The week after I turned sixteen my life got turned upside down by the kind of mistake that would make a good comedy movie.

Several months before, I got hit by a car while biking across town to see a movie with my friends. I don’t actually remember anything about the accident or for a couple of days before or after. Someone ran a stop light and hit me inside the crosswalk. I'd gotten off the bike to walk it across, they told me later.

I woke up in the hospital with a concussion, a broken right arm, a cracked left femur, cuts and contusions all over and some heavy bruising around my hips. I went home in a wheelchair. It took a while for the leg to heal but I was back walking soon. Things seemed okay until I started having other problems.

The doctors decided that I had a hernia that needed surgical repair so I checked into the hospital in the middle of the summer before my junior year in high school for a minor operation.

My name was Martin Gordon Lewis and honest, no one had noticed the stupid name thing, it was just my name. Most everyone called me Marty, anyway. Marty Lewis. No one called me Lulu, yet.

I didn't know it but someone with almost the same name as me also checked into the hospital less than fifteen minutes after I did. Louis Martá­n Gordon danced in an all-boy drag revue under the name Lulu Martine but the hospital had insisted on using his real name. Except, they got it wrong and so before the day was over the hospital had two people registered as Martin Gordon Lewis in the same surgical wing, rooms 324 and 342, just around the corner of one of those twisty hospital corridors from each other.

Add to the fact that both of us stood about five-nine, weighed around 130 pounds, had light brown shaggy hair and eyes that were either gray or blue–I called mine gray but he called his blue -– Louis and Martin could almost be twins and could easily pass for brothers, or siblings anyway. Louis was seven years older but we were superficially nearly identical.

Except one of us had a routine hernia repair scheduled, said hernia caused by traumatic injury and covered under insurance, and the other person was scheduled for a complete sex change operation paid for by a wealthy admirer. Other than minor facts like that, you can understand the hospital's confusion.

One of us died on the operating table, victim of a previously undiagnosed cerebral aneurysm, and the other woke up in room 342, the survivor of a highly successful sex change. I know which one I am, but I'm still not always sure of which one I would prefer to be.

As mistakes go this one was, pardon the expression, a lulu. And so was I.

When I first woke up I flashed back on that previous hospital awakening after the accident back in the fall. I hurt all over, just like before, but the pain was distant and dull, just like before, because of medication. My chest hurt, my face hurt, even my feet hurt but mostly, my groin hurt.

It was a front-to-back, deep-set pain, like getting kicked there but it didn't get worse or better, it just stayed the same. The hernia, I thought, although that could get bad, then worse, then worst. Maybe this was how it hurt after they fixed it.

I could move but that hurt, too. I could move my hands and arms and those did not hurt. Wait a minute, I thought, isn't my arm supposed to be broken, too? My eyes opened.

"You're awake," someone said in a mellow but concerned voice. I moved my head to see a heavy-faced blonde woman I didn't know sitting right next to the bed in one of those padded sleeper chairs hospitals have for visitors who are going to stay in them all night.

I opened my mouth but she said, "Ah. Don't try to talk yet. They said you shouldn't try to talk for a few weeks."

Weeks? They? Who they? And why shouldn't I talk, I wondered. So I tried anyway. "Ah. Tah?" I whispered. That hurt, a lot, even my lips hurt, feeling stiff and bruised. I brought my hand up to my throat and felt a bandage there.

The woman beside my bed reached out a rather large hand and put it over my mouth, not pressing, just holding it there. "I'm serious, no talking for at least two weeks? Remember what the doctor said?"

I stared up at her, noting the heavy brows, the coarse skin, the voice that seemed lower than alto and the too blonde hair. I shook my head, just a bit, suddenly frightened of this strange person in my hospital room.

"You don't want to damage your new voice, honey," she said. "No talking, okay?"

This time I nodded and she took her hand away from my mouth.

