The Trading Post
Friday, January 03, 2025
Aidan/Emilia: "What, and Miss Out?"
Friday, December 27, 2024
Aidan/Emilia: Hardest Moment as a Dad
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Aidan/Emilia: Well, that was a weird Christmas
It starts with the kids and I actually kind of more in sync than most mornings - they both had to catch morning flights, so we wound up sitting around the little tree at 5am, dressed in slippers and the sweatpants and t-shirts we'd slept in. Didn't even put on a bra, so I'm sure my nipples will be in every picture we took. I laughed, saying that it seemed like only yesterday they were so eager to see what Santa had brought them that they got up before dawn until they became teenagers who slept in practically until noon. Rusty said that still sounded like a great plan.
After last week's hemming and hawing, I eventually decided to get them things that would be useful now and that I could see them bringing home. For Kutter, that was a camera and some accessories - a ring light, a gimbal stabilizer, and an external hard drive. The camera probably wasn't much better than what she's got in her phone, but it's good to have something built for a job sometimes. Rusty got a Blu-ray player and what the guy at the store assured me was a good starter pack of Korean movies that could be hard to find on streaming services. This apartment actually doesn't have any device that plays discs (welcome to being a zoomer, Aidan!) and the one in the living room back home is old.
With each other, they were oddly sensible - chocolates and coffees and craft beers and bottles of hot sauce with an alarming amount of flames on the packages (Rusty, of late, has discovered that she really likes a lot of spice and heat on occasion, after she went to some local ethnic eatery and they deemed her Asian enough to handle the "real" version of a dish), stuff that they figured they would use up in the next few months even if they only had the good stuff every once in a while.
I got some of that from them, too; ciders and the fanciest box of artisanal peanut butter cups you've ever seen (they've been buying me the tree-shaped boxes of Reese's since they were five and six, so this is a bit of an upgrade). Kutter got me an autographed "Advanced Reading Copy" of a thriller by a favorite author that should be big next summer. Rusty discovered that apparently Atari still exists and is selling updated versions of 30-year-old game consoles, so she got me one of those and some cartridges, which I guess means I'm not totally introducing her to the idea of physical media.
(There were also some gag gifts that I'd prefer not to discuss - what was the idea behind competing over who could get the other the most outlandish heels?)
Then Kutter beat Rusty to the shower but was quicker than usual, and soon they were dressed, made-up, and on their way out the door. I felt like I should have accompanied them to the airport or seen them off, but it would have just been taking the subway even if one wasn't going to JFK and the other to Laguardia. Just a reminder that I was not properly dad-ing.
Soon, though, it was my turn to shower and dress for the holiday, which I'd left in the hands of the kids, telling them this would not be a good time for pranks. I still kind of felt like they were kidding me - candy-cane tights, a sparkly green skirt, and a sweater with a reindeer on it that didn't hide much of my figure and which didn't feel entirely appropriate for Zooming with the parents - but apparently, it was: Emilia's mom and her little sister were wearing matching sweaters even though full breasts apparently run in the family and her sister is still a senior in high school. When I opened the box they'd shipped, it was from Victoria's Secret and contained both flannel pajamas and some new variety of bra that Emilia's mother swears by. I'd sent gift cards, and so had they, with a pre-loaded Visa debit card discretely slipped into a card so the little sister didn't have to see it. We somehow managed small talk with me drawing on Facebook and "Mom" remembering what it was like to just be starting out in a new city.
The call with her father was a little different. There was a stepmother who said hi at the start but then busied herself in the background; I gather she and Emilia never became close. Her dad asked if I was already looking for new work since the bookstore would likely be a last-in-first-out situation, and I lied and said yes. Lots more questions about if I was being careful in the big city, and I admit I did chuckle at one point when he used some exact words I'd spoken to Rusty & Kutter, although I bluffed and said we'd had this exact conversation at graduation when he asked what was funny. Anyway, I'd sent him gift cards and he had done the same, plus some nice gloves that you don't have to take off to use your phone and a knit jester's hat. He didn't feel the need to be discrete about having sent a prepaid debit card.
After that second call, I did the thing where I retreated to Emilia's room and flopped backward on her bed, feet touching the floor, and just staring at the ceiling for a bit. I used to do it because being a girl has just been too much for me, but today it was the lying, and also something seemingly bigger than that. The parents were my age, and Emilia's sister less than a year older than Kutter, and it was something to really do the full role-reversal; dizzyingly strange at points and all too easy at others. It's one thing to put on a bra and work an entry-level job and scrape to pay rent but then come home and be able to be yourself with your kids (I've done some of that before and at a certain level you just accommodate your body until you can tune any signals of discomfort it's sending out), but immersing yourself in someone else's life, even for a couple of hours, is something different.
