It was very confusing. They came from opposite coasts, and were opposites in nearly every sense, but oddly enough they had the same name. The faculty grad admissions committee members would never admit they'd gotten the two of them confused, but if that's true, they were the only ones.

Andrea ``Call me Annie'' Fredriksen was my office mate; I guess the male establishment thought women students should hang together. She was quite a looker; about five-eight or so, with long curly blonde hair, bronze skin, a California girl all the way. She was inclined to wear minidresses.

Women in science departments need defense mechanisms. I tend toward playing the nun; just kind of act puzzled if someone hits on me. Not that I'm unattracted, it's just that there's this knot of mortal dread in my tummy whenever someone sparks my interest. Annie was amused by the spectacle of men falling over their tongues. She'd just stare at them staring at her. Well, for a while. Eventually she got kind of fed up with being hit on a dozen times a day by clueless geekboys who thought (wrongly) they were being clever.

Andrea ``Hi, I'm Andy'' Marcantoni Fredriksen, all male all the way, was a New York Italian boy, though of mixed Nordic heritage. Also blonde, thin, short for a man (in fact just about Annie's height). He liked wearing shorts that showed off his muscular hairy legs, and a full, red, beard.

Come Halloween, one houseful of grad students invited the department for a party. Scientists are on the whole very unimaginative and uncaring about their appearance, so the suggested theme was ``Come as what you might have been if...'' This brought out the usual assortment of clowns, ghosts, witches, gnomes, pixies; a priest; a Naval officer in uniform; a bunch of we ain't dressin' up for nobody grad students in jeans and t-shirts (this would include me). The chairman came as a laundry basket, with his wife as a box of Tide. He had lacy underthings on his head. Whodathunkit. But A&A really went all out.

When Andy got there, he'd shaved his beard, and was wearing a tunic kind of thing. Maybe he was a Roman or something. He looked kind of androgynous, especially when one saw the single dangling earring.

People started dancing after two beers or so. There was a bit of a commotion in the living room, people coming into the kitchen where I was ensconced (lest any of the geekboys think I might want to dance with them), giggling, muttering ``wow'' and ``can you believe it?''.

I went to check it out. Someone grabbed my hand, pulling me into the dancing mob. Andy. Nice guy, very attractive, very odd tonight. I got into the groove of the music, put my hands over my head, closed my eyes. When I opened them again he was different somehow: there was a different look in the eyes. I looked down to check out his nice legs, and, hmmmm? It wasn't Andy at all, it was Annie. She'd cut her hair, teased it straight up to look like Andy's flattop, and was wearing a tunic just like his. The effect was breathtaking.

They spent the evening as far apart as possible, so they were rarely both to be seen at once. They often swapped places when whoever the one was with got distracted for a moment. I think everyone in the place got their genders bent a little that night.

Somebody in the kitchen drew an analogy from physics. If there's even one magnetic monopole in the universe, a simple argument shows that electrical charge must be quantized (as it's observed to be). If there's even one successfully, convincingly androgyne in the world, everyone's gender is impacted somehow.