Chris had turned into a girl first and they had all been surprised. He had said that sometimes in his family, occasionally, once every couple of generations, it happened--a male would turn into a female.

"For how long?" JC had asked.

Chris had shrugged and tucked his hair behind his ear. "A couple of weeks, a few months? It varies."

It was no secret to anyone that Joey had fallen hard for female Chris. Hard and fast, and strong enough so that when Chris turned back into a guy, he had thought that they’d still last forever.

They hadn’t: their relationship ended in an explosive yelling match, followed by platonic wrestling, a tear or two, and a hug accompanied by the muttered words "we’ll always be friends, okay?"
 
 

Chris got a new boyfriend and Joey slept with a girl a night for the next 17 nights. He didn’t recognize any of them the next morning.
 
 

Sometimes, Joey would stare at one of the other guys and wonder what it would be like for *them* to turn into girls. He dreamed about it once or twice--of Justin with a curly ponytail high up on the back of his head, or JC dressed entirely in pink fuzzy stuff.

They were just dreams, though, until he found a sexual magic shop in New Orleans and saw the bottle of liquid that guaranteed that "your loved one will be a participant in the wildest sex adventure ever--the adventure of living as the other sex!" Joey set the bottle down on the shelf and turned around, only to turn back around and pick it up. He paid the five dollars, blushed at the smirk the cashier gave him, stuck the bottle in his coat pocket, and promptly forgot about it.
 
 

A few days later he pulled it out of the coat pocket, blinked in surprise, and started thinking.

Twelve hours and multiple fantasies (of JC in skirts and Lance with sparkly barrettes) later, Joey decided to try the tonic on himself. He mixed a good swallow in with his nightly beer, felt like throwing up after he drank the mixture, and waited for something to happen. Nothing did.

After 73 checks down both his shirt and his pants in under an hour, Joey gave up, went to bed, and fell asleep immediately.
 
 

Everyone was surprised when Joey turned into a girl. Chris stared at him, his mouth hanging open, and said, "Dude, you’re stacked."

Joey looked down at his chest, noticed that he couldn’t see his feet anymore, and sighed. He wondered what he had done.

"You are the modern woman," Theresa, their PR person, said. "Big and." she stared at Joey. "Well, big."

"I’m thinking sparkly shoes," Nathan, their other PR person, said.

JC shrieked in protest. "He gets to wear sparkly shoes! That’s not fair! I want to wear sparkly shoes!"

"Turn into a girl, Chasez," Theresa said, "and we’ll talk about it."

JC flounced out of the room.
 
 

The one thing Joey noticed while he was a girl was that Lance--little gay boy Lance--was hot.

He tried throwing himself at the other man, but Lance pushed him away after two or three sloppy, half-formed kisses

"Jo," he said (because they called Joey Jo in public.) "I don’t, you know, *do* girls."

Joey sighed. He wished he’d never taken the stupid tonic because he really badly wanted Lance and he really, really badly wanted to be able see his feet again while he was standing up.
 
 

Joey wasn’t surprised when he turned back into a guy. He knew as soon as he woke up because his body felt heavier and there were prickly scratches of hair all over his cheeks and chin.

Lance came to him that night, tears in his eyes, said: "I’m glad you’re back," and threw himself at Joey.

The kisses were no longer sloppy and half-formed, but solid and real and *masculine*.
 
 

They were very happy together for two weeks, until Joey had a very detailed dream in which Lance--as a girl--had wrapped his legs around Joey’s waist, and they’d fucked up against the wall.

For two days Joey stared at Lance. He pictured him with breasts and lipstick and short skirts. At the end of the second day they went to a bar and while Lance was in the bathroom, Joey poured a healthy dollop of the tonic into Lance’s beer.

That night he pleaded exhaustion when Lance asked him in and had sat at his own house waiting for a frantic call.

When the call came at 4:30 in the morning, it was Justin on the phone.

"Dude!" Justin said. "Lance turned into a girl! And like, his hooters, man, he’s even more *stacked* than you!"

Joey drove as quickly as was legal over to Lance’s house.
 
 

Lance withdrew after that.

