Ellen and I were both handy with tools, but only doing odd jobs. To take a chance at something better, we entered a do-it-yourselfer reality TV show. This type of thing wasn’t for everybody. We had to be able to spend weeks on location in Key West (because it was billed as an “island getaway” to draw in viewers), and even more time there if we won. So it was ideal for people like us with no steady work.

What we really hoped for was a way to set our bodies straight. Ellen and I had met at a therapy group. We were both transgender but deeply closeted about it. This was a way for us to come out in front of some other people. It sort-of worked, as we found each other, but it also made us aware we couldn’t afford what we needed to change our bodies. And while transgenders were becoming more accepted in the world, being open about it, if you couldn’t pass well, was a negative on your earning potential, and lower earnings meant not being able to afford making your body into one that could pass well. So we were kind of stuck, and continued to only cross-dress in private and among trans friends.

We came out to the team from the show because they encouraged us to not keep any secrets about our lifestyle and that nothing about us would disqualify us from the show. And the producers liked the idea of having a trans couple on the show, but they got us stuff to make us look better. I got electrolysis on my facial hair and stick-on breast forms that were good enough to even use with a bikini, along with a gaff to hide my junk and hip pads to improve my shape. Ellen got some of the opposite gear to give her a straighter shape. And they had excellent makeup; Ellen even got fake beard stubble.

So during the challenges, I often dressed female and Ellen male, and then we were Angela and Henry. It was tough; they had to do a lot of makeup work on me every morning, and Ellen had various things to wear to hide the shape of her body to become Henry. Whenever we were in the little village for the show with only the competitors and TV people around, we were Angela and Henry. When we had to go out among other people, those days we were Joe and Ellen because we weren’t confident we could pass well enough and we didn’t want it to detract from our ability to succeed at whatever the challenge was. But we probably could have passed with their excellent makeup. I did have to wear a bikini for one challenge; for that one we were Angela and Ellen, since Henry's male disguise wasn't good enough to let him be a topless man on the beach.

After three-and-a-half weeks of challenges that would be spread out over 12 weekly episodes on television, we won! Our prize included $100,000 cash, a heavy-duty pickup truck, and 90 days of everything we could use from a closed hardware store. The last part of the prize had conditions on it: We can’t just sell or give away the items we take; we have to use them in some project, and we have to let them film us building that project for the final episode of the season. But after we finished, we could keep or sell whatever we made. We could also keep any tools we took from the store that we used in the project.

The store was in southern Florida, but we were told to pretend it was still Key West; they would interpose sea and beach scenes to make it look as if we were still there. The store was closed due to a bankruptcy; it would reopen sometime after we were done with it under a new name, with whatever goods were still inside. But we had access to the tools, hardware, and building materials inside the store to build... something. We could spend time in the break room in the back of the store and use the restrooms there (electricity and water running), but most of the store was on minimal power. No heat when it got down into the 50s at night, and low light. We had plenty of light to see inside the store, though, because they filmed us every time we went in and the film crew brought lights brighter than the store’s regular lighting would have been. TV viewers would never know how dark the rest of the store usually was. The show also provided an apartment for us to spend our nights in nearby. And again, since most of the time it was just us, the TV people, and the empty store, we were Angela and Henry.

Henry came up with the idea of building our own trailer home, starting with just a simple trailer. The kind of trailers we were looking at as a base were flatbeds built to haul cargo, so would have the capacity to hold the furnishings we put in it, and our prize truck could haul it. Of course, it wouldn’t be a simple thing; we would install every luxury we could fit in.

The producers approved our plan and agreed to our condition that the 90 days began on the day our pickup was delivered so we could use it to bring the trailer to the store; we would build in the parking lot. I found a place that was liquidating trailers and we were able to get it on day 2 of having the pickup. A 9 x 28 foot trailer with a flat bed and slots to mount walls for $2100.

Now that we had the actual trailer, we could work out a more detailed plan. The first goal was a framework for the structure. We needed some kind of beams that would fit into the side slots and support a roof. We actually found some arches in the store which were perfect to make a rounded roof. We put one at each end and three in the middle to divide the roof into sections which were less than 8 feet long, since many of the materials we had available were only 8 feet wide.

The exterior would be made of sheet aluminum, but we cut it to the size we needed, using a rig across three saw tables, only one of them having a saw mounted in it, the other two just having stocks to align the metal. The saw was a high-powered but standard saw; it just needed the right class of blade. And we found such a blade and a saw it would fit on in the store. I think the producer enjoyed seeing this setup.