"I'll call the nurse to see if you can sit up, I've got a detachable keyboard here and a laptop you can use to talk with but it's hard to do that lying down. Huh?" She smiled at me. "Your face is all bandaged but I can't wait to see how pretty you're going to be." She turned away to use the call signal.

I checked my face out with my fingers. I had bandages all over, my nose, my forehead, my chin, my mouth. In fact, I had only small openings at mouth, nose and eyes.

Once again, trauma or anesthesia had removed memories. I did remember talking about the surgery with my parents but I didn't remember checking into the hospital. Had something else happened? Had I been in another accident? How long ago were my most recent memories? I didn't know.

A nurse came in, a pretty woman wearing cross trainers and a shapeless green tunic and pants . "Sure, she can sit up. I'll crank the bed for her," she said when the big blonde asked.

Her?

The bed cranked up to a sitting angle revealed more pains, I gasped, or I would have if I could have but my voice reduced the noise to a whine.

"Is that better, Miss Lewis?" the nurse asked.

"Martine," said the blonde.

"Miss Martine," said the nurse. "Is that better?"

I stared at them. Miss? Martine? I started to open my mouth but they both put fingers to their lips, so I just shrugged. Maybe, I decided, I hadn't really woke up yet and this would all be very funny when I did.

And maybe it wouldn't.

The big blonde put a small keyboard into my lap and angled the screen of a fancy laptop sitting on the bedside table to where we both could see it.

The nurse picked up a clipboard from some holder on the end of the bed and asked, "Which name does she prefer to go by now?"

I stared past the lumpiness of my chest under the hospital gown to the keyboard. "She? She who?" I typed.

"Lulu Martine," said the blonde and spelled it.

"Lulu, that's cute," said the nurse, writing something on the clipboard.

"My name is Marthy," I typed, saw the error and backspaced to retype.

The blonde smiled at me.

The nurse put the clipboard down and said, "We'll have a nice protein shake for you in an hour or two, Miss Martine. Then the doctors will remove some bandages later tonight and you can probably go home tomorrow. Remember to take small sips so you don’t get strangled.”

“say what?” I typed.

"Thank you, nurse”, said the blonde. "Isn't she a sweetie?"

"Yes, she is," agreed the nurse on the way out.

"she who?" I typed. "you mean the nurse?”

"I did," said the blonde. "But you're a sweetie, too."

"who are you?" I typed.

She laughed. "I'm Alice, of course. Are you being silly?"

I typed, "dunno whats going on?" Already typing was beginning to wear me out.

"Anesthesia," she said, nodding. "Always left me confused too. You'll be okay soon, honey. Oh, the girls are coming to say hello."

"the girls?" I typed. "who?"

"Dixie, Sugar, Tiffany, Bobbi-Sue, LeeAnne, whoever else they can find to come along, I guess. Everyone is so happy for you."

"don't know them do i?” I typed.

She grinned. "Okay, they are all jealous as hell. Some of the real queens won't come, of course; they think you're nuts. But all the t-girls are happy for you and jealous, too, I guess."

"none of that make sense" I typed. I felt tired. I wanted to type a question about what had happened to my chest but I didn't have the energy.

She took the keyboard back. "Why don't you nap for a bit? I'll wake you when the girls get here or the nurse will when she brings your shake."

I didn't want a shake. And a protein shake sounded awful. I wanted to wake up and have the confusion be only a dream. So I nodded and closed my eyes.

"Want me to crank the bed down again?" she asked.

I didn't even nod, too near to sleep already to care about it.

I slept and I dreamed. Very disturbing dreams about a mistake the hospital made. They cut out my testicles, turned my penis inside out to make a vagina, put in breast and butt implants, reshaped my larynx and my face and even did something to my feet.

While I was out–in the dream?–I heard a doctor say, "Hey, this kid has a hernia."

Someone else said, "Well, fix that, too, long as we're in here."

Oh, good, I thought. At least, I won't have to worry about that anymore.

