The Walk (Part 2)

View Part 1 of The Walk.

I had no idea what I was going to do now that I was swapped into this woman’s body, but I figured a cup of coffee couldn’t hurt. I certainly needed one.

Everything felt weird. Walking to the coffee shop felt weird. Ordering with my new voice felt weird. Paying for the coffee and having to reach for a purse felt weird.

As I pulled out the credit card, I saw this body’s name. It felt goo to know I had a name that I’d have to get used to going by. But she had to have some sort of ID, right? I could find out where she lived; maybe I could get some more answers about who I was now.

Out-of-Body

My brain still didn’t want to believe my body could move in certain ways. Lifting up my leg to stretch was effortless, but when I saw it up on that bar, it didn’t feel like MY leg. Well, in some ways it technically wasn’t my leg. It hadn’t been my leg until just a few days ago. Perhaps I should say that it didn’t feel like that leg was attached to me, and since swapping into this woman’s body, well, that leg was definitely attached to me now.

I often wondered if these sorts of out-of-body experiences were common for everyone after the Great Shift, or if it was just me. Maybe it was swapping bodies with a woman that had put me in such a state of disbelief at what was clearly my reality. Maybe it was just the particularities of her specific body that made it so weird. Either way, it was so surreal and not getting any better.

Love

Benjamin had an amazing life before the Great Shift. He had a high paying job in tech with a really hot girlfriend -- and he was quite a good looking guy, too.

The Great Shift changed all that when he swapped into a new body along with most other people on the planet. He hated becoming a woman; he hated being older. His girlfriend let him borrow clothes that had looked hot on her body, but he felt like they just exposed the liver spots on his new skin.

And his girlfriend wound up his body, so she was a fairly good looking man -- which felt somewhat arrogant for him to say, but...eh?

And one day he told her, “I’d understand if you left me.”

She just came up close to him and put her arm around him and said, “I love you no matter what you look like...”

The Worst

It was hard for Herb to imagine a worse swap. He had literally become a blue haired freaky liberal with tattoos and piercings all over the place. This was a nightmare. Riley wasn’t any happier. They didn’t want to be in Herb’s body either -- several decades older and clearly identifying as a man.

But Riley took two steps back from the panic. Nothing really stopped them from redefining themselves in this new body. They could start expressing in a nonbinary way -- maybe even investigate hormone treatment -- even if the age thing was still a problem.

Herb didn’t quite have those same options open to him. He felt like embracing manliness in this form would be giving in and proving the other side right. But would embracing femininity be something he really wanted to do?

Hyped

In the days after the Great Shift, Malcolm was worried he was doomed to a world of skirts, high heels, and makeup. He had swapped bodies with a woman after all, and the gendered stereotypes in his head loomed large.

But as the days turned to weeks and the weeks into months, he realized he was still free to be himself. Sneakers, pants, and even a baseball cap were all commonplace for him. Sure, there were still some differences he had to get used to -- bras and periods, for instance -- but the whole thing wasn’t nearly as dramatic as he hyped it up in his head that it would be.