Chapter 15: 6:20. “How Dare I Be So Beautiful?”

Thankfully, the pool was old enough to have tunnel access, so we didn't have to go outside on a November evening, get wet, and then return on a winter night; but it'd been expanded into a full-fledged fitness center in the '90s, when accessibility became a big issue. It was pretty quiet at this hour, but there were a few people in the gym and the main pool, plus a couple other merfolk in the freshwater pool.

We went in, and Tammy headed to the women's changing room. She paused for a moment, glancing back to see if I was coming, but I waved her onward; I wasn't swimming, and I didn't belong there anyway, did I...? She nodded. "Okay. Meet me on the other side, then."

I went in and waited as requested. A few minutes later she emerged, wrapped in a towel and looking visibly embarrassed. She looked up at me from her chair and grimaced. "Look," she said, "be honest with me. How bad is this, really?"

"...The outfit?" I asked, giving her a confused look. "I, uh, I can't even see right now."

Reluctantly, she doffed the towel, and I tried to give her as polite a look-over as I could. As far as I could tell, her sports bra looked pretty much like a normal swimsuit top, but plainer. It wasn't any kind of a racy cut, and it wasn't at all see-through, at least dry. "It looks totally normal," I told her. "If I didn't already know, I'd never guess."

She was at least a bit reassured by this, though the uncovered waist was probably the bigger hang-up. With merfolk, everything humans felt the need to cover was normally hidden behind a pair of specialized scales - but that knowledge wasn't going to override years of ingrained cultural norms all at once. I wasn't the only one facing awkwardness and discomfort trying to cope with all this, I realized...

Tammy sighed. "Alright, thanks. I guess there's nothing for it, then." She wheeled her way over to the edge of the pool. "Um...what, do I just jump in?"

"Probably," I said. "Looks like even the 'shallow' end is eight feet."

She blanched. "Cripes. That's...way over my head."

"If it helps, you're built for it now." Not that I didn't understand; I didn't even want to think about what would happen if I went in. Was this body airtight? If not, could it even function underwater? I wasn't eager to find out.

"Only a little," she said. "But...I guess there's no way around this..." She inched up to the rim of the pool and set the brake on her chair. Taking a deep breath and shutting her eyes, she grabbed the armrests and launched herself out over the edge and into the water.

Despite knowing that it was almost impossible for her to drown, I spent a minor eternity worrying that she wouldn't come back up. She had no experience with this; I didn't know if she'd even learned to swim as a human. I felt my internals running faster as I strained to see her down below, and it was nearly fifteen seconds before I saw a flurry of activity and Tammy shot back up, gasping for air as she broke the surface.

"Holy shit," she said, when her breathing had settled. "I thought I was gonna be stuck down there."

I crouched down beside the rim. "Well, you did it."

She shook her head. "It was mostly raw panic...but I guess so. This is so freakin' weird...it's like having to shake your ass to move."

"That's what they say," I said. "But you know you don't have to hold your breath, right?"

"I know it," she said, "I'm just not sure I believe it. So tell me, how does that even work?"

I sat down, legs folded. "It's...you know the thing that closes off your windpipe from the rest of your throat?" She nodded. "You've got another of those now," I said. "When you're submerged, it blocks off the windpipe, and the water you inhale gets drawn down through the primary gills instead. That's, uh, right there, just below the ribcage."

Tammy pulled herself a little ways out of the water and twisted to one side for as close a look as she could get. I saw it better: thin slits down the side of her abdomen, with dark red gill tissue peeking out; they were already closing in the open air. "So that's what those are," she said. "Stung like a bastard when I was soaping up in the shower that first night."

I nodded. "They're a bit delicate, so be careful with them. Anyway, when you exhale, there's a second set at the base of the skull and behind the ears that the water exits through. It's all supposed to be pretty much automatic; you just have to get past the mental block you had as a human."

"Easy to say," she said dryly. "But 'don't drown' is a pretty hard thing to forget."

"No kidding," I said. "But from what I've read, the first breath is the hardest; that's what it takes to make your subconscious mind understand that you won't drown that way."

She bobbed there for a minute, thinking it over; finally, she sighed and glanced down at the bottom, and back at me. "...Okay, I'm gonna do it," she said. "I'll go under and try. But...if I screw up, promise me you'll pull me out, okay? I won't go out of reach, just far enough down to be submerged." She looked me straight in the eye with a hesitant, almost pleading expression. I couldn't blame her; it probably was freaky to think about.