Lulu

A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity

Chapter 4 - Girls, Girls, Girls

by Lulu Martine

When I woke up the room seemed full of women. Tall women, mostly blonde, wearing too much makeup and talking in voices that were either too deep or strangely shrill. Mostly it was just noise because none of them were talking to me, just to each other.

The big blonde from before, Alice(?), had yielded her place at my bedside to a slinky, black woman who nevertheless had blonde hair and blue-green eyes. She looked at me, saw I was awake and whispered, "Wishes really do come true, don't they, honey?"

I started to speak but remembered that I wasn't supposed to talk and pointed at the keyboard. She handed it to me. One of the other girls, t-girls(?), noticed and exclaimed, "Hey, she's awake."

This provoked a chorus of people calling out, "Lulu!" and "How do you feel?" and "Congratulations, new girl, you!" and Alice saying, "She can't talk yet, she has to use the keyboard."

I tried to type but all that came out was garble. I couldn't get my thoughts straight. Something had happened that I didn't understand. Who were all these people, why did they keep calling me Lulu and she? Why were they so congratulatory?

What the hell had happened to my life? Where were my parents? I wanted to ask for a cellphone, even if I couldn’t talk, I could message my folks. Or someone. But I couldn’t make my fingers hit the right keys.

I didn't realize I had started crying until Alice confirmed it. "Why the tears, cupcake?" she asked.

The room got quieter. I made strangled sobbing noises that hurt my throat.

Alice said, "Maybe you guys better leave, doctor says she can come home tomorrow. We can have a big party by the pool."

"Yeah, okay," someone said. "Don't cry, birfday girl," someone else said. "We'll see you tomorrow, Lulu," and, "Goodnight, baby girl."

Were these people crazy? I wondered.

Alice walked everyone out then came back and sat by my bed. "Too much?" she asked.

I nodded. She handed me tissue from the little box on the tray table and I wiped my eyes. One hand wandered down to my chest and I felt the shape under the gown. Breasts. I had breasts?

I lifted the top edge of the gown and looked under it. Yes, I had two large breasts on my chest. There seemed to be bandages under them and in my armpits but there they were, breasts.

"I'm a boy," I siad in a squeaky whisper, not caring that I wasn't supposed to talk. It hurt and I touched the bandages on my throat.

"Don't talk," Alice warned, handing me the keyboard again.

"y tits?" I typed. I forgot about asking for a cellphone for the moment.

She blinked after reading it. "Well, you got breast implants, honey. You...." She stared at me. "Are you that confused?"

I don't know exactly what happened then. I sort of remembered the dream I'd had and maybe I realized just what had happened. That the hospital had given me a sex change intended for someone else. That Alice thought I was this person who had wanted a sex change.

I went into shock and hysterics or I fainted or something. A nurse came in and gave me a shot and I went to sleep again.

I remember thinking just before the sedative hit that I hoped I didn’t dream about the operation again. Maybe part of me hoped I would not have to wake up at all.

Lulu

A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity

Chapter 5 - B.arf M.e O.ut!

by Lulu Martine

 
Alice told me later that there had been a real parade of doctors through my room while I was asleep. Two or three came in at once and looked at my chart and one of them examined me, right there in the bed while I was unconscious.

Then they all left, looking worried but they wouldn’t tell her what they what was going on.

I didn’t know anything about it.

Instead I dreamed of going home, looking like the bride of Frankenstein, all covered in bandages. My brothers made comments about my tits and my little sister was afraid of me. Mom wanted to take me shopping and Dad wanted to lock me in my room.

“Y?” I asked him.

“B-coz u cant trust boyz,” he said. We all talked in text in the dream.

They gave me a new bike, a girl’s bike. It had a basket with pink flowers on it on the front.