And on top of that, I knew that pretty soon, Kutter & Rusty were going to be doing it even more than I was. Maybe better? After a while, it led me to thinking about the guilt I'd felt about not being able to drive them to the airport earlier, and how over the past couple of months, I've slowly been relating to them more as roommates than as Dad, even with the morning's sentimental gifts, and they were about to get the better part of a week of people just relating to them as parents with their kids. And mothers! They would have mothers for the first time in a decade! Two people doting on them and worrying about them that they didn't have to share with their brothers!
I don't think I quite had a panic attack, but I laid there a while. Then, some time later, I realized I was hungry, because I hadn't actually had any breakfast and it was 1pm or so by then.
For some folks, that's bad, they'll feel like they don't deserve food or binge or the like, but it tends to hit me as "here's a problem you can deal with, so tend to that". So I did. I grabbed a coat, plus the gloves and hat Emilia's father had given me, and went downstairs, glad I was in New York. Lots of places were closed, but lots of places weren't, and while they were quieter than usual, they weren't sad, empty places that reminded you that you were sad and lonely. No, there were lots of people grabbing a slice of pizza for lunch for whatever their own reasons were and it was kind of no big deal.
Then I kept going, explored New York at Christmas. Sure, it doesn't quite snow like it used to here, so maybe it's not the exact sort of magical that it used to be, but I only saw that in the movies and on TV, so I walked through Central Park, through Times Square, up Broadway, and every other thing Emilia's phone could find that was a noteworthy Christmas decoration. And the thing about New York's bigness is that, while it's often annoying when you're packed into a bus or tourists are choking downtown, it can also mean that things can be done at scale. Some of it just isn't possible anywhere else, certainly not in our suburb or the nearest city.
Of course, another part of New York is that it gets dark at 4:15 or so this time of year on top of being cold. I decided to treat myself, found a nice steakhouse, and let them all wonder about the pretty girl having a steak, red wine, and ice cream by herself on Christmas. Then back home and more time playing Atari than since I was eight (though we probably had a Nintendo by then).
And then, writing this, because the crazy day seemed to need summing up. Tomorrow, back to work!
-Aidan/Emilia
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Jordan/Yuan-Wei: Could Be Worse!
Hope I didn't get folks too worked up over the last post. Anyway, Dominic had a rough night of it - compound fracture and what is apparently way more internal bleeding than you want from the femoral artery as a result. I mean, you want none, obviously, but I feel like transfusions for "just" a broken leg is kind of alarming!
If it was alarming to me, it was absolutely panic-inducing to him, so I wound up in "reassuring girlfriend" mode the next day - no, I was not just attracted to you for your body, and it's not nearly broken enough for me to put me off, you'll heal up, and be back at risking your body/skillfully making it look like you've risked your body in a couple months - which, admittedly, is not natural to me. I'm not a bitch, I don't think, but there's still a lot of New York asshole in me which is not exactly helpful when someone feels legitimately down or isn't used to busting your chops as meaning "see, it could be worse" rather than "it's worse than you think". Trying to quickly think of solutions when he's down, that sort of thing.
And, like, trying to make sure he's not down for very long. There are logistical considerations in fucking someone whose full leg is in a cast and not supposed to have any weight put on it, but we're figuring our way around them. Purely for the purposes of making sure he knows he's no less a man in this situations, of course.
I kid, but that sort of temporary handicap is no joke, especially in a place like Hong Kong where folks often have tiny, cramped apartments and some of the elevators are like sixty years old and break down a lot. Dominic's apartment, for example, is on the sixth floor of his building and he's often joked about the stairs being his workout. His parents are in a high-rise whose elevator doesn't have any problems but which is just a bedroom, kitchen, living room, and bath, since they downsized after he moved out. Which leaves me. I don't know if I'm really rich right now - Chen-ai/Bingbing didn't exactly drain the family accounts but she sure as fuck convinced the nice lady living her life that she deserved a good chunk of it - but I've got a nice condo with a spare bedroom should we not decide to sleep in the same bed for whatever reason, and the building is relatively new and reliable. There's the family house, but... Well, I'm not sure what to do with it, to be honest, but that's a whole other thing.
