Blue Moon
2.1-2.5

by Donna Lamb

Richard Alexander came running out of his room when he heard Joel scream. "What is it? What? What?"

Joel Messenger pushed the bathroom door closed right in Richard's face. "It's gone!"

"Huh? What's gone?"

"M-m-my ..." Joel couldn't say it.

"Good grief, guy! It can't be that bad!" He tried to push the door open. "Did you drop your watch in the toilet?" Joel's weight or foot or something seemed to be blocking the door.

"No! Go away! You can't come in!" The seldom used inside latch on the door clicked into place, locking the door -- unless someone got a butter knife from the kitchen.

Richard stepped back from the door and stared at it. Joel had never acted like this before. A bit of a sensitive, over-emotional, geek but not really a flake, Richard reflected. And this behavior definitely qualified as flakey. The poor mook was crying on the other side of the door. "Hey, little buddy," Richard said in his best Skipper voice, "maybe I can help?"

"You stay away from me!" Joel sobbed.

"Holy shit!" said Richard, awed by Joel's vehemence.

"Stay away!"

"Okay, okay." Richard backed away from the door, subconsciously giving Joel more room. "I'll be in my room waiting if...if you want to talk sense." He could still hear Joel sobbing on the other side of the door. Baffled, he retreated to his own room. I'd better stay up, he decided, in case he wants to talk about it. I never thought he'd be this upset about me taking his date.

Joel's pants lay in a pile on the floor, topped off with underpants and polo shirt. Naked, Joel stood in front of the mirror on the back of the bathroom door and stared at the girl in the mirror. She had Joel's close-cropped, ginger-blond hair, green-gray eyes, and the same basic features -- with just a bit more delicacy in the chin, nose and eyebrows. Her small, neat ears lay close to her head, just like Joel's. Her shoulders were square and narrow, her neck slender; neither quite right for Joel. Her torso tapered to a slender waist and supported a pair of small breasts with big nipples with dark womanly areolas.

Breasts. Joel said it out loud, "B-b-breasts. I shouldn't have b-b-b-boobs." Cupping one cookie-like titty in a delicate hand, Joel looked further down the mirror's image where hips widened to complete a slender hourglass. A patch of curly blond fur disappeared into the cleft between two pale thighs. Joel's other hand dropped to the joining and felt around, feeling nothing but soft fleshy lips concealing a narrow cleft, slightly moist.

"P-p-pussy!" said Joel. "I've got a p-p-pu-pudenda!" She shuddered and jerked her hand away from the discovery.

She stared at herself for a moment, unable to believe her eyes. She turned to look around the room, as if to see if someone was playing a trick on her. But she was alone. She looked back at the mirror -- alone with a pretty girl in the looking glass.

"How? How could this happen?" She put her hand back to her groin. "My dinkle is gone. What happened to my dinkle?"

* * *

Outside, the wind from the desert mountains blew down the inner valleys through the passes and into the city, hot as the breath of some ancient baby-eating oven-god. Not six weeks since Christmas and the thermometer would probably peak at ninety-five sometime the next afternoon. The local gringos call this hot winter wind "the Santa Ana," thinking it's named for the nearby city and one of the mountain passes. But they're misinformed; in Spanish it's called "la Santana," the Devil.

In the kitchen, Richard took a slug of a cold boutique-brewery beer straight from a longneck to get the gritty taste of the wind out of his mouth. His sinuses always hurt when the desert wind blew; he hated it but he didn't complain about it. Life in Los Angeles had its compensations for a handsome young man getting paid to drive a big car, sometimes carrying famous people but more often just teenagers on a date. Most of the time, the weather lived up to its hype and when it didn't, well, at least it wasn't raining. Richard didn't like rain; since he drove for a living he knew that no one in L.A. knew how to drive in the rain.

He debated watching television on the big screen in the living room but he could still hear Joel whimpering in the bathroom. He really hadn't expected it to hit the guy so hard. Joel was skinny and geeky but not really bad-looking; he probably didn't get dates because of a basic lack of self-confidence. Which having the first date you've gotten in months stolen by your roommate probably didn't help, Richard admitted to himself. How could he make it up to the poor guy?

