Over the next week, I started thinking about things. Who was I interested in? Was it boys, girls, or both? Did it even matter, since the whole town was family and they were likely all also being offered the chance to change bodies? Some of them wouldn’t, but they probably all had the choice.
But I wasn’t sure at all. I wasn’t really feeling that kind of feeling. Wasn’t sure at all who I might want to ask to date. I told Mom about it.
“Nothing to worry about. Not all aspects of sex develop at the same time. What you should think about is, when you are masturbating, who do you think about? Is it a man, a woman, any of your classmates? It might not be the same when you are in a male body versus a female one, nor in your usual body versus one of the adult ones. But that will help you answer these questions. And not immediately. What happens over time? Which thoughts help you enjoy sex the most? That’s the real answer.”
Not a simple answer, but I think the gist of it was she was telling me that if I don’t know, it will come in time.
I was looking at women again to change into next Saturday, and I ended up with a shorter and slenderer one the next time, who was still a C cup. But the same size breasts on a smaller body made them seem bigger. Still not too big, but at the upper limit of what I would be comfortable with. The masturbation was just as good with this one as with the first woman I had, but there was no period happening, which simplified some things.
I kept doing this the rest of the school year. Instead of going to the thrift store, I would bring with me a suitcase with all the clothes I’d bought previously for that gender. Sometimes I could reuse them and save a trip to the store. I alternated men and women, with different sizes within the range I thought was acceptable. They didn’t have it recorded in their database, but I was also looking at penis size. I wasn’t sure how much this mattered, but I intentionally chose some that, at least at the limp size I saw when trying out the bodies, seemed smaller and some that seemed larger. There was some variation in the sexual pleasure I felt between the men, though it didn’t correspond to penis size, and some variation between the women, but every one of the women was better than the best of the men.
So that was settled. The question was, then, what was I looking for in a partner? I had not really fantasized about my classmates, who were still underdeveloped sexually compared to the bodies I had been using part of almost every weekend for months. Instead, I usually fantasized about the bodies from trying on clothes at Grandma’s place, often but not exclusively the ones I’d spent a day in. I didn’t focus on male or female ones, but rather thought about both. When I was male, I almost exclusively thought about women, but when I was a woman I could think about either. And since I had decided that I wanted to be a woman, that let me consider anybody as a partner, as well.
During the summer, Grandma hooked me up on blind dates. I had identified three female bodies I had spent a day in that I would not mind having dates in, and she would find another teen changer who would want to date one of my bodies, and arrange for us to spend an evening or afternoon together. We would arrive and change into our bodies and pre-arranged clothes separately, and use an assumed gender-appropriate name, so we didn’t know during the date who it was we were dating. Mom helped me buy some nice-looking dresses. Not “date dresses” as she had described them, which were for when I got older and started doing more sexual stuff, just nice-looking, in the sizes we already knew for each body.
Sometimes my date was in a male body and sometimes in a female one. We would do some things together - not sex! - and at the end of our arranged time together we would go back to the Clothes Hole and reveal who we really were. I never had any idea and rarely did my dates figure it out either. Twice my date was in a woman’s body but his natural body was male, just like me, which we both laughed about. But it was good to know so many others of my classmates who were changing. Most of us agreed we would date again, and a couple times Grandma set us up for a repeat date but in different bodies.
Since I had narrowed my choices down to these three bodies, there was one other important step. Each of these bodies had a day-long doctor’s appointment during which they tested for everything. It was too much to test every single body that came into the system this way, so this was only done once someone had picked a body or a small set of candidate bodies. Fortunately, they all came back free of disease and without any strong risk factors for future disease, and without any issues that would keep them from having children.
When I got back into school in 8th grade, I had half a dozen interested partners. I didn’t date every weekend, but at least twice a month I managed to arrange a date with one of them. Having learned their tastes, I’d choose a body, not necessarily one I had used before with that partner, and my partner would choose one as well, and whoever we ended up as, we’d do something together. My partners knew I was always going to go female for my dates, while I had some partners who always chose male, some always female, and one who did both. And since my date and I now knew who I’d be dating, instead of using assumed names, I named the bodies I used Dana, Dani, and Danielle, and most of my dates did similarly.
