Permanence
So, I guess the thing to do is get a blood test. Considering how regular Michelle's periods have been since I woke up in her body, I should know pretty quick whether or not "we" are pregnant (those little red pills start this weekend), which leaves disease to worry about. Not that I could have caught anything worse than a cold Saturday night. Despite not knowing the mechanics of how my memories and personality wound up in Michelle's brainpan, I'm not so ignorant of biology that I think you can catch HIV from a doorknob.

But the fact remains, I've probably had more sex with different partners, about whom I knew relatively little, over the last few weeks than in any other month in my life. Another fact is that the organs involved are designed to move tiny swimming things from a man's body to a woman's, and I'm definitely on the pointier end of the vector now, so to speak.

Sometimes a scare is good for a person. I guess I knew that "multiple orgasms for no commitment" was too good a deal not to have strings attached, I wasn't worried about the consequences until I saw them up close and personal. Part of it was just being down and lonely when it started, and part of it was being used to the lesser risk a man takes in an anonymous assignation.

But a big part was that I didn't look at it as a risk to me. I may talk about shaving my legs, cutting my hair, or guys looking at my boobs, and I may not bat an eye when I see any of them in the mirror, and I may finally be co-ordinated to the point where I can run in high heels without looking like a fool or breaking my neck, even if stairs are involved, but when it comes right down to it, I still think of there being a point where "me" stops and this body begins.

I'm only inhabiting or controlling this body, I think, and by now I may know it as well as a homeowner knows his house and I may control it as well as a car-lover steers her automobile. But as much as those people may feel like their house or their car is an extension of themselves, they also know that if their car is wrecked or their house burns down, those things can be replaced. I think that, on a subconscious level, I feel the same way about Michelle's body - that if it gets damaged, I can somehow go back into my own body, or some third one. Evidence supporting that feeling: Nil; it's just that once I got used to the idea of my "self" not having to be tied to one specific body, I don't feel as attached. I expect that when I get my own body back, it will be less central to my identity than it was before.

Permanence is just harder to feel on your second of anything. No house has ever felt quite so much like home as the one I lived in until I was fourteen; I've only rarely seen the future with a woman quite so clearly as I did my first girlfriend; I still haven't had another dog since Moe. But you've got to make allowances for it, and looking back on the past month, I don't think I've necessarily done a very good job of it.

-Marti

- posted 8:28 PM - - (archive use only)