But, yeah, Dominic is moving in, at least for the next couple of months, a lot sooner than I expected we'd be having this conversation. We've gone over to his place and brought a lot of clothes over, and he insisted on being the one to buy a cheap bit of plastic storage to keep them in. So far, we're not clashing too much, except over breakfast, when I am trying to get out of the habit of grabbing the closest thing Hong Kong has to a New York bagel and coffee en route to work because he'll make dim sum. Along those lines, he and his parents are not really sure what to think about just how American the contents of my apartment are. The place you see the most Chinese characters is one the Blu-ray shelf and the pantry, whereas my jottings on the refrigerator's notepad are all in English and so are most of the books and magazines lying around.
More than being generally Western - which isn't that big a deal; folks in this city have been using a lot of English and getting into Western things to look worldly and sophisticated for a long time, and the transition to sucking up to the Mainland instead is kind of happening slowly and reluctantly - it's my place. Me, Jordan Chang, not Jordan Lee Yuan-Wei. And I suspect that while that just looks eccentric to friends and lovers who pop in for a visit or stay the night, it's probably pretty fucking weird for Dominic when he's got time to settle in and look around. Like, why does the Christmas card from a random-seeming family from New York have a place of prominence while the one from my mother (you know, Chen-ai, or the while lady posing as her) doesn't? How would someone who went to college in Boston know this family from New York, getting all these texts at odd hours and there was a package with some Christmas presents, and do you know what it fucking costs to ship stuff internationally these days?
I'm not worried he's going to find out my secret and have some sort of gay-panic freakout; the Inn's curse kind of protects me from that, which becomes weirdly convenient once it's not the most fucking frustrating thing in the world. But, ugh, I'm not looking forward to coming up with weird stories (which you kind of have to after the face I made when he guessed that I had dated my kid brother at some point) or pushing my original life even further into the background. But I guess that's what you kind of have to do when your new one fills out like this.
And I guess I can; Jonah is getting married next year and seems to be making her peace with it. I just wan't figuring on doing it the week I'm exchanging a lot of Christmas greetings with my American friends and family, is all.
-Jordo
Friday, December 20, 2024
Aidan/Emilia: Christmas Shopping
So much of it! And not just because of all the hours I'm working at the bookshop (lots of overtime - a couple folks quit and someone chose a lousy week to have Covid)!
This is not, by the way, a "Oh, now you know what ladies go through at the holidays" thing. I've been a single dad for over a decade managing Christmas decorations and shopping on my own, and sometimes money has been tight. It's just figuring out what would be appropriate
For instance, we dug through the back of various closets and found that there was a small artificial tree and a string of LED lights that Emilia had apparently bought for her dorm room or college apartment. It's small, maybe the and a half feet tall, but so is the apartment. We pushed the coffee table into a corner and set it up in top of that. Kutter and Rusty are going to have to improvise foot rests for when they're gaming on the couch, but they made that sacrifice willingly.
Decorating ours, though, was surprisingly deflating. There are years printed on most ornaments, whether store-bought or homemade, and every year I discover anew that they can be profoundly powerful reminders of how Kutter and Rusty have grown and what has persisted, what Christmas was like for me as a kid, and remember the ones we spent as a family before losing their mother. The various ones Emilia, Katey, and Monica have left behind mean little to us. Maybe even less, because they were willing to abandon them. We wound up putting them back in their boxes and buying some new ones. I went for a couple specifically featuring New York while the girls went goofy - honestly, who even puts a loop of string on a miniature pair of heels and calls that festive? - so that they would mean something later.
It's trickier to do the same sort of thing with the actual shopping - should I be shopping for teenage boys or young women? It doesn't seem right to look for things that they will be leaving behind in a few months - although I suppose they may be mementos of their time here - nor to get them things that won't seem relevant until May. After all, buying teenagers something that they'll still be interested in six months from now is difficult in the best cases, and who knows how this experience will leave them changed on the other side..
Yeah, I guess I'm shopping for Katey and Monica. Of course, there's also the question of the family living our lives now, so maybe we should be getting "Aidan", "Kutter", and "Rusty" something. The kids and I have talked it over a bit, but we're actually having a little trouble coming up with something appropriate that we wouldn't have mentioned three months ago. Rusty as suggested just a card involving Santa dresses and the caption "Wish You Were Here!", at least until I pointed out that the girls living their lives were also underage and that would be inappropriate on so many levels. She still wants the picture, though.
And then, there's the big one - these girls' families.
It's the twenty-first century, so there are social media posts hinting at interests and Amazon wishlists for when you don't want to leave anything to chance. I've been texting with Emilia's (divorced) parents to get ideas about what to get her sister and vice versa, and also to let them know that their daughter won't be able to make it home because I'm working late Christmas Eve and early on the 26th, because rent in Brooklyn is expensive. They're disappointed, but understand. It's kind of a relief to me, since it means that there's a good chance I'll get through this whole thing and not have to lie about who I am to their faces and think about why Emilia left them behind.