Hey, he could get poor Joel another date. Maybe with one of the girls he knew? He wandered into his bedroom and booted up his ancient Gateway computer with the Holstein decals on the side. Who could he set up Joel with; it would probably have to be some girl who wasn't too mad at him, personally. Ouch, thought Richard, that narrows it right down. He was still searching through LiveJournal and MySpace pages looking for prospects who hadn't banned him from their webspace when Joel wandered in, looking lost and strangely appealing.

* * *

Joel had gotten dressed again in the regular clothes she'd left lying on the bathroom floor. They still fit, but oddly. The shirt seemed miles too big in the shoulders, with the seams hanging halfway down her upper arms and the ends of the too-wide sleeves flapping at her elbows. Putting the underpants back on would have made her cry again, and besides, they just would not accomodate her new wider butt. The once roomy jeans now fit like a second skin and she just could not get the waistband up properly; it hung on her hips inches below her waist which seemed to have migrated upward.

After discarding her male underpants in the hamper and moaning to herself, "I'm going to have to wear p-p-panties," she turned to look at herself in the mirror again. "I look like a girl wearing her b-b-boyfriend's clothes," she complained. The jeans seemed to emphasize her new curves and the ill-fitting polo shirt gave her a waifish air.

She waved a hand above her head, measuring herself against the door frame; her height seemed to be about the same, a fraction of an inch short of five-foot-eleven. But her legs looked longer and her arms shorter, her hips too wide and her eyes and mouth too big. Her small breasts hardly showed through the thick fabric of her shirt but she knew they were there; they'd reacted to the coarseness of the shirt pulled over them with tingly, shivery, not-unpleasant messages that went straight to somewhere Joel didn't want to think about.

She wiped at her mouth, even it looked wrong. Her eyes had red rims from crying and her nose shone red like a clown's from too vigorous wiping. Well, it would run when she cried; it always had and that hadn't changed. She sniffled and used another tissue which she discarded in the round little wastebasket by the bowl. Richard always missed though he could throw a beer can straight into the trashcan from clear across the kitchen. She sniffed again, deciding that Richard must have some connection with her predicament.

Before leaving the bathroom, she stepped briefly on the scales. "One twenty-nine?" she whispered, "I've lost almost forty p-p-pounds? It doesn't make any sense!" Just for a moment, her hand drifted to her newly flat crotch, contemplating that more emotional loss.

Distracted, and surely she had reason, she struggled with the bathroom door before remembering that she had locked it to keep Richard out. Thumbing the latch open she wandered left down the hall toward Richard's room after dithering a moment about going to her own room to fling herself across the bed and start wailing again. Maybe she should call her mother? Shuddering at that thought, she continued onto Richard's door and knocked lightly on the frame.

Richard looked up, smiling and looking not at all ashamed, which he ought to, thought Joel. "Hey, guy?" said Richard.

"My dinkle's gone," said Joel in a voice both higher than before and still somehow sounding husky.

"Sorry to hear that," said Richard, keeping his face serious. Cellphone? PDA? What the heck was a dinkle? he wondered. "Have you looked in the couch cushions?"

She shook her head. "No ,it's gone, and it's all your f-fault."

"Well, I haven't seen it," Richard protested. At least Joel didn't look angry at him, he thought, just sad. "Can you afford a new one?"

Joel frowned. She hadn't planned this conversation out and it wasn't going anywhere she expected. "What's a good thing to get drunk on if you don't want to be sick in the morning?" she asked suddenly.

Richard stared at his roommate. "You want to get drunk?"

Joel shrugged. "I don't know, it seems like a good idea."

"Well, it's not what you drink so much as how you drink and how much you drink if you don't want to be sick in the morning." Richard frowned. He didn't drink much himself since he made his living as a driver but he sure did his share of dealing with drunks. "The first thing to do if you want to drink is eat something."

"I'm not hungry," said Joel. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered as if cold. "I just don't know what to do."

"What's this about?" Richard asked. Subconsciously he had noticed the changes in his geeky roomie but consciously put them down to Joel's peculiar behavior. Joel had always seemed a trifle effeminate to Richard's macho sensibilities but on the night of the Blue Moon appeared fruitier than usual. "Is this still about Sylvia?" he asked.

"Sophia. You took my girl and my dinkle," Joel accused. "That wasn't nice."

"I never touched your dinkle!" Richard protested, tacitly admitting his theft of Joel's date. "What the hell is a dinkle anyway?"