And none of my partners cared that I was dating other people. They were dating other people, too, often the same ones I was dating. While I had dated quite of few people my age who were changing bodies like I was, that group wasn’t actually too large, and when Grandma was setting me up, she had in fact set me up with everyone from that group who was interested in female partners at least once.
I ended up most often dating Kendra, the one among this group who used both male and female bodies when dating me, but I realized it was for the variety.
“Kendra, I like you, but part of that is that I like the variety you offer. But won’t you eventually choose one body to stay in all the time?”
“Yes and no. Yes, I’ll choose one to stick with, but when I rejuve again for the next generation I can switch genders. So in the long run you will get to enjoy both sides of me.”
“Wow, I guess I wasn’t really thinking about it in the long term like that. But I’ll eventually choose some other woman to be as well.”
“Of course. We can go there together when it comes time to change up.”
This made me rethink things. Because Mom had chosen a new husband at the start of her current life, I was likewise thinking that I was only looking for a partner for this life only. But what Kendra was talking about was... eternal. A partner to keep across the generations and different bodies.
When I brought up the subject with Mom, she explained, “Danny, we have chosen as a community not to accept cross-generational vows. When one of us permanently adopts a new identity in a body which is younger by a generation, we let that person start over and not be bound by the promises, misdeeds, and such of their previous life. There are certain limits, imposed by way of not letting those convicted of major crimes like murder or rape take new bodies. That said, we do have some couples who have stayed together across multiple generations.”
“What about you? Why did you and your husband from your last life not go on?”
“My wife of the last generation wanted to stay female, but I was changing from male to female and she didn’t want that. Well, that’s the main reason, though I’ve never really stuck with a partner across two generations. But this ties in with more of our story and it’s really better to ask your grandmother about this story.”
So next Saturday morning, after I went over there with Mom and we tested another 28 garments, at the end of it when I changed into Dana’s body for the rest of the weekend, we sat down and Grandma gave the story.
First off, I need to level with you, Dana. I am actually Abbie Johnson. I only told you the brief version of the story before, because I was focusing on how the magic worked, but now I can tell you the whole story.
The rest of the story is true how I described it; I was born as Abraham Johnson, and in my first life I was gay. I’d been seeing a partner, Frederick Ingalls, secretly, because that society did not approve of gay relationships. We were hoping to establish an out-of-the-way farmstead where we could be together but our relationship might go unnoticed, so I was outside of the town when I encountered this huge pile of clothing in a small depression between two large rocks. It was right in this spot, but it hadn’t been tended to, so there were thousands of garments scattered around, some not in good shape due to being exposed to the elements, but on top of the pile was a heavy coat that was in good shape.
The coat I was wearing was old and ragged, so I grabbed that coat and put it on. Because the clothes were spread over such an area, this happened to be in the changing circle, though we never let the clothes build up to such an extent today. And although I was completely covered, I felt the change in my body’s size and shape as I changed into Abbie for the first time. Of course, I didn’t know what I looked like yet, but the female shape was clear. Trying to understand what happened, and not wanting to undress fully in that weather, I took off the coat and felt myself change again. Some of the other garments there made other changes, which I was not prepared to fully explore, but I changed back into what I hoped to be my own body by wearing the clothes I arrived in, and I took with me the coat that made me female, and went to find Frederick.
I knew this was the miracle Frederick and I needed. If I could stay as Abbie, we could stay together as man and wife, not be outcasts from the society, and if we built our home right on the spot (since we confirmed the changes only happened right there) I could change back into Abraham privately when Frederick and I were home alone. I brought him to the site and Frederick also took a turn at being Abbie, but we left there this time as Frederick and Abbie. We got married and registered that site as our homestead within the week.