"I...I will," I said. I didn't want to try my luck in the water if I didn't have to, but I could at least risk getting an arm wet if she were in mortal danger.

Tammy nodded and glanced down again, steeling herself. She took a deep breath, stopped and remembered that the whole point was not to do that, exhaled, and ducked herself below the surface, letting go of the rim. I watched nervously as she came to rest a foot or so down, let the last few bubbles of air out of her mouth and nose, and tried breathing in.

Her eyes went wide, and for a moment I worried that something had gone wrong. But she didn't freak out or signal for me to help; she just floated down there for a minute, breathing gently, then gave a flick of her tail and came back to the surface.

"Thaf frbl-" She stopped and frowned, water pouring out of her mouth as she spoke. She pursed her lips and exhaled hard, a jet of mist spraying out from her secondary gills like a whale-spout as she forcibly cleared her throat. "That feels so goddamn weird," she said. "But...hell, it really does work."

"Like I said, you're built for it now." I rose to my feet. "You gonna be okay from here?"

She nodded. "I think so. Don't go too far, I still don't know if I can get out by myself."

"Sure thing," I said. "I'll just be over on the bench there. Lemme know if you need a hand."

Tammy smiled. "Sure. Um, thanks, Stu."

I nodded and returned to where I'd left my things. I fished around in my purse for the book; I wasn't eager to dive back into this nonsense, but it had to be done, and this was as good a time as any. I took a seat on the bench at first, but then I noticed some deck-chairs by the pool's edge, and moved over there. They looked comfier anyway, and I'd be closer to the pool if she needed help.

Partway through a very non-riveting piece about someone's experience with past-life regression through hypnosis, I heard someone break the surface nearby. I was about to ask what Tammy needed when an unfamiliar voice said: "Freshman comp, huh?"

I glanced down to see one of the other merfolk I'd spotted earlier. She had bright, iridescent silver-blue scales with a vivid red stripe running down the sides; her human half had milk-chocolate skin and dense, curly black hair. And she was completely naked.

Intellectually, I knew this wasn't a big deal for merfolk; but as with Tammy, decades of cultural conditioning didn't go away just like that. I averted my eyes, then worried that it would be rude to talk without looking at her, and tried to find a midpoint where I could see her face without staring at her breasts. It didn't work; I kept shifting my gaze and catching glimpses in my peripheral vision. "U-uh, y-y-yeah," I stammered.

She snickered. "It's okay," she said. "I don't mind."

Whether she minded was less the issue than what I made of it, but I tried to regain my composure and look her in the eye and not be weird about it. She nodded in acknowledgement. "So," she said, "did you get through the Happy Days essay yet?"

I groaned. "Barely. I nearly threw the thing across the room."

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She chuckled and nodded. "Listen, save yourself a bunch more pain and skip straight to the one - oh, what was it...I can't remember the title, I think the author's name was Foster. Only worthwhile piece in there."

"I'm surprised to hear there's one," I said. "But, uh, thanks." I was feeling weird and uneasy again, ticking away rapidly as I tried to figure out what I was feeling. Or...what I wasn't feeling...?

As much as I tried not to notice, I couldn't not notice. Her breasts weren't much larger than the mock-ones that I'd ended up with, but they were spectacular, and mermaid norms be damned, I knew I should be turned on by this...but I wasn't. Had something changed about me? Was it because I was a...because I looked like a girl now? If some buff shirtless guy suddenly showed up...?

It was at this moment that a buff shirtless guy suddenly burst from the water. (Okay, "buff" might not be the right term; he was lean but well-muscled, more of an Olympic-swimmer build than a cartoon-bodybuilder one. Regardless...) He shot a good 10' into the air in a stunning backward arc, turned mid-air with a flick of his tail to point straight down, and made such a clean dive back in that he only caused a mild tsunami to crash over the rim of the pool.

I yelped and pulled my feet up just in time to avoid getting my shoes and skin soaked through. The mermaid, however, was completely blindsided, and she sputtered and whirled around with fire in her eyes. "Dammit, Julian!"

The merman surfaced nearby, just in time to catch a massive wave full in the face, as she planted her shoulders against the rim and swept her whole tail in his direction. "Alright, alright, sorry!" he laughed. "But c'mon, I can't look this good and deny newcomers the chance to bask in it, y'know?" He glanced up at me. "So, who's she?"

