Transplanted Life
Saturday, March 27, 2004
 
Well, would you?
Carter was kind of upset that I didn't feel like going out tonight. Maybe I'm getting all worked up over nothing, but that bottle of colorless, odorless liquid that doesn't seem to affect anybody but me seems pretty damn suspicious. Sure, that's with a sample size of, like, four, and also assumes that Kate, Jen, and Maureen aren't lying to me. Which, for all I know, is totally possible; we all work in an environment where we have contact with biochem wizards who just maybe could whip something like that up. My natural inclination is to think that maybe Maureen might have reported that I had some sort of suspicion back to Carter, but if I think about it logically, she's the least likely suspect - if there's some sort of conspiracy at BioSoft, she's the new girl, and probably knows less than me. I just don't want to suspect Jen and Kate because I like them.

Spent a lot of time on-line tonight researching "love potions" and aphrodisiacs and the like. It's like the opposite problem from researching mind transfers - there's too damn much information out there, and most of the search results are people who claim it's real and are trying to sell you something (whereas the mind transfer stuff is generally sci-fi). How do you filter the good and useful stuff out?

I want to figure this out soon, though. I hated telling Carter that I had other plans tonight, and then I hated worrying about how much I hated it - did I hate it because I'd been dosed with something to make me want to be with him, or because I genuinely have feelings for him. Or, to get all mind-is-matter about it, do I genuinely have feelings for him because feelings are just the result of brain chemistry, and whether that chemistry is created internally or by outside stimulants is immaterial?

It's enough to drive a person nuts.

-M/M
Thursday, March 25, 2004
 
Creeeeeeeeeeeepy
Girl's movie night tonight. Somehow Maureen wound up coming along. She was acting all lonely and poor me-ish as we got ready to head out, so Jen invited her along. I guess she had a bad breakup, but didn't want to talk about it. We've all been there, so we kind of felt sorry for her. She was markedly less snotty than usual.

The movie itself was pretty good - Spartan, written and directed by David Mamet. It's kind of a weird thing to watch a movie that was shot in your neighborhood; a good chunk of this movie was not only set in Cambridge and Boston, but actually looked it. It's weird to recognize someplace on screen as somewhere you actually spend time; I think they even used Soldier Field (Harvard's football stadium), which is just down the road from this apartment. I'm not sure which is stranger, wondering how you could have missed a film crew in the neighborhood or the idea of seeing these fictional characters running around like they were real. It can make you feel like you're the one that's made-up, especially when your own life is significantly more outrageous than a story about the President's daughter being kidnapped and sold into slavery.

(Almost used the term "white slavery", which is just stupid and needs to be eliminated from the English lexicon. What, is it somehow worse for white girls to be held in bondage than black people? More than kind of a racist double-standard. But I digress...)

Speaking of weird and unbelievable things in my life, I brought that bottle of cologne with me, and was mentioning how it actually got me aroused the other night. Kate said it was probably some Pavlovian thing, that I associated it with Carter so it was triggering the same reactions as him. I pulled it out of my purse and asked them to test it. None of them could detect any sort of scent coming from it. I took a whiff and practically wet myself. None of them believed me, of course, and I figured it wouldn't be polite to stick their hands in my panties to prove it. Maureen was looking at me weird, so I laughed and said it was just an experiment, to see if the placebo effect would work - could plain water have an effect on them just because I said it had an effect on me? She didn't think it was funny, though the other girls seemed to.

This is really freaking disturbing to me, though. I mean, my mind has been screwed with enough just being put in a new body (or having new memories and personality traits stuck into it, if that's your perspective)... And a love potion? It just seems absurd, even positing a world where you can transfer minds between bodies. And, I keep telling myself that I can't believe Carter would do something like that... I mean, he doesn't need to. But is that "me" talking (whatever that means) or the contents of the bottle?

-M/M
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
 
This place is a mess
Part of that likely stems from me not throwing any junk mail addressed to Michelle Garber away; I tell myself that it could provide valuable information, but let's be honest, what is an offer to subscribe to Cosmopolitan going to tell me? And I never actually take the time to actually look at this hardcopy spam, so it just piles up until I'm wondering if, given enough paper, an apartment can spontaneously ignite.

