Being Jack Tripper solved a lot of problems I hadn’t known I had, and during this time I took pleasure in eradicating almost every feminine thing about myself. Femininity had always been a conundrum for me, and throwing it off brought the greatest freedom. During the first few months of the year I changed my walk, my mannerisms, anything that felt inauthentic to being Jack. That included my period, which unfortunately I couldn’t get rid of completely—I took a pill that regulated this function to every three months. Even so, I hated being reminded of my biology, and when it finally came round it was sick-inducing, a week of near-prostrate hemorrhaging and intense, punishing migraines. The pill was the only one of its kind I had been able to tolerate, and it still didn’t agree with me, but there wasn’t much I could do about it—changing it would have required a doctor’s visit, a grave interruption of the routine. I simply had to live with it. Whenever I felt the telltale cramps coming on, dread would pull at me, then anger. I regarded it as a hostile takeover. During those days I resigned myself to a bitter depression, the only time (besides those sleepless nights that occasionally plagued me, and Ray’s animals) that any inkling of discontent slipped into my world. To prevent polluting the sacred space of my usual living quarters with my nausea and dark mood, I’d retreat to Apartment 205 for the duration of my bodily revolt. Oh, if I could muster the energy I tried to use on those days to perform the maintenance tasks to kill two birds with one stone, but most of the time I lay on the couch of the neutral apartment, watching my DVDs with an ice pack on my head, eating and drinking myself into a sugary, fat-filled stupor until I either slept or vomited, or both.

By the middle of the year I had achieved Jackness to the nth degree, reading the sports page of the LA Times and going to Lakers games with Larry, who lived upstairs. I shamelessly flirted with my roommates, annoying and delighting them with my playful advances, whims they sometimes indulged and sometimes rejected all in equal fun, the clear boundaries of our friendship allowing such dancing to take place. On weekends I took part-time work when I could get it, a waiter at the Pizza Paradise here, a short-order cook there. Mostly, though, my typical daily routine included catching the bus to my technical college where I trained to be a chef, and in the afternoon and evenings I moved around the kitchen of Apartment 201 with ease, whipping and frying and tasting. I wore an apron with frilly lingerie drawings at the chest and crotch level that amused me. Dinners were lavish, multicourse meals when the budget allowed, and the ghosts of my past selves—Janet and Chrissy—danced around me.

This was all in my recent history when the knock on the front door broke through the gauze of my new life. My knife stopped in mid-chop. At first I thought it was the dog at the door, pawing like it used to paw to be let in. Something inside me lurched a little. This was the day after the dog had run away, seemingly for good. For nearly twenty-four hours I had been building up resentment toward the dog for fleeing in my hour of need, such blatant disrespect. However, since I’d woken from a long nap an hour earlier, and felt restored to the best self the sleepless night had robbed me of, I felt open to diplomatic relations.