nodded. “Give it to me before I change my mind.”
So I handed her the next shot glass, and in five or six sips she drained it. It was already having a visible effect before she took the last sip. Her face developed worse acne than Tim had had before he’d changed into Dean, her eyes took on a slightly squinty look, and then she got a bit shorter and fat began to redistribute itself around her body, leaving her looking a lot plainer and less attractive. She looked around and said, “I think I need glasses.”
Dean mocked her, saying “What you need is a paper bag.”
“Hey!” Chuck yelled. “Leave my girl alone,” and I added, “Yeah, don’t be like that.”
“You still like me?” the girl asked Chuck.
“Well, to be honest, jekyllase didn’t do you any favors and you probably shouldn’t take it again. But I still love you no matter what you look like.”
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Charlotte,” she said in little more than a whisper. Then she turned to Chuck and said, “Are you sure? I’m not really Nancy —”
Dean interrupted, saying to me: “Hey, Scott, what about if you take yours next? I hope Jennifer looks better than Charlotte here, we need something to feast the eyes on now that Nancy’s gone.”
“We know Jennifer’s safe,” I said, ignoring his comment. “We can’t be a hundred percent certain about Chuck, though, and just in case his hyde is dangerous, it’s going to be easier for you and me to restrain him than you and Jennifer.”
I was starting to wonder if Dean himself might be dangerous, if not to me and Chuck, at least to Jennifer. But I hadn’t been Jennifer in so long and missed her so much, my judgment was impaired. I’d waited so long, I should have been willing and able to wait a few more weeks until Linda and I could spend a weekend together... but Tim wanted to try it himself, of course, and had soon talked Chuck into it, who talked Nancy into it, and I didn’t want them to try it for the first time without an experienced user there to guide them.
“You think I might turn into a jerk like Dean there?” Chuck said. “Or —” He glanced at Charlotte.
“There’s no telling,” I said. “It’s not all that likely, but it could happen. But you wanted to learn something about yourself... it’s up to you, I won’t push you.”
“I will,” Dean said. “You don’t look like you’re man enough to try it. Not that Scott here is much of a man, if he wants to keep using it after he found out it turns him into a girl... or really even if he never used it but once.”
I’d trusted Tim with my secret, and I’d been a little more hesitant about telling Chuck and Nancy, but now I was really regretting it. Tim was a nice guy, but Dean was already using what I’d told Tim to make fun of me, and might do worse given the chance. But Chuck looked angrily at Dean and didn’t say a word; he just snatched up the third shot glass and chugged it.
His skin turned a couple of shades darker — still Caucasian, but with a deep tan or Mediterranean complexion. And his facial features shifted just slightly, but he still looked a lot like Chuck. His build hardly changed at all. It was the slightest change I’d seen of anybody who’d taken jekyllase in my presence. At least physically; I wanted to know more about his personality before I subjected Jennifer to him. Another jerk like Dean and the night would be no fun at best and disastrous at worst.
“Jennifer’s turn,” he said, looking at me and then at Charlotte. He put a hand on her knee, and she smiled shyly.
“Not just yet,” I said. “Tell us your name and a little about yourself.”
“I’m Glenn. I suppose I’d be in pre-med if my jekyll would let me out often enough to enroll and take classes.”
“I’d be in engineering,” Charlotte said quietly.
“A girl engineer?” Dean scoffed, and I was about to say something when Glenn beat me to it:
“I’m sure she’d be a great engineer,” he said. “What would your major be, if you weren’t such a jerk that Tim will never let you out again?”
“Girls and partying,” Dean said. “No, seriously, probably business. I’d go into Tim’s dad’s wholesale business like he wanted instead of running off to be a pantywaist nurse. But we’re wasting time. Jennifer, it’s your turn.”
I should have called a stop to it there, but I hadn’t been Jennifer in so long, and Glenn seemed like a nice guy, and strong enough to restrain Dean if he got out of line. “My name is Scott,” I said, “for the next thirty seconds.” And I downed the last shot glass.
As I became myself again for the first time in well over a year, my first feeling was exhilaration. Scott loved being me so much that he’d cracked down in his chemistry courses and taken extra courses until he could brew up his own jekyllase. We’d never be without it again now. Just with what he’d made a couple of weeks earlier, he could change into me every week for a year and a half.
My second feeling was annoyance that he couldn’t have waited until he was with Linda, preferably at Newcomen College. I missed her. I still missed Cynthia, but being able to see Emily would be nice, and Darrell and Randall. And I didn’t know these people at all, and I already didn’t like God’s gift to women over there.
But I was better at getting to know people than Scott. Time to step up.
“Hi, everybody, I’m Jennifer! I see my reputation has preceded me.”
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Like A Box Of Chocolates
You never know what your Hyde will be like.