You lie there on your bed for what feels like forever, listening as the sound of your heartbeat racing in your ears slowly subsides. You're still wearing the jeans, boy-shorts, black t-shirt and sport's bra you slept in, but now they're all but soaked with sweat. They cling to your body in ways that are vaguely uncomfortable. You already took a shower, but you feel like you need another one.
'Get it together,' you think. No more sound from your room mate or his girlfriend through the wall. Good. With a grunt of effort that you don't really feel, you climb out of bed, walk across the room, and sit down at your desk. A few moments' rummaging produces your laptop, and a short time later, you're online, and you're pregnant: the thought that wouldn't go away.
Are you really going to be a girl for the rest of your life? ... That's what the spiritualist said would happen, back then. That was after you'd changed for the first time. You were thirteen. The memory is still vivid. You were at school. You'd never really noticed that Cynthia Jones was pretty before. She'd always been your friend - ever since first grade - but the idea that she was a girl hadn't been one that you ever really considered. But that day, your thoughts kept returning to her. You'd started to wonder what she looked like naked, and it was strange: a thought like that had never occurred to you before. When she spoke to you at lunch time, you were all blushes and stammers, and then you went to the bathroom, and then...
Then it had all become a nightmare. Nobody believed you were you, and trying to explain what had happened only made it worse. Even thinking about it now, an awful warmth seems to bubble up in your chest and up to the top of your head. It's more than just embarrassment. It's more than just warmth. Sweat breaks out across your skin anew. It feels like the time when you were five and you were lost at the Halloween parade, and it was dark, and all around were ghastly faces and the laughter of goblins; it feels like when you were at a school assembly in third grade and everyone else stopped talking just in time for the entire school to hear you say unthinkingly to Cynthia, 'look at the fat kid!' and every eye in the room went to you, and the overweight new kid's hurt, angry stare made it even worse, and you wanted to sink through the floor; it feels like the moment you realized that death was forever. It all comes back, and for a moment, it's like it just happened. Sitting in a chair while adults yelled at you, demanded to know what you'd done with . Your dad getting really, really quiet, and your mom screaming at you to tell her what you'd done with her baby. Being taken to the police station overnight. And then, after everything, after you'd finally convinced your parents that you really were you, the visits to the doctor. You'd been stuck as for almost eight months before you'd finally figured out how to change back. And then you knew she would always be waiting for you, this other you that you've become, every time you got too aroused: . ... all things considered, it was kind of a miracle you turned out as well as you did, much less made it into college.
"It's a gypsy curse," the spiritualist had said. "Has to be." That was almost a year later, and there was a note of wonder in her voice. "I've never seen anything like it. Sexual excitement provokes the transformation. Sexual satisfaction will change you back, though the degree required may be significant." She shook her head. "Be careful, child, for your sake. As near as I can tell, the curse is tied to fertility. If you were to father a child, I believe the curse would be broken. But if you bear a child, you will be a woman forever. Even in future incarnations, if you can believe that."
Your mother had been the one to ask the obvious question: what about sperm donation? "No good," the spiritualist had said. "This is magic, not science. The ritual of the act has as much to do with this as the result. You, yourself, must bed and impregnate a woman. Or you, yourself, must be bedded and impregnated."
Gypsy curse. What is this, a bad Sam Raimi movie? The idea itself is offensive. It's an idiotic stereotype that only really served to further the persecution of the Roma world wide and oh God but you're thinking like your political science teacher. ... Worse, your political science teacher kind of has a point. You shake your head, letting the thoughts drop.
You do a quick google search for the spiritualist who helped you back then, and it doesn't take long to find the obituary. Huh. She's dead. Been dead for two years. She has a daughter, though. Julia Malloy. You vaguely remember her from back then. A pretty red-haired girl about your age, peeking through the doorway from the back room to watch her mother work. She's in the same line of work, too, with a business email address and everything. You write up a quick email and send it her way. You're not sure what you're expecting her to be able to do. Maybe nothing. But it's better than just sitting here, right?
At the very least, the idea that maybe old Mrs. Malloy's daughter can help you lets you put off a thing that fills you with dread: having to tell your parents that you're stuck as a girl, and knowing that they'll know exactly what that means.
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