Joel suddenly giggled, perhaps hysterically, covering her mouth with the heel of her hand. The new girl still suffered from the psychic shock of her discovery or perhaps after effects from the devil-worked transformation itself. Besides, a lot of words for the male member started with the difficult sounds called labials that tended to trigger Joel's slight stutter. So she had been using the childhood word her mother had used when she had found out Joel couldn't say pee-pee or wee-wee. And Joel didn't really know that it wasn't a commonly used word since it wasn't something that had come up in conversation very often -- so to speak.

Richard stared at her. On one level he felt a sudden, very disturbing attraction to his slender roommate and so on a more conscious level he began to get defensively angry. "Cut it out, Joel. She was a real witch and you're better off without her." Actually, Sophia Drake had been the Devil in Drag, going about the world on Strangefellows Day and granting troublemaking wishes under the Blue Moon.

"You don't know what a dinkle is, Mr. Dinkle Alexander?" Joel asked, still giggling. She dropped one hand to her own crotch and pointed with the other at Richard's groin. "Mine's gone, all gone. Now I've got a w-w-winkie."

"Holy shit!" Richard said, the obvious pun on the most common casual version of his first name occurring to him. He hated to be called Dick but something about Joel's manner and words told him that his roomie didn't intend a simple punning insult. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Joel leaned forward, trying to scowl. "My dinkle is gone, Mr. Dick." She stretched her shirt tight across her chest. "I've got titties. I'm a girl and it must b-be your fault 'cause it sure isn't m-mine!"

"You what?" said Richard, staring at Joel's chest. "What are you doing, man? Is this a joke?"

"No, damn it. It's not a joke!" Joel snatched the edge of her shirt and pulled it up to her throat displaying her barely-b-cup boobies to her roommate. "Now do you b-b-believe me, M-mister Dickhead?"

Richard stared for a moment then reached a hand out. Joel dodged backward and jerked her shirt down. "B-b-bastard! Don't touch me, you p-p-pervert!" she said, feeling absurd and alarmed at the same time.

Staring some more, Richard noted Joel's slimmer, hairless arms; more delicate face, wide hips; narrow waist. "Vodka," he said. "We need vodka."

Joel nodded. "Lots and lots."

* * *

They decided to eat HotPockets before, or while, drinking. Joel put three of the panzerotti on a cookie sheet, one cheese-and-sun-dried-tomato for her and two ham-and-turkey-club for him. Richard mixed a pitcher of weak screwdrivers while she worked at the oven.

She's a girl, he kept thinking. How could that happen? Has she always been a girl? But no, he'd seen Joel naked or nearly so often enough over the last two or three years to be certain. Plus, they'd been in college together years ago and had shared a room there after Richard got cut from the wrestling team for not having enough killer instinct. It had taken him four years of high school and two of college to find out he didn't really like hurting people. Should have gone out for baseball, he thought, trying to distract himself from thinking about Joel naked. The flash of breasts she'd shown him earlier seemed burned into his brain.

He took a drink from the pitcher then poured each of them a tall glass over ice.

Joel smiled at him when he handed the drink to her and his dick got hard immediately. Down boy, he scolded mentally, that's Joel. But his wolf-mind wasn't having any of that, it smelled girl and tried to put the charm in gear. "Here you go," he said, resisting his impulse. "Not too sweet, not too strong." Inanity might be the best defense.

Joel sipped. "Mmm. Good. I don't drink much. Well, you know that." Lame, she thought, then, Well, what do I care? She couldn't figure out why looking at Richard made her nervous now; or rather, she didn't want to figure it out. She couldn't possibly be attracted to him, she just knew that.

"How do you think this happened?" he asked at the same time that she announced, "I'm not at all attracted to you."

She took another drink.

He stared at her for a moment.

"You made a wish," she said. "It's a Blue Moon, maybe someone was listening?"

He didn't remember making a wish but he said, "That can't be it. Wishes don't get granted by magical fairies listening at the windows, not anymore. If they ever did. We are not characters in a Disney movie."

She giggled and took another sip of the juice and vodka. Did I just giggle like a girl? she wondered. She took another sip.