It's mostly me, though. Initially thinking that this whole "new body" thing would be temporary made me get sloppy, since this wasn't my place, and it's just persisted. I mean, I don't even want to think about how the bedclothes would never get cleaned if I wasn't getting laid on a regular basis. That's a gross thought, but apparently my somewhat slobby tendencies came with my memories, skills, and self-image. Or Michelle was just as predisposed to them as I remember being. Guess it's not a guy thing after all.

While we're in gross territory, as well as the place being a mess... Some of the crap I found in the couch is just shiver-inducing. I think I remember how that pair of panties got under the cushions, but that would have been a month ago. Probably better to just burn the suckers. And the really weird thing was the little bottle of Carter's cologne. Like I mentioned, "I" used to have a bottle of that brand, and, I don't know what they've done to it, but... Not only is it clear, but I couldn't smell anything when I took a sniff. I took a really deep breath of it, though, and it just about knocked me on my ass. I can't say what it smelled like, but it was powerful; the front of my brain got fuzzy like when I get too close to an overly powerful air freshener and breathe deep. And I think it may be some sort of aphrodisiac or something; my nipples got stiff before I retired to the bathtub.

Yeah, I've got no shame. Still - weird.

-M/M
Monday, March 22, 2004
 
I hate laundry
There just seems like there's so much more of it to do than there is for a guy, and that's even considering that I'm not like a lot of my ex-girlfriends or other ladies I've known who feel some need to change clothes at some point during the day other than when they get up or when they go to bed. Of course, guys don't have to deal with bras or pantyhose or slips or scrunchies, and even though lots of things have less material, there's more straps and stuff that gets all tangled up, which makes everything take longer.

Today's real irritation, though, was that when I went down to the basement to do my wash, the price on all the machines had gone up a quarter, and I, of course, only had exactly enough quarters to do my laundry with the old prices. I throw it in anyway, figuring I can find some more quarters easily enough.

Ha! No change machines anywhere near the closest T stops, banks close at 4:30, and local businesses opt to be a pain in the ass about just making some change. I wind up buying a $1.20 soda at the local convenience store and then getting the other quarter as change for a small pizza. And by the time that's done, some jerk has my stuff just sitting on top of the dryer in plain view because they couldn't wait ten freaking minutes to let me do it myself.

Grr. I've never liked that kind of laundry-room behavior, especially now that I know that a guy is more likely to get off on handling my panties than a girl was my shorts.

-M/M
Sunday, March 21, 2004
 
O Cruel Irony
Something weird I realized today, that's sort of been bouncing around in my brain. I've mentioned more than once that I think of Kate as being much more attractive than I am, for the simple reason that she is. This leads to comments about how there are plenty of guys out there who would be all over her if they had the chance, or how funny I found her occasional jealous comments toward my body, or the like, both in this journal and directly to her. And, more than once, I've thought that if I woke up tomorrow in my old (or any) male body, I would go after her pretty damn quickly. It just seemed funny to me that in order to meet the girl of my dreams, I would have to become one and basically no longer be either interested in women romantically, or physically attractive.

Anyway, this struck me funny because last night Carter was asking why I was studying Kate's boyfriend Dennis so intently at the midnight movie. I told him part of the truth, that Kate was my best friend and she had had somewhat iffy luck with guys, and that he didn't necessarily seem to be her type. What I didn't mention was how much Dennis reminded me of, well, not necessarily myself, but the Martin Hartle I remember being. Most of the same interests, same height, build, eye/hair/skin color, heck, he even seems to dress the same (not so big a deal with a guy, of course). Don't take this as me being dissatisfied with Carter in any way, but it's kind of weird to see that a girl I would have gone for big time has apparently gone for a guy much like me. I would actually have had a chance.

Well, maybe. I was talking with Kate today, and the subject sort of got around to how Dennis isn't necessarily the first guy I would have seen Kate matched up with, and she mentioned that she probably wouldn't have given him much of a chance if she hadn't been exposed to a lot of stuff through me. I mean, that's just weird - that in order for her to find a guy like me attractive, she had to know a girl like me.

Good thing Carter and I are doing well, otherwise I could really beat myself up over this.

-M/M

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Note: This blog is a work of fantasy; all characters are either ficticious or used ficticiously. The author may be contacted at JaySeaver@comcast.net