So we first worked on building the house. This spot was lower than most of the land around, so we dug it flat, level with the land after we moved the clothes aside. We brought in rocks for the sides that didn’t have natural rock walls, and mortared them in place to make a basement as a foundation for our home. It was during the building process that we realized clothes were continuing to come out of the rock and that it wasn’t just a pile of abandoned clothing.
That home was much smaller than the one that is here today, but it was what we could manage then. It was a shelter, and it gave us time, in the secrecy of the basement, to understand how the magic worked. Once the house was finished and I moved Abraham’s belongings in, I never showed myself in public as Abraham again. There was only Abbie, who set up a vendor stall to sell some of the clothes from the hole that were in good shape and use the money to buy more of a wardrobe for Abbie, and later for other things.
For a long while, I turned into Abraham when we were home alone, but eventually we decided to have children and I stayed as Abbie all the time. We had a son, Jeremiah, and a daughter, Rebecca. Jeremiah eventually became your mother, but he lived two lifetimes as male before first turning female.
After the long spans I spent as Abbie, we learned about how the bodies became permanent in the sense of newer clothes turning you back into that body rather than the original. Some of Abbie’s clothes turned me into Abbie, and some into Abraham. We also learned how the newer clothes turned me into post-pregnancy Abbie, while the original coat turned me into young Abbie. I realized I had unlimited free rejuves as young Abbie, but after a while it wouldn’t work because I wouldn’t be believable for my age.
Apart from the initial experimentation, Frederick never changed, and he grew old and died like other people did, but my repeated changes into young Abbie before my pregnancies had kept me roughly 10 years younger than him. By the time Frederick passed, Jeremiah and Rebecca had families of their own, and I posed myself as Clarice, the youngest daughter of Jeremiah, at first about 10 years old, using a piece of girl’s clothing that had come through, so that I didn’t still look like Abbie. I let Abbie and Abraham both be dead and never used their bodies again. Ever since then, your mother and I have swapped roles like this repeatedly, usually indoctrinating a new spouse into the family tradition each time, and usually having one real child in addition to the parent passed down as child.
“So where do you think it came from?” I asked.
Grandma replied, “That’s a real source of confusion. The fact that it was not inside a building or even a place where there were records of a building having been before makes us think it’s Native American in origin. That might mean there was a completely different sort of clothing coming through here when it was created. But there’s no doubt these two were placed together on purpose. It’s possible one pre-dates the other, but if so, the other was added to make it more useful. We’ve never found any other real working magics like this anywhere, so we have no way to compare it to anything else to guess who could have made it.”
Mom added, “My theory is there were aliens who visited Earth, maybe centuries before Abbie found it, who used it to assume human form. The reason we didn’t find them is they only needed to change once and then they blended into whatever sort of Native American society there was. And they left it because they arrived on multiple spaceships over time and the last one never knew they were last.”
Grandma and I laughed together at that.
“Are you going to become my sister soon, Grandma?” I asked.
“Yes, I plan to. My chosen new body appears to be 17, but my new identity as your mother’s daughter is only 15, so it will be two years from now.”
“What about Grandpa?”
“His new body is going to be ready for him in six months. He’s turning into a girl, so we are not sticking together in the next generation, and he’s going down through the other branch of our family and will be your cousin to some degree.”
“Wait, if Kendra and I get married and have two real or reincarnated kids, and we reincarnate as their children, we’ll be first cousins. Is that going to be a problem for us marrying in the next generation?”
“No. Cousins are allowed to marry here, though it’s sometimes frowned upon for the potential inbreeding. But inbreeding doesn’t happen within our family because we use bodies from all over. If you and Kendra both reincarnate, you’ll become two genetically unrelated people, even if you are legally cousins. We can also place one of you with another family which is less close legally.”
“OK, well I am strongly considering Kendra for the potential she offers. But what will we do in generations where we are both female?”
“You can just host reincarnated family members, or do the same as lesbian couples in the rest of the world and get some sperm from somebody else. You or Kendra can temporarily turn male with the clothes here if you like. But don’t feel like you have to make a decision now. You’re only 14 and you have at least four more years before you will get married.”