We bolted the sheets to the beams, but in addition we welded the edges both from inside and outside the trailer. Welding was definitely not my thing, but we had the tools available, and it was going to provide a secure seal so that the trailer would be waterproof. We did the same thing for the roof; the sheets were flat when we cut them but could be bent around the arch of the roof.

The ends were tricky. On the back end, we cut a flat plate to cover the top, carefully matching the arch shape, and we put double doors below that would let us bring in any sort of furniture that would fit inside the vehicle, using top and bottom latches so we did not need a center post. We installed twin exhaust fans in holes in the top plate. The front was a flat plate too, with a hole for our air conditioner, but at the top, we installed a series of triangular plates coming to a point which would make a somewhat aerodynamic shape above the top of the pickup. Aside from that, these extra plates were purely decorative.

We had to use a grinding tool to smooth out the welds on the outside of the trailer. On the inside, we didn’t worry because we knew everything there was going to be covered by interior walls, and we only smoothed jagged bits. We cut holes and installed windows. Three and a half weeks into the operation we had the whole shell of the trailer built, save for painting it. There was a rainy day just after this and we checked that our trailer was sealed against rain. There was one spot where a little water was getting in, not enough to flood it, but enough to mark it for resealing, and we found the hole the next day and rechecked it with a water hose after it was welded and smoothed again.

We split up after this, Henry priming and then painting the outside, while I worked on installing wiring on the inside, hooking up lights, outlets, the fans, and two windows at the front that would open slightly outward at the bottom, and could be kicked out as emergency exits. Henry used a paint sprayer to apply the main coats, which required covering a large part of the parking lot nearby in tarps so we didn’t leave a big mess. He did the primer and first main coat the first day, second main coat the second day, with some artistic work in the afternoon, and two coats of clear sealer the third day. There was touchup work after each coat to make sure no gaps were left.

I needed two days to do the wiring. While Henry continued painting the third day, an electrician the show hired inspected my work. Since I was not a licensed electrician, this was a safety requirement the producers imposed, but they paid for the electrician.

The day after all that was done, we started on the interior, primarily trying to set up the things that would rest against the outer walls or go inside them, before we installed inner walls in the remaining spaces. We added cabinets and other storage spaces, a mini-fridge, and a few things that would fold up against the wall when not in use, including our bed, 2 tables, and our stove with 2 burners. Folding the stove was a little tricky in that we had to make sure it did not get folded against the outer skin of the trailer while it was hot. We did that by mounting the hinge so the back stayed an inch from the wall, and at the top installing some bumpers that would rest against the front corners of the countertop when it was folded back. When there were hollow spaces behind other installed items, we installed standard home insulation. There were a lot of spots that couldn’t be insulated, so it probably wouldn’t work well, but some insulation was better than none.

The producers loved every trip we made into the store, seeing the stuff we adapted to the purposes we needed. And they celebrated All-Gender Day with us on March 13th, the 72nd day of the year, so designated because of a theory that there were 72 genders, by having the entire crew cross-dress.

On both sides of the trailer, along its entire length, we installed small cabinets which slightly resembled the luggage bins on airplanes. Their doors opened upward and they were flat on the bottom. Where we had the more accessible cabinets, these went directly above with them and flush with their fronts.

We had left a space for a bathroom, but this was another tricky area. These trailer bathrooms work by using a small septic tank and there was a very specific hookup needed to empty them at campsites. The store did not have that and we had to go elsewhere and find one, one of the few parts besides the trailer base itself we had to spend money on. The water was stored in a tank overhead, which meant we had a limited number of flushes between refills.

The walls went in next. They weren’t like house walls. Sheetrock and plaster would not survive the rigors of the road, so there were plastic materials that were used instead. The typical sort wasn’t something the store had in stock. We used some of the practically indestructible composite fiber building materials more commonly used on modern decks and outdoor stairs. The same saw we used to cut the sheet metal was employed here, but with a different blade. Wherever there wasn’t a window or something up against the wall or which folded against the wall, we installed this material on the inside of the beams, with insulation behind it.

We installed laminate flooring, stuff you might install in your house, directly on top of the originally provided trailer floor, with only a thin layer of foam insulation under it that was meant to be used with this kind of floor.

We installed a TV using a wall mount, and we put in a low-rise TV antenna near one edge of the roof. This made the top of it not any higher than the peak of the roof. While we were at it, we measured that roof by measuring a beam placed across it with vertical supports on both ends, by measuring the height of both ends and taking the average, and checking the front, middle, and back of the trailer for the highest height. The 10’9” we measured would fit under standard overpasses, but not some low clearances and probably not any parking garages.