The basket was full of Ken dolls dressed in Barbie’s clothes and they all talked like Valley Girls. “4 sure,” and “o rly!” and “bmo 4 reals!” They disappeared from the dream pretty quickly, if I’d had to put up with much of that, I think I would have woken up.

But I peddled my bike to school and no one recognized me. Scott Winters walked past me giving me a look but I wasn’t sure what for. I didn’t think he liked me but he didn’t seem to know me. And the look was strange.

Mr. Daysmith, the drama teacher, motioned to me and then whispered something I couldn’t understand. I’d always thought he was gay, did he like me better this way?

Some of the girls grabbed me then. April Locke, Taylor Grimes and Heather Something. “Girlfriend,” one of them said, “You’re scary!”

“Barf me out!” another said and they all laughed.

“Fokker seagulls,” said the other.

I went with them because I felt like I needed to. We went into the bathroom, the girl’s bathroom. They primped their hair and did makeup, like in the movies. I didn’t know how to do that stuff so I just went into a stall. Maybe they could show me later.

I felt a little sick, anyway. I took out my cellphone to call my folks so maybe I could go home early.

I thought the girls were being friendly but they locked me in. I dropped my cellphone in the toilet. I had to use my bandages as toilet paper. My foot came unraveled.

I wanted to cry and I kept telling myself it would be okay to cry if I were a girl now. But instead, I woke up and Alice was looking at my ankle, prying up at the bandages there. She stared up at me. I blinked.

She came up beside the head of the bed. “Sit up,” she said. I did. She sounded spooked instead of friendly.

She pulled the stupid hospital gown away from my shoulder. “Your tattoos are gone,” she said. “You had a tattoo of two butterflies right here – and a flower on your ankle. And since when do you have freckles?”

I shook my head. I remembered I couldn’t speak but maybe she had forgotten.

She sat down on the big padded chair and stared at me. I motioned for the keyboard and she handed it to me. “Who are you?” she said.

“I’m marty lewis,” I typed.

“You’re not Lulu?”

I shook my head again.

“Oh,” she said. “This is so fucked up.” She stood and paced around the room, chewing on her lip, using her hand to push it back into her mouth when it escaped. “What the fuck is Prince going to say?” she asked.

I didn’t have any idea since I didn’t know who Prince was. “Who?” I typed.

She stared at me then suddenly turned and headed out of the room.

I tried to make enough noise to get her to stop but I couldn’t speak and I had nothing to bang on. It wasn’t until then that I remembered I hadn’t asked her for a cellphone.

But now that Alice knew I wasn’t this Lulu person, she would tell the doctors and someone would call my folks and I could go home. Couldn’t I?

I remembered the basket of Ken dolls from the dream. Ken dolls don’t have anything between their legs. Would that be what I would be like now? Crying seemed like a good idea again.

I’d forgotten about the pain. Sitting up suddenly and leaning forward so Alice could see my back had not been a good plan. Something blunt and hard and about two feet wide pushed upward into my middle. It felt like a chestburster but lower down.

I thought if I even opened my mouth I would puke and that seemed like a very bad idea.

I reached for the button to call the nurse with tears running down my face.

Lulu

A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity

Chapter 6 - Cream of Broccoli

by Lulu Martine

 
The nurse came and gave me a shot for the pain and helped me take some tiny little pills. I went to sleep and didn’t wake up until they brought in the evening meal tray. I wasn’t hungry.

Alice was back in the big padded chair next to my hospital bed. She smiled at me. “Everything is going to be okay, honey,” she said. She helped me put sugar in my tea and butter a small piece of bread. My throat still hurt and I didn’t want to eat that much.

Alice said, “I talked to Prince and he’s going to make sure that you’re you’re all right, first. He knows how to do things, you know?”

I didn’t know, of course. Who was Prince? I looked for the keyboard and laptop but I didn’t see them. I made typing motions but Alice didn’t seem to notice.