“Thanks. So you think I shouldn’t commit until I finish high school?”
“I didn’t say that. In fact, it’s common for changer couples to commit during their senior year in high school, also choosing which bodies they are going to switch into at that time. But if you don’t, there will be plenty more opportunities to find someone, including reincarnated people.”
I had to think about that last part for a bit. Would I, in my first life, want to date and eventually marry someone who’d already lived a life and was going on their second or more?
“That sounds weird, but at the same time, it’s really a lot like what I’m doing, choosing a new body from the Clothes Hole. The difference is that they will have done it all before.”
Mom responded, “Yes, but each of us who go out and find people who have never visited the Clothes Hole at all get someone like that. It’s a real choice, and even though we might not stick together for the next generation, nearly all of us stick together for the lifetime in which we marry.”
After talking it over with Kendra, I continued to date Kendra, but I also dated two others, one always-boy and one always-girl. I found myself most attracted to Kendra, though, and after a year and a half of this, we were exclusively dating each other. Kendra liked Danielle best among my bodies. I had trouble deciding among her bodies, and eventually I told her which girl body and which boy body I liked best and told her to pick whichever of those two she wanted. She could either be Keisha, a cute redhead, or Kenny, an athletic man with straight black hair.
But assuming those bodies permanently was still in the future when Grandma took her new body. For a short period while that body became hers for the purpose of the magic, Mom needed extra help sorting the incoming clothes, and Kendra came in with me to help. And about that new body, all I can say is that there are distinct advantages to being here and seeing thousands of bodies. She wasn’t, like they said of some of those bodies, a porn star; she was really nice looking, though. Once the time passed and she bought new clothes that belonged to the new body, my once-grandma, now-sister continued working at the Clothes Hole.
When we got to the start of senior year in high school, Kendra and I decided to commit. This was a step before engagement; we didn’t have a fancy ring, but our families helped arrange a special date for us. While I was committed to using Danielle, I still didn’t know which of Kendra’s two most favored bodies she was going to choose until she came out to meet me as Keisha.
All senior year, we dated regularly in those bodies, and we started calling each other by those names even when we weren’t in the bodies. It was just before graduation that they registered our name changes and my gender change so that we would have the new names on our diplomas. That was also the time we started using those bodies full time. They were both close enough to 18 that it worked to do the changes then.
Our parents together rented an apartment for Keisha and me to live together in all summer. The idea was for us to get practice living together and apart from our parents. We didn’t change bodies at all during this time to give time for these bodies to become treated as our own, so we could start buying new clothes that would belong to Danielle and Keisha rather than to Dan and Kendra. And Mom found another teen to help try on clothes coming out of the hole.
For me, it was also an opportunity to get more experience living as a girl. I’d done plenty of evenings and whole weekends, but now it was going to be forever. A lot of it was great, but there were also periods. I think periods were really the biggest negative to being a girl, but spending the summer as Danielle gave me the chance to get used to them.
I had the better grades, so I was going off to college, for which I had already applied as Danielle, my high school supporting me by providing records as needed in that name even before it became official. Keisha had no such plans, but we got an off-campus apartment so we could live together. That let Keisha handle the domestic stuff while I could focus on my studies.
It also meant even more time of sticking with the one body, not that that was a problem. I loved my new body and so did Keisha. One thing, though, was that I found myself getting hit on by guys I wasn’t interested in. I solved that problem by getting engaged with Keisha. Our parents understood and covered the cost for the rings (one for each of us), with strict limits, of course. We didn’t have to actually get married yet, but telling guys I was engaged and showing the ring was a great way to drive them off.
The engagement was still speculative; same-sex marriage wasn’t yet legal in our home state nor where we lived for college, but some states had already started legalizing it and it seemed there would eventually be a way. But the guys I was showing my ring to didn’t know I was engaged to a woman. Indeed, when I got job offers after college, living in a state that had legalized same-sex marriage was how I chose between otherwise very similar offers.