She paused, realizing she didn't know my name, looked like she was going to ask, then turned her focus back to chewing him out. "Someone who isn't any more impressed with your bullshit than I am, that's who. Geez, even landwalkers know better than to pull stuff like that this close to the edge of the pool! That must've been damn near twenty knots you were doing towards that wall...!"

"Not into it, though," he said with a toothy grin. "And you gotta admit, I looked damn good doing it."

"Didn't. Even. See." she said, through clenched teeth; then she turned back to me. "Listen, honey, don't encourage him. We get enough of this nonsense when it's just the regulars in here." She frowned. "Give a guy sleek lines and a sharp dorsal fin and he thinks he's God's gift to mermaids," she muttered, sotto voce.

But I'd seen. Personality issues aside, Julian was a fine specimen physically. Like most mermen, he was less broad-shouldered than human guys and had no body or facial hair, but he had a handsome face with a strong jawline and steely gray eyes, a mop of dirty blond hair, and an infectious grin. What I could see of his tail was covered in gray sharkskin, and unlike most merfolk, he did have a dorsal fin on his back; whether it was a particularly good-looking one, I had no idea.

She was right about his attitude, though; I could feel his eyes on me, and from his expression he clearly thought he was doing me a favor by...letting me look at him? Being looked at by him? Both? I wasn't sure, and I had no clue how to deal with it. If I just ignored him, would he go away? Or would I have to snub him to his face for him to get it? How did actual women do it? Was this another of those subconscious signals I wasn't sending...?

While I was puzzling over this, Tammy surfaced nearby; this time, she remembered to expel the water she'd been breathing before speaking. "Hey," she said to me, "how's it going? Everything okay?" I wondered if this was her way of asking if this guy was bothering me.

"Uh-" I started, but the mermaid cut me off. "Omigod, the new girl! We heard about you! Uh, Tanya...?"

"Tammy," she replied. "Tammy Greenfield, ah, uh..." She was trying to ask the other mermaid's name, but was visibly distracted by her toplessness; for a girl raised with human norms for modesty, this was probably almost as distracting as it'd been for me.

"Candace," she said with a smile. "Oh, I love your colors..."

Tammy frowned, looking down at herself. "...I look like a goldfish."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," the mermaid chided. "It goes so nicely with your hair and skin...you should be proud of it."

Tammy didn't seem convinced, but I took a fresh look at her tail, and I had to concur. Goldfish in cartoons just get colored in with flat carrot-orange and forgotten about, but her orange-gold scales were dappled with touches of silver, even hints of red along her spinal column and on the rays of her fins, with a silver-white ventral "underbelly." It was more striking than I'd thought - and it did look very nice with her golden hair.

But I kept thinking about my lack of reaction. Tammy was, if no longer a classical beauty, still a very pretty mermaid; and Julian was, if a total peacock, still an inarguably good-looking guy with his shirt off; but in neither case had I felt any physical interest or desire. Really, I felt more of an absence of it, like when you know you should eat something but you just aren't hungry. Was that it, then? Did I no longer even have these desires, without the relevant organs? I didn't get hungry like this, either - but I didn't feel a lack of hunger like I felt-

"So, Tammy," Julian interjected. "How long you been a mermaid? Need someone to show you the ropes...?"

To play devil's advocate, he wasn't a shameless grabby letch like a lot of the fratboys; it seemed more like he genuinely believed he was all that and a bag of chips, and anything female must therefore want him by default. I'd certainly run into women who behaved the same way, as a man. But thinking about the way he'd been acting towards me made me feel ultra-cringey, and I wondered if I should try to help Tammy out of this the way she'd tried to help me.

Tammy, however, had it handled. I didn't know if I'd just never picked up on these things until now, or if I'd genuinely never seen anything like it, but she positively radiated ice, without saying a word or even looking directly at him. She turned to me as if he hadn't spoken, or possibly didn't exist. "So," she said, "if you're cool, I'm gonna keep at this for a while; I'm still getting the hang of this, and I have nothing better to do right now." Somehow, she delivered that last bit in a perfectly normal, even-tempered way while also loading every syllable with venom.

"U-uh, s-sure," I said. "Got some stuff to work on anyway." I was slightly in awe and slightly terrified; but she nodded and turned to go back into the pool.

"Mm, I bet it's a lot to get used to," Candace said. "I've always wondered what it'd be like having legs, myself..." She didn't notice Tammy's expression momentarily darkening at that. "Well, I'd be happy to help you figure anything out, if you need it."