We had also noticed the trailer sloped down slightly toward the back when it was attached to the truck, and now we had measured the difference was an inch and a half from front to back. That seemed wrong, and we confirmed online for trailers that we could get specs for that they were expected to run flat front-to-back. The tires didn’t seem low. We weren’t actually sure what the right pressure was, but they did not seem obviously low enough to cause such a difference.

We took it over to a tire store and they explained that trailers can take tires of different sizes. Whoever had used this trailer before had either just been trying to be cheap, or had towed it with a small pickup which was lower to the ground, and had put small tires on it. To make it right for our truck we needed different tires, ones comparable to the size of the ones on the truck. He had some in stock and we paid our third out-of-pocket cost during this entire process to put tires on it which matched the truck.

The rest of the time, we loaded whatever looked useful into those cabinets. All the tools we used in the construction were ours to keep, as was the leftover hardware in any packages we opened, which included a couple of those everything boxes with 30 or 40 little drawers with different things in each one that we had taken to reduce the number of trips into the store for one-off parts, as well as some large boxes of the more common screws. We took some cases to keep the small stuff organized, and built or installed various things to hold the tools and other larger items. We took all the tools including the saw and all the blades we used on it, but we didn’t have room for the saw tables. They were going to be donated to local schools. But we managed to make two sawhorses - the kind where you just buy the brackets and add your own wood for the legs and crossbars - that would fold up, with the crossbars removed, and fit in one of the overhead cabinets. We were setting ourselves up to be the construction road show.

We went to several other stores to load up the trailer with food and other supplies we could not get from the hardware store, the camera crew riding along with us. And finally, our 90 days was up, we took our belongings from our temporary break room in the store, and, for the finale, we did drive back to Key West so they could film us driving the trailer past the “Mile 0” marker at the start of U.S. 1.

Then we hit the road to enjoy the camping life on our way home. We were dressed as Joe and Ellen, though, because we knew we would travel through some country unfriendly to trans people, and while our disguises were good, we were not as good on our own with the makeup as the show’s staff was and the overall appearance was not as good. We’d gotten so used to our trans names after dressing that way for four months, though, that we still called each other Angela and Henry in private.

If we were lucky, we wouldn’t stay home after we got there. Inspired by what we’d done, the producer of our show was trying to make some “dream makeover” show that would be a sort of construction road show. They would find people who needed a bunch of work done but couldn’t afford it and were suitable charity cases, we’d come and do it, the show would pay for the materials, gas, a standard rate for our labor, and $20 grand an episode on top of it all. But at the time we set out, he hadn’t managed to get buy-in for this show, so the plan was still up in the air.

Home was more than we could manage in one day, so we stopped somewhere in Georgia, found one of those trailer parks with hookups, paid a small fee, and prepared to really use our trailer for the first night. It worked well, though it was still a trailer. There were things we could have made nicer but required buying things that weren’t at the store, and we could always add them on later. The biggest thing was the convenience of having our bedroom anywhere we wanted.

I had an elaborate dream that night about The Wizard of Oz, or at least the land of Oz. It didn’t follow the movie plot closely, but it clearly took place in Oz, with characters, places, and other elements from the film. There were plenty I didn’t recognize, but I would have plenty of time to meet them, because when Henry and I woke up, we were still in the dream-world. Our truck and trailer were there. Even the trailer park with its electric, water, and sewage hookups were there, but it was run by a munchkin.

When we awoke, the bright and fanciful colors of the landscape made it immediately obvious we weren’t in Georgia anymore. Nor Kansas.

“Henry, are we still dreaming?”

“Um, it looks like it. Did we have the same dream last night?”

“About visiting Oz?”

“Yeah.”

“So we did. What do we do now?”

“Follow the Yellow Brick Road, I guess.”

Henry pointed out the road passing by the trailer park, which was as brilliant a golden-yellow as the one in the film. The trailer park itself appeared to be just dirt, though it was an exceptionally rich-looking reddish-brown dirt.

If the people here looked like Munchkins and whatnot, nobody was going to care about a woman with an Adam’s apple or a man with barely disguised hips and breasts, so we dressed as Angela and Henry and prepared to enjoy the day.

Henry unplugged our hookup and the Munchkin thanked us for visiting. Had we paid him? I know we did in the dream. I guess, as far as this place goes, that was real.

