Someone Else's Lady

I'm Jamie Ballard, a 30-year-old Jill of many trades. To describe myself—I've got green eyes, light blond hair, and I'm 5'1" tall. Originally from Arizona, I now reside in San Francisco. It's quite different from the desert I grew up in and knew so well. I'm not sure which place I like better. I like the liberal, friendlier, and more relaxed pace of San Francisco, but then I do miss that dry, barren desert with its cleansing heat as well. I don't get homesick too often. For one, I didn't leave any family or any real friends behind, and I keep busy enough not to miss much of anything. As much as I love and sometimes miss my home despite its flaws—particularly the way it tends to favor certain groups of people over others, and its barbarically harsh laws—one day I realized I needed a change. The world is simply too big to spend it all in one place, even if you like the place you're at in the moment. So variety was in order, and I vowed to make a change. But where did I want to go? One day, I was lounging by the pool at my apartment complex and got into a discussion about my boring office job and how highly unrewarding I found it to be, especially since I felt I could do a lot more than just answer phones, schedule appointments, and keep records up to date. My neighbor, whom I would often meet at the pool and gab with, decided that she and her girlfriend were going to move to San Francisco because they wanted to be in a place where lesbians were a little more accepted. I'm a lesbian too, so I could understand this desire. Pooling our savings, we all decided to get the cheapest two-bedroom apartment we could find—and believe me, that wasn't "cheap." But we were able to find jobs relatively quickly. Madeline and her girlfriend, Maira, were able to get retail work, and I found work in an office. This job was at a smaller office for an eye doctor. The one in Arizona had been in a larger office for a dentist. The smaller the better if I were going to do this kind of work, because then it only requires one person to handle the job, and I prefer to work alone. While I certainly wasn't unfriendly, I wasn't really much of a people person either. I hadn’t dated in a while because I always seemed to get exactly what I didn’t want. People tried to set me up all the time, but if I didn’t feel a spark or some kind of mutual connection, then I wasn’t about to settle either. I was very picky about relationships. I didn’t expect a beauty queen with the perfect life, but I wanted there to at least be some attraction and some realism. Maybe I was overly picky, but there just seemed to be some kind of flaw or another with everyone I’d met lately who showed an interest in me. Either I wasn’t attracted to them, they drank too much, they smoked, or they just didn’t have the type of personality I like. For the last few years, it seemed like those I wanted were either straight, lesbian and taken, or lesbian and not interested. The three of us slowly got to meet more people as the weeks turned into months, including a really cool gay guy named Orson. Orson was an accountant for the San Francisco Police Department. When my psychic side came out, he got an idea. That idea would lead to many additional changes—changes that would change me forever.