"I’m a *girl*," he said at the same time he picked up all of his stuff from Joey’s house. "I’m not me, anymore, Joe, and it’s like." He paused. "I’m a girl."

Joey tried to kiss him and show him that nothing had changed, but Lance wouldn’t let him.

"It’s not the same," he said.

Later that night, in frustration, Joey nearly dumped the bottle of tonic down the bathtub drain, but at the last minute he stopped. He shoved it to the back of his medicine cabinet and vowed to never bring it out again.

He kissed Lance at the MTV Video Music Awards, catching them both off guard, and ruining the semblance of platonic friendship that they’d constructed.

After a week of not talking to each other, Lance came to his house and started crying. "I don’t want you to like me for these," he said. He pointed at his breasts.

"I liked you before, dumbass," Joey said.

"I know," Lance said. Thin trails of mascara wove down his cheeks. "But I saw what these did to you and Chris. They changed everything between you two. And then when you got them, they changed everything between us. And now, just when I was happy with the way things were going, I had to go and get them and have everything change again."

Joey, feeling very guilty, tried to think of something to say.

"I like you, Lance," Joey said. "Not because you have breasts, or you don’t, or you have a dick, or you don’t. It’s the you inside that I like."

Lance stared at him, seemingly trying to determine the truth in his words. Then, for the second time, he threw himself at Joey.

Later that night, Lance, as a girl, wrapped his legs around Joey’s waist and they fucked up against the wall.
 
 

Joey was surprised when Lance turned back into a guy. The front of his T-shirt was flat and his pants were more filled out in the front.

"I, um." Lance stared at himself in the mirror, and Joey stood behind him.

"We’ll be okay," Joey said. "*We* will be okay."
 
 

But things happened, as things happen in all relationships, and Lance fell madly in love with Wade the choreographer.

"It’s just." Lance got a thoughtful look on his face. "I don’t know. It’s just."

"I understand," Joey said. And he did, because recently he’d been looking at Justin, imagining *again* the curly hair pulled up into a cute, bouncy ponytail.
 
 

Justin had the flu and Joey volunteered to bring by some chicken soup--Campbell’s, of course--into which, at the last moment, he poured a tablespoon of the tonic (which had been rescued from the back of the medicine cabinet that morning.)
 
 

The problem was that Justin didn’t turn into a girl--something that had become an almost normal occurrence--he turned into a dog. A poodle-ish one with tight, springy curls.

Joey ran into Justin’s room the next morning, expecting to see curves under the white hotel sheet and instead saw an ankle-biter.

"What are you doing here, boy?" Joey asked the dog.

Justin growled at him.
 
 

Joey got used to having Justin at his house, always willing to play catch, or go for a run, or even just curl up on the couch and watch TV.

Actually, he was very glad to have Justin with him because Lance and Wade were in the lovey-dovey stage, and it was very painful for Joey to watch.

One night, Justin licked taco juice off of Joey’s hand, looked up at Joey with liquid blue eyes, and Joey knew he was lost. Justin slept on top of Joey’s chest that night.

Justin didn’t turn back, though. Every morning Joey would wake up, expecting to find a lanky teenager in his bed, and every morning he was disappointed. He decided that he was sick and perverted and he really had to make it with a lady again.

When he tried, though, Justin barked through the whole thing and completely ruined the mood.

That was the last time that Joey tried.
 
 

Justin turned back into a boy on a Sunday morning, and by the next Friday, he was looking at Joey with the same liquid blue eyes the Justin-dog had looked at him with.

This time, though, instead of limiting the licking to Joey’s hand, Justin licked a lot more places.
 
 

"You are a *freak*," JC said a week later, when Justin was sitting on Joey’s lap, nuzzling at his neck. "Is this, like, a fetish or something?"

Joey wrapped his arms around Justin and frowned. "No," he said. "Sometimes I just need a wakeup call. That’s all."

JC frowned in response.
 
 

On a Thursday a few weeks later, Justin said, "I think it was just puppy love, Joey. I mean."

"Yeah," Joey said. He decided that puppy love hurt a lot.

He went into the bathroom after Justin left and pulled the bottle of tonic out of his medicine cabinet and stared at it. He noticed that there was about a swallow left. He set it down on the edge of the sink and went to call JC.
 