The kids aren't so lucky.
Katey and Monica were both only children, and with neither Kutter nor Rusty having taken any time off, they've got a little PTO and floating holidays that they can't roll over into next year, so there's really no excuse, especially since Monica's father already bought her a round-trip ticket. Katey's parents haven't been quite so insistent, but they too mentioned that they haven't seen her since graduation, so she's booked a ticket herself.
On the one hand, this is logical, they answer to "Monica" and "Katey" without ever missing a beat by now, never forget themselves and do things a woman wouldn't, and they've been less timid about responding to folks who knew the originals on Facebook or the like than I am. On the other hand, despite them working full-time jobs and not sticking to soda when we do bar trivia every Monday and regularly getting into taxis driven by strangers on their own, they're kids. This will be their first unsupervised travel, and as pretty young women besides. On the one hand, it probably shouldn't scare me too much - they handle the New York subway system on a daily basis, which is probably more dangerous than suburbs and regional airports, on top of being more complex.
They're not that worried about shopping, saying that whatever they get, these other parents will appreciate the thought, and vice versa. Which, I'll admit, is true. It still seems overwhelming to me, though.
-Aidan/Emilia
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
Jordan/Yuan-Wei: Too much time to think right now
I mentioned a few months ago that I was trying not to jinx something, but I guess I may as well. His name is Dominic Wong Tak-Lok and I think I may love him.
We met on a dating app, as you do, but it actually started to take off when we crossed paths at work. He's a guy who would be about to break big if Hong Kong's film industry was what it once was, a pretty darn good screen fighter in one of the big stunt teams who has the charisma to jump to speaking roles; he's had a couple things - mostly stuff that goes straight to the likes of iQIY - where he's a sort of featured heavy, the guy that gives the star a run for his money on the way to the big showdown with the villain and lodges himself in your memory because that guy was sort of cool. Anyway, he was in a fantasy action thing and I came on-set to set up mo-cap when needed and show the director monster designs to make sure that there was actually room for a bulky ten-foot-tall beastie on screen. So I was putting some dots on him, he said funny meeting you here and poured on the flirting; I wasn't seeing anyone exclusively and he was my type, so I went with it.
Not that "my type" is particularly specific: He's tall, well-muscled but just short of the super-sculpted way that Benny says isn't achievable without risking dehydration, and gets a nice five-o'clock shadow. Some of his family emigrated back in the 1990s, so he's spent a fair amount of time in Vancouver, which means his English is pretty good and he doesn't think I'm weird for preferring baseball to soccer, and he respects that I'm good at my job so he doesn't try to mansplain movies to me. He's got an impressive, responsive dick.
I wasn't expecting much more than some good sex and some good times. I've been a woman for ten years, even if I figured to become a man again during the first, and though I've had boyfriends, I really only got hurt by something ending once, and that involved a bunch of weird Chen-ai Inn Conspiracy Shit. I kind of figured that's how it was going to be, just because of who I am. I figure that the Inn alters the parts of your brains that control gender identity and sexual orientation but don't mess with anything that speaks to your experiences or skills (I've read so much fucking neuroscience of gender for dummies shit since becoming Yuan-Wei) and just kind of figured that who I am was kind of set by the first twenty-five years of my life, where I was overweight, angry, overlooked by girls and pissed off about it. I kind of go into relationships expecting the collapse. And sometimes I wonder if how I behave as the girl in a relationship is really me, or me trying to be what I wanted girls to be as a guy, or how I think girls act, or how I think girls should act.
(If a therapist went to the Inn they could make so much fucking money from zoom sessions with folks who can't tell a regular shrink why they're fucked up)
It's been really good. We both tend to work long hours, but Hong Kong is a good city for when you're looking to have a date at 3am, and when he's not working, he's a good cook and not weird about how I make more money than him so I sometimes pay for dinner. We go to movies and elbow each other to point out stuff that we think is kind of funny or weird from a behind-the-scenes perspective. His family is pretty cool about me being a couple years older and doesn't talk about my eggs running out or anything. He has yet to fail to bring me to orgasm, and all that martial-arts training seems to translate well to how I kind of like being picked up and kind of manhandled without crossing a line. Like, he knows his own strength and that I like to feel some power without actually getting hurt.