I started the truck in the usual way, and I could feel the rumble of the engine, but it was almost entirely quiet. Some sort of magic must power it here, though still by turning the mechanical parts. We took off, down the road, the same way we were headed relative to the trailer park when we stopped in the real world last night. I couldn’t say where we were headed, though, because none of our technology worked, and even if we had paper maps, who’s to say they would match anything here?

When we were getting hungry for lunch, we found a farm stand where we were able to buy some fruit (not any fruit we knew, but it tasted good) and what looked like chicken wings, using some unfamiliar coins we found in our wallets.

We came to the Emerald City at what we figured must be dinnertime. When you have a motor vehicle and aren’t waylaid by witches and other travelers, you can make distance fast! Despite looking nice, it didn’t look like it was very big, so when we found a trailer park near the edge of town, we stopped there and walked into town. It was less than a mile from where we parked to the middle of everything.

And of course this was a world with magic, so it was a truly wondrous place. There were so many amazing things in the marketplace. They had a copper, silver, gold coinage system. Among my coins I had 1, 2, and 5 of each metal except only 1 and 2 of gold, and none of the prices even on more expensive items used numbers above 9. That turned out to be because a silver was 10 coppers and a gold was 10 silvers. But our total money supply was about 25 gold, so I hesitated to spend it wastefully. There was a magical map and a magical version of a compass and that seemed important to have if we were going to live in Oz now, so I spent a total of 6 silver to buy them both. And we spent a silver on a nice dinner in a restaurant. And finally we made our way back to our trailer and our bed for the night, where our hookup for the night cost 4 copper.

I woke up and went to the bathroom without noticing the change, but when I looked outside later, the Emerald City was no longer there.

My first thought was Oz had been a one-day thing and we’d returned to the real world. There was grass outside and trees. But our electronics still didn’t work. I opened up the magic map, and that still worked. We were in Middle-Earth, which I then recalled having dreamed about.

“Yep, I remember that,” Henry commented. “There aren’t any trailer parks here, but the water and waste handle themselves magically.”

“So what have we gotten ourselves into?” I asked. “A different fantasy every day, or perpetually jumping between them? Will we eventually get back home?”

“If there is a good place to sleep other than in the trailer, we should figure out if we can keep from jumping if we don’t sleep in it. The jumps only started when we started sleeping in it, so it makes sense that is related.”

“To the extent any of this makes sense,” I responded.

“Yeah.”

But since we were in the middle of nowhere, and didn’t even find our way to a village that day, and didn’t dare camping outdoors in some unknown place, we didn’t do it that day. We depended on our stored food and slept in the trailer and jumped again.

The next morning, everything outside looked like a cartoon, including the people. We soon discovered we were in Springfield from The Simpsons, and nothing we did could allow us to leave. We got on a road out of town, having no idea if it was the right one, since we didn’t even know which state’s Springfield we were in, but it didn’t matter because a little ways down the road we found ourselves entering Springfield at the same place we left. So we just parked and tried to enjoy ourselves.

The next morning, we found our technology worked again. We got a few weird errors from our phones, but ultimately they worked; we had GPS and internet. Our money was back to normal money. We tried to call our producer, and while there was a production company there, they knew nothing about our dream makeover show, and the people we knew were not there. So clearly we were not home yet.

But we were only six hours’ drive from home, or at least where our home should be. Not knowing whether “our house” would be ours in this world, we mapped a course and worked on finishing our trip. The street existed, anyway, and we did still have the house key, whether or not it would open the door. We dressed as Joe and Ellen and got normal breakfast and lunch at some restaurants. When we got to our street, we saw our house wasn’t even the same house. Other people were inside, and I did a slow pass by it and moved on, stopping in the parking lot for a nearby shopping center (which was mostly the same as I remembered).

“So now what?” I asked Henry.

“Well, we could keep trying. Camp out somewhere around here, check back each day and see if our house is ours.”

“I would ask whether the people there would find it suspicious we keep walking by, but it’s likely it will be different people until we get back to our actual house.”

“Actually, I had another thought. My credit card worked. That means we still have an account here. Maybe we can use online access to find our address.”

Sure enough, we were able to log into our accounts. Sadly, when we checked our bank balance, we found that we’d never received the hundred grand in this world. But we did find another address in town which we apparently lived at. So I simply drove there, and the key we had opened the door. It still wasn’t the same house, but at least it looked like our stuff. Some of it, anyway. There were no trans clothes.