"Uh, thanks," Tammy replied, then turned back to me. "Thanks for waiting; I'll see you in a bit, Stuart."

I wondered why she'd made a point of naming me to them when she'd been so discreet the first couple days, before we went back to class. But a glance at Julian's face answered that. The two mermaids dove back in; the merman stayed where he was, visibly trying to work this out in his head. Another weird wrinkle; girls could just tell I wasn't a normal girl, but guys couldn't...? But Gil had recognized me...

At any rate, I decided to get back to my homework. I opened up the textbook once more, scanning through the table of contents. Yes, there it was: Dawn Foster, "Verfremdung." I flipped through the pages, wondering what the hell a verfremdung was; over in the pool, I heard Julian finally give up and slip back into the water.

As it turned out, the word meant "alienation," and to theater types it was a technique of deliberately breaking the illusion that the story is a fixed sequence of events, "real" within its own context, in order to make the audience think critically about the plot or characters; but the author had first heard someone else use it to refer to "the sudden strangeness of a normally familiar object or occurence" - what I'd heard called jamais vu. She related this to a common experience for transformees: looking in the mirror and not immediately recognizing oneself.

She was coy with the details, but it became clear that she'd undergone a spontaneous metamorphosis a few years prior. I'd read a bit about these, but I'd never heard an account from a subject's perspective before. The details she did give were interesting; apparently, in the days leading up to it, she'd had recurring dissociative episodes - feeling detached from her body, as if she were an outside observer and "that person" wasn't really her at all. She didn't describe this as traumatic; just a brief and curious fugue state that came over her for a moment here and there when looking into the mirror, pausing at the front door, etc.

And then one morning she'd simply woken up as something else. She described in detail the experience of waking up, getting out of bed, going into the bathroom, looking in the mirror, and only finally realizing that something was amiss when she'd turned away, after seeing her new reflection for the first time and thinking nothing of it - recognizing herself before realizing that she was unrecognizable.

From there, she drew a connection back to the dramatic use of the term, and tried to look at her experience analytically, from an outside perspective. The episodes, she felt, were significant in some way - but she didn't hold with the interpretation some people offered, that her feelings of dissociation were a sign of her being in the wrong body, and that she'd somehow self-induced a change into her "true self" as a cure; she'd never suffered from dysmorphia, and she still had occasional dissociative flashes even in her new body.

Instead, she thought, the initial episodes might've been a sign of her mind preparing to detach from her old body and inhabit the new one. She admitted that this was only an impression and she didn't know if this was how transformations worked,^* but it felt right to her. She wondered if her post-incident flashes were nostalgia for her old self, or the last remaining mental links to her original form disconnecting; but ultimately, she concluded, whether she recognized it or not, the person in the mirror was her.

^* (It probably wasn't. As far as science had been able to determine, the change from one state to another was instantaneous. Indeed, if probabilistic elements were a key factor, there might well be a whole spectrum of alternate universes where we'd all become anything else, each coming into existence at that same moment.)

I sat there at the pool's edge for a long time, ruminating on that. I wondered if it meant anything that I hadn't had any such episodes; not that this felt right or anything, but I'd seen myself in the mirror that night and recognized myself, even as I considered my new form in the abstract. There was no feeling of being a detached observer. Did that signify something about me? But she hadn't believed that what she'd ended up in was her "true" form or anything...

But then, if we "broke the spell" and considered the narrative of my life critically, from an outside perspective...what the hell was this!? Was this all related to my own sense of purposelessness and ennui? Was it some big stupid How Stuart Got Her Groove Back plot where it was all for my own betterment and some vague yuppie idea of "self-actualization?" Or some twisted story of an unsuspecting schmoe being toyed with by forces beyond his ken, before we cut to Rod Serling at the fireplace? Or was there no purpose at all, only the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune? For whose sick pleasure was this all unfolding? What, if anything, did it all mean!?

I realized that my mechanisms were racing again, the chatter echoing across the pool and rebounding back to me. I sighed, trying to calm down, but I found myself thinking about the prospect of writing an essay on that piece as a recent transformee, and all the things that people would inevitably read into anything I could possibly say about it, and what they would think about me...

Over at the other end of the pool, Julian executed another spectacular backflip. I groaned, not at him so much as at...everything. What - and who - was I...!?

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