And, right now, sitting in this hospital, I wish the stunt coordinator on his current job had been similarly committed to people not getting fucking hurt.
it's so fucking ridiculous, because I was there to make sure something like this didn't happen, helping with green-screen work so that we could put a fake cement wall in behind him so that if he didn't manage to leap onto the car's hood in time, we wouldn't be crushed between them. We do a lot of that stuff - folks don't realize how much CGI is letting folks do practical stunts safely - but some jackass figured they could store equipment behind the green screen, and Dominic's leg got pinned. It's a pretty gnarly fracture - they brought him into the OR rather than just setting it with a cast - and they won't let me into his room, even though I'm the one that called his parents and told them where to come.
So, yeah, maybe I'm in love. Can't imagine I'd be this freaked out otherwise.
-Jordo
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Dave/Chris: Gone Fishing
It's been a little while since I've written an update here. We celebrated Thanksgiving a couple of weeks ago with Chris and Sylvia's friends, rather than any of their families. They both don't have much to do with them, because they don't approve of their "lifestyle". Everyone brought something along, and our contibution was the pecan pie. We all ate until we could eat no more, and the drinks flowed, along with the jokes and the laughter. It was actually one of the best Thanksgivings I can remember.
Aside from that, there wasn't much to report. We've settled into a routine of work and home life, and it's really not that interesting. But then, it was my birthday last week. Not Chris' birthday, which is in June, but mine. It's strange to think that my body doesn't actually exist for this birthday, but that's a whole other topic.
I've mentioned before that we used to go fishing regularly in our old lives. We've been so caught up in these new lives and routine, that we haven't gone fishing, or really done any of the things we used to do since we got here.
When I woke up, Shane was already in the kitchen, frying up bacon and eggs as a birthday treat. "You'll get your present after breakfast", he said, and once we were done, disappeared to his room. A few minutes later, he came out with fishing rods and a tackle box. "Cindy and Craig are working today", he announced "We have the day off and we're going fishing".
We got lucky with the weather, it was in the mid-60s, which is quite good for this time of the year, so we headed off to a local lake, where Shane had rented a boat. It's the off-season for fishing, and it was the middle of the week, so we had the lake to ourselves. Shane had packed lunch and a few beers, and once we'd cast our lines, it really seemed like old times. We didn't talk much, and even though we also didn't catch much, it was a very relaxing day.
We got home in the late afternoon, and Shane told me that we were also going to dinner and a comedy show, so we got changed, went out, and had a fun night.
In the Uber on the way home, I gave him a hug - which was quite awkward, because we were sitting in the back of a car, wearing seatbelts, and I thanked him for what he'd done for my birthday. it really meant a lot. He looked at me, seemed to be in deep thought for a few seconds, and then he said "fuck it", put his hand at the back of my head, pulled me in and started kissing me. I was stunned at first, but then kissed him back, and we made out for the rest of the way home.
We were interrupted by the Uber driver telling us that we'd arrived, and I thought the moment had passed. But once we walked in the door, Shane grabbed me and started kissing me again. we moved to the couch, and he took off his top, revealing a lacy red bra. I took it off and started playing with his tits. He fumbled with the buttons on my shirt, and grabbed my hand and guided it up under his skirt. I could feel the dampness through his panties and nylons. He moaned and started to unbutton my slacks, which immediately made me come to my senses. I pushed him away, and asked him to stop. "I'm sorry" I said, "I can't do this". I was suddenly super aware of the fact that I don't have a cock, and that I was making out with my best buddy. "It's alright", he said, "I want this", and reached for my trousers again. "I can't, I'm sorry", I repeated. I got up, and told him I had to go to bed. "Thanks for organising all this for my birthday. I'll see you in the morning". I him left sitting on the couch, hair tussled and topless.
When I got into bed, I couldn't sleep. I kept replaying what had happened over and over again, and it didn't help that I felt really turned on. After maybe an hour, I started to hear faint female moans, and it took me a moment to realise that it was Shane in the next room. There are no prizes for guessing what he was up to, and it just turned me on even more. Finally, I stuck my hands into my shorts. My pussy wasn't exactly gushing, but it was undeniably wet. I started stroking my clit between my thumb and index finger, trying to imagine it was a penis. I didn't want to insert anything - I'm not ready for that, but eventually, I felt something build, and then an orgasmic release. Shane had gone quiet by now, and I hoped that he didn't hear me. I fell asleep eventually.
This happened a week and a half ago. Nothing has happened since, and we haven't even talked about it. We're both just pretending it didn't happen. But I liked it, and there's a part of me that wants it to happen again, and wants it to go further next time...