Richard turned away and sat at the kitchen table so Joel couldn't see the tent in his pants. She's flirting with me. No, she's not, Joel doesn't know how to flirt. I don't want Joel to be flirting with me. He took a sip. "I don't remember making a wish," he said.

She half-closed one eye, thinking. "You said, 'I wish I were going to sleep with a b-beautiful girl tonight!'" She blinked rapidly, took another drink and glared at him. "Then I turned into a girl, so it's all your fault!"

"I didn't say that!"

"Yes, you did!"

"No," said Richard. "I said, "Wouldn't you like to sleep with a beautiful girl tonight?' I think." He frowned, wondering just what he had said.

She shook her head, not looking at him, wondering if he'd somehow made her drink more potent because the world seemed to be getting that bright but fuzzy edge that goes with the first level of being drunk. If I start talking loud, I know I'm in trouble, she told herself. "Do you think I'm beautiful?" she asked, louder than she intended.

Richard knew he looked most like Charlie Sheen when he tried to keep cool after a girl made a pass at him. This had good points and bad points. At his most-Charlie, he knew it could never be wrong, no matter how outlandish the circumstances, to tell a girl that you thought her beautiful. Especially, he realized, if it were true.

"Yes," he said, with a small, confident smile. "Yes, you're beautiful."

Joel drained the rest of her drink and burst into tears.

Richard stared at her. The oven timer dinged. He got up to retrieve the HotPockets while Joel got a tissue to wipe her face.

"I just don't know what's happened to me," she said. "I didn't want this to happen. It's like a bad movie, or a dream." Her expression changed. "That's it, I'm dreaming! I m-must be dreaming!"

Shaking his head, Richard scooped steaming Italianate pasties onto plastic plates. He pointed at the cheese-and-tomato one Joel had chosen for herself. "Take a bite of that," he said.

"I'll burn my mouth!"

"Then you're not dreaming, are you? One, you know it would burn your mouth, and two, it really would."

Joel sniffled.

When he used to pout like that, I wanted to smack him. Now when she does it, I want to kiss her, thought Richard. He broke off a corner of one of the pasties with his fingers to let the inside cool faster. Joel used a fork to chop hers into small pieces, same as she had done the last time they'd eaten this. Richard watched her. "Maybe you'll be happier this way," he mused aloud.

"I will not! My dinkle is gone, I liked having a dinkle!"

"That's -- disturbing."

"Huh? Why?"

"Well, you're using a cutesy word to talk about your penis that you don't have anymore. You're a beautiful girl who doesn't need her own penis because she certainly can have the use of almost any guy's --dinkle-- she cares to borrow. It's either disturbing or hilarious and if I start laughing, I'm sure you'll cry again."

"Pour me another screwdriver and maybe I can laugh, too," said Joel. She pushed her empty glass towards him and reached for the bottle of sweet green Tabasco on the table.

Richard drained his glass and refilled both from the pitcher. "This may be hitting you harder than you might think?"

She shook several drops over her shredded HotPocket and after a moment of thought, added six or eight more to her drink. Richard shuddered. "You talking about the vodka or my being turned into a girl by your stupid w-w-wish? Either way, I think I'm doing p-pretty good. Hic."

Richard rolled his eyes but took a moment to consider the shadows under her cheekbones and the graceful curve of her neck as she tilted her head and examined the lifted glass to see what the green sauce had done to the color of the orange liquid.

"Think it needs m-more Tabasco?"

"God, no."

She took a sip of the concoction and moaned with pleasure, sending thrills to parts of Richard he had wisely concealed again by sitting at the table.

"So what happens if I w-won't sleep with you tonight? I think your w-w-wish will turn you into a girl, too!" Joel took a forkful of cheese-and-tomato pastie crumble and nibbled fragments off the load with her sharp little teeth.

Richard suppressed a groan. "I don't think so," he said. He took a man-size bite of his first HotPocket, savoring the simple ham, turkey and cheese. He didn't like strong spices in his food, the despair of his Mexican-born grandmother.

They both chewed for a moment.

"But if I won't sleep with you, the w-w-wish will have to turn you into a girl, too, in order to come true." She grinned at him. She took another healthy swig of her Tabasco-tainted screwdriver.

He grinned back, pointing with a piece of pastie at her glass. "If you drink all of that, you will sleep with me."

She opened her mouth to counter his argument. "Hic," she said.