I mouthed, “Who’s Prince?” But Alice just smiled. It looked like the friendly smiles she had given me before but it didn’t feel like it.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s still gonna make you his princess. Do you want this soup? Cream of broccoli, I think.”

I shook my head. “I’m not a girl,” I mouthed at her.

She shrugged, not getting it. “For hospital food,” she said, tasting the soup, “this isn’t bad.”

“Fuck the soup!” I mouthed. “I’m not Lulu! I’m not a girl.” I hissed and gasped, unable to make intelligible noises.

But if I really understood what had happened, I was a girl. Or as physically much a girl as surgery could make me. The thought of what had been done to me made me sick at my stomach. I could sometimes feel something up inside me, in a place that didn’t seem as if it should be where it was.

I glanced at my chest and the swellings under the sheet. I had breasts. I touched my face, I couldn’t imagine what they might have done there, narrow my nose perhaps, reshape my brows and cheeks and chin?

I had bandages on my ass. I thought I had read somewhere about butt implants, like breast implants. How much had they done there?

My voice – they had changed my voice and I couldn’t use it until it healed. But I didn’t have a deep voice anyway, it had hardly begun to change.

“I’m only sixteen,” I mouthed at Alice. “You can’t do this to a kid.”

She shook her head. “Stop trying to talk, honey, you’re going to hurt yourself. It’s going to be all right. Prince will fix everything, you’ll see, sweetie. You’re going to have the most amazing life.”

“I’m not Lulu,” I mouthed at her.

She got that. “Oh, yes, you are. You’re Lulu, now. You have to be Lulu, for all of us.” And she began to cry.

I didn’t know why she was crying but I cried, too, and it hurt my throat. It’s hard to cry without making any noise at all.

“Don’t you see?” she whispered through her tears. “You have to be Lulu now or she’s just dead. And all she ever wanted was to be beautiful. You can be beautiful for her, can’t you?”

I didn’t think so and Alice’s little ramble freaked me out a bit.

Another pain distracted me. I mouthed another question. “What did you do to my feet?” I repeated part of it. “Feet?” I said and I pointed at mine, under the hospital sheet.

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “You can have pretty feet, too.”

Lulu

A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity

Chapter 7 - Fatso and the Blonde

by Lulu Martine

 
I gave up trying to figure it all out. The insanity of the situation seemed to weigh me down, I couldn’t have thought my way out of an elevator without someone else to push the buttons.

And I stopped getting much co-operation. No laptop, no cellphone and when my attempts at mime and charades got annoying, Alice turned on the TV. Daytime soap operas are druglike enough but the nurse came in every two or three hours with some real drugs.

No one said anything more about going home tomorrow. The nurse put an IV in my other arm and strapped both of them down to boards where I effectively could not use them at all.

Two doctors came in and started talking to Alice, though they all glanced at me now and then. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, Alice put the television headphones on me and I felt as if I had fallen again into a dream.

It was even worse when the TV channel got stuck on a Spanish language station. I couldn’t understand more than one word in five though I could sort of follow the stories in a broad way. I lost track of what was happening in the room. The drugs, the sounds I could not understand and a feeling of isolation made it easy to slip into a sort of trance.

There was one show, a kind of comedy variety slapstick thing, the title translated as “Fatso and the Blonde”, I think. It was obvious which of the characters was which. The fat guy looked sort of like every fat Mexican stereotype you’ve ever seen and the blonde was more of the same, sexy and ditzy in tight clothes and flashy jewelry.

She was really overbuilt, too, with her bosom on display and frequent turning away from the camera to waggle her butt. A laugh track, or maybe a studio audience, cued me in to which parts were supposed to be funny but really, if it would not have hurt my throat.

A peculiar thing began to happen. I started to identify with the blonde. I imagined how it would be to have everyone stare at my tits. And be able to distract guys like Fatso with just a hip wiggle and a smile. He kept running into doors and stepping on rakes when he turned to look at her.