 

Later that night, Joey went back into the bathroom, after JC had left for the evening, and noticed that the bottle of tonic was empty.

"Shit," Joey said.
 
 

The next morning, JC turned into a girl.

"I think it’s something in the water," JC said with a tinkling laugh. He gave Joey a hard stare as he tucked his legs up underneath him.

Joey blushed.

"But you guys all did it," JC said as he puffed up his hair, "so I suppose I can survive, too."

"You did it for the shoes," Nathan said with narrowed eyes. "That’s what you wanted all along. The sparkly shoes."

JC nodded happily and turned to Theresa. "There’s a sale at Prada."

Theresa, calm serious PR person that she was, cancelled the rest of her appointments and JC’s appointments, and told the rest of the guys that they’d be back later.

That afternoon, Joey looked at the bottle in his bathroom again and made a vow to stay away from JC.
 
 

It was harder than he’d thought it would be, staying away from JC. JC as a girl flirted, was soft, and goddamn *touchy*.

One night he dreamed of JC as a girl, rather like the dream he’d had before he bought the bottle of tonic. The next night, JC called and asked him if he wanted to go dancing.

They danced, slithering against one another. Then they went back to JC’s house and fucked on the bed and on the couch as the sun rose.

JC did things for him, like his laundry. And he cooked, sometimes. And he’d light candles in the bedroom when he thought Joey needed to be calmed down.

"They’re herbal candles," JC said, smiling as the scent of lavender filled the room.
 
 

"Why’d you do it?" Joey asked, a month later. They were at a private beach cabin.

"You said you realized things you never realized before," JC said. He blushed. "I mean, I *saw* the bottle and what it did and." He swallowed. "I just wanted to see what would happen. And I wondered why you hadn’t given it to me."

"I’m beginning to wonder why I didn’t give it to you first," Joey said. He pushed JC back on the deck, kissing him hard.
 
 

Three mornings later, JC turned back. He stared at Joey and Joey stared back at him.

"So." Joey looked at the flat chest and the thinner hips.

"So," JC said. He looked down at himself. "I should." He stood up.

"Yeah," Joey said. He stared at JC and wondered why he was willing to let him go when he hadn’t been willing to let Chris or Justin or Lance go. "No."

JC turned around and crossed his arms. "I. Uh."

Joey kissed him, hard, and JC kissed back, hard. They moved back to the couch and JC sat on Joey’s lap. He wriggled and tongued at Joey’s mouth.

Joey closed his eyes and moved a hand up to cup JC’s nonexistent breast. It wasn’t there. His breath started coming faster.

He stood up, suddenly, pushing JC off his lap. "You should go," he said.

JC blinked.

"It’s not the same," Joey said. "I. I need time."

JC nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said. "Okay."

"Okay," Joey said.
 
 

Joey smashed the bottle that had once held the tonic on the cement walkway in his backyard. The thousands of little pieces of glass flying everywhere almost made him feel better. Almost.
 
 

He looked at JC as the other man walked into the studio. JC had on dark glasses and his whiskers were unshaven. His long hair was wavy and highlighted.

Joey thought he looked damn sexy.

That night he dreamed of guy JC. He woke up hard and groaned.
 
 

"I’m sorry."

JC stared at Joey through the screen door of his house. He lowered his sunglasses.

"There’s nothing to be sorry for," JC said.

"I wasn’t willing to fight for you," Joey said. "I’m sorry for that."

"It’s better this way," JC said.

"No." Joey shook his head. "I have this kink, okay?"

"I noticed." JC rested his hands on his hips.

"I just. I like you, C. I freaked out there, that morning."

"What does it matter now?" JC asked.

"It matters," Joey said as he opened the screen door. "It matters that I’ve come daily for the last five days thinking of you. With a dick."

JC blinked. "Oh."

Joey kissed him, then, hard, and JC kissed him back.

"I got a new kink," Joey said between moving lips.

"Really?" JC’s asked, directly into Joey’s mouth. He layered his arms across Joey’s shoulders.

"Yeah," Joey said. "You."

"That’s a good kink," JC said.