We started planning our wedding as soon as we moved there, and that mostly meant Keisha planned it since she wasn’t working. Not many members of our families were going to make the long trip, so she kept it small, and instead planned a separate wedding party at Christmas when we would be back home and all the members of the extended family who lived near could attend.
Keisha planned one big surprise for me, though. All the guests at our Christmas wedding party knew about the Clothes Hole, so she arranged for my close family members to change into different bodies so that I didn’t know who anybody was. Even Dad showed up as a 15-year-old boy. I was confused where they all were, but when I saw so many unfamiliar faces I figured it out.
After I did, they made me play a guessing game; they lined up and I had to guess who each person was. Keisha spanked me with a pretend paddle that was actually made of Nerf-like foam material each time I guessed someone wrong. I thanked Keisha for planning such a fun and unique event.
We were barely back from that Christmas trip when Keisha brought up the subject.
“Danielle, I was just thinking about children.”
“You mean our children, right?”
“Of course. And I think it makes sense for me to be the one who gets pregnant.”
I thought about that, but Keisha didn’t let me think long.
“It makes sense since I’m the one who stays home while you’re working.”
I nodded.
“And it makes sense since in some other lifetime when I’m male, then you can be the one to carry the children.”
“Impeccable logic, Keisha. I’m not promising to carry your children in another lifetime, but I’m not denying it, either; it is something that I think I should eventually experience. Did you have any ideas how to go about getting pregnant?”
“Actually, I did. I think it would be awesome if you wear the Kenny body during one of our trips back home and use him to impregnate me. My family is keeping the shirt that generates him sealed in one of those airtight bags to preserve it for me.”
“Um... That’s... Keisha, that’s a great idea. You could have just asked me to do it as Dan, but why not? We both love that body, and our kid may come out as more of a hunk.”
Keisha laughed. “It’s a deal then?”
“Yeah, deal. When we’re ready, I’ll do that for you.”
As the year progressed, we eventually decided to try and do that on our trip home the next Christmas. But when Keisha started monitoring her fertile periods, we realized she was going to be fertile in the middle of December. So we planned an early Christmas trip, flying there on the 12th and leaving on the 26th. It was a little awkward for me to be Kenny for several days, but it was easier doing that and finding times to be intimate each day through the 17th than to have to run over to the Clothes Hole each time we wanted to do so. I spent the second week as Danielle, and Keisha got a positive pregnancy test on Christmas day, so we left very happy. She called it her Christmas present from me.
We did one other important thing. We took a trip back there in September of the following year so Keisha could give birth in our home town. Having the birth record there made it easier if our child wanted to take advantage of the Clothes Hole later in life.
Lisa was a bright child, but she showed no transgender signs. She loved being a girl. Still, with Mom’s permission, when we gave her the birds and bees talk when she was 11, we also explained about the Clothes Hole, and how neither I nor Keisha was in the body we started life in. She was curious, but skeptical.
“I’ve got the bestest body already! What if it makes me ugly, or stupid?”
“Well that’s just it, honey, you get to choose a body that’s not ugly or stupid.”
She got the ticket as a gift from my mother on her 13th birthday, and we went there the following Christmas. We did get her to try it, but she came up with complaints about every body she ended up in, and after just half an hour, we put her back in her original body and ended the session. And we didn’t talk about it again. Nobody was required to change. We kept the ticket together with her birth certificate and other important documents, where we hoped she would find it some time in the future, if she changed her mind.
We still visited the family from time to time, and after Lisa went off to college, Keisha and I visited, without Lisa, to try on new bodies. Before long, we picked the bodies for our next lives, and found family members to be the fake parents of our next identities. Keisha indeed picked a male body the next time, so I agreed to bear a child for us in the upcoming generation.
Lisa did fine, and became a world-renowned doctor. I guess she did have the right body after all. We still talked, but never about the Clothes Hole.
Keisha and I moved back to our home town late in life, and made our changes to our new bodies and their pre-arranged identities, and this time around I did get pregnant.