Would I look like that when the bandages came off? All curves and smiles and winks, Lili, that was her name, acted like an empty-headed bimbo but she seemed to be enjoying herself.

And that got me to thinking. Would I be able to live and be happy with what had happened to me? I didn’t think anyone could change me back and that would involve more operations and pain and would I want to go through this again? Just to be an imitation of a man?

Another show came on, a news program. I recognized some of the news stories continuing from English language broadcasts I had seen before but some of the others were just noise. All but one of the newswomen on the show was blonde. Again, I found myself identifying with them instead of the guys.

Pretty women, all of them. Alice had said that Lulu wanted to be beautiful. Would I be beautiful? Would that matter? Would it be easier to adapt to being a girl if I could be a beautiful one?

Or was that just a crazy thought?

Lulu

A Dark Comedy About Mistaken Identity

Chapter 8 - Princess or Frog?

by Lulu Martine

The limo drove up into the Hills and stopped in the circular driveway of an immense mansion. We seemed to be miles above the city, above the smog even. Almost a fairytale castle, the huge house had towers and a gate with a little bridge over a stream. I thought I had imagined that but later I checked and yes, it was real. Or as real as anything else in my life.

“You’re home, princess,” Alice whispered to me. I didn’t feel like a princess, even with tits. I felt more like a frog, an experimental frog in biology lab. Any moment now, someone would make the incision and take out my brain to put with the other parts of me that had disappeared.

And this wasn’t my home. I lived in a dusty old ranch-style out in the Valley with my parents and my brothers and my little sister. I made texting motions with one hand at Alice but she didn’t get it. If I could just get hold of a cellphone I could call my parents.

What did they think had happened to me? Why hadn’t they come for me? Why hadn’t anyone missed me and come to take me home? I started crying and Alice said, “Yes, it’s so beautiful, it makes you cry.”

I shook my head but I didn’t even try to speak. I knew my parents must think that I was dead or someone would have figured all this out by now and come to take me home. I tried to say cellphone but Alice shushed me then wiped my eyes with tissue and helped me blow my nose.

There were three girls in the car with Alice and I, and five or six more following behind. More girls poured out of the mansion as the limo stopped at the front door. Almost all of them tall and a little unreal looking in one way or another, like bad CGI animation.

They babbled and giggled and several of them bent to kiss me on the cheek or forehead. They called me Lulu or princess or baby or darling. When they had wheeled me into the entry, they offered to let me get out of the wheelchair and walk. My groin hurt and my feet, too, so I whimpered and settled back into the chair.

"She wants to ride," laughed one of the girls. Betti-Sue, I think.

"Don't blame her," said another, the tall black girl with the blonde hair and blue eyes. "Get all the TLC you can and ride when you can't walk."

I had realized that all of the girls, every one of them, had started life as men. Had they all gone through something like what had happened to me? Only, did they want it to happen? They sure acted like they thought I'd won the lottery or something. I tried to hate them for their joy in my misfortune but the sedative or something kept me from working up any real emotion more than a sniffle of self-pity.

Alice helped me settle back into the chair, cautioning me again not to speak. "You don't need to talk, honey," she said. "We'll take good care of you and we can baby you all you want for a couple more weeks. The doctor says you shouldn't walk on your new feet until at least then."

What had they done to my feet? I wondered. I couldn't talk, I couldn't walk, people expected me to stick things up inside me in places where I shouldn't have places. I started to cry and everyone gathered around me to tell me things would be okay.

"You're going to be beautiful, baby girl," Alice whispered to me. "Just like you've always dreamed of."

I tried to tell her I didn't want to be a girl or beautiful. I just wanted someone to call my folks or let me text them so I could go home, but she put a finger to my lips and reminded me that I wasn't supposed to talk yet. Who wants to hear a frog croaking, anyway?

I let the tears run down my face. She wiped them away and kissed me on the cheek and the forehead and called me princess. But even she didn’t sound completely sure of it.