Summer 2020
Marc Green, a man in his mid-thirties who worries about the slight expansion of his waistline and receding of his hairline, has quit his job as a corporate lawyer, over the protests of his wife Laura. He was spending 80 hours per week going over contracts for a heartless conglomerate and felt the soul being sucked out of him. The timing couldn't have been worse given Laura's ambition to start a business of her own, and the lawyer job provided much-needed stability. Then the pandemic hit and all bets were off, and suddenly every little disagreement between these two becomes magnified in the hothouse of social distancing.
We're going out to see some friends for the first time since the lockdown, and there's a disagreement over what dress she should wear. The truth is I am ambivalent -- women's clothes? What do I know about that? -- but when pressed, I make a ruling. She disagrees, and in fact is annoyed that I describe her choice as "a little cleavage-y," because it insinuates something prudish and patriarchal on my part. At a certain point, I think we're just picking fights over any little thing.
On this occasion, we limp through the evening, and even start to rebuild our dynamic and rediscover why we got together in the first place. After a few drinks, all is forgiven, and at the end of the night, after we've parted ways with our friends, we're making out in the car like a couple of teenagers. Sex becomes our only form of expression, which probably helps keep our relationship afloat through the final two very fraught years of our ten year tenure, a stretch marked by visits to three different couples counselors, one of whom, in 2022, will recommend a getaway. We're on a budget though, so we can't go further than... Maine.
Fall 2023
Chantelle Carey, a pretty, curvy-hipped and quite bosomy green-eyed brunette with the most beautiful, kissable round lips you've ever seen (not that many people kissed them) arrives home from work, goes straight to her room, and removes her pencil skirt and blouse. She pulls down the elastic band of her panties and notes the red mark where it has dug into her skin. "Damnit," she hisses, now examining her soft, fleshy body in the mirror. Gained an inch too many. She sits on her bed, half-naked, running her hands through her thick hair in stress.
It isn't that she's worried about staying thin. She's not thin, and she likes her round figure as it is, even when her thighs rub together as she walks. She's certainly made peace with it. She's come to identify with it. But the idea of it getting bigger, or changing in any way, is troubling to her. After all, she owns hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of clothes that are meant to fit this body. The last thing she wants to do is gain weight (or lose it!) and have to build an entirely new wardrobe. She wants things to stay exactly as they have been since she came into this form in the summer of 2022. Helplessness sets in. Not for the first time, she's trapped in a life she didn't ask for and doesn't know what to do next.
That night, I gathered my -- er, Chantelle's -- younger sister Emma, and niece Keisha, who was staying with me for reasons too personal and complicated to explain, and we went over every item in my wardrobe to figure out what still fit. Only a few items had to go to Goodwill, which was a relief.
By now, Laura was well out of my life, having embraced being Damon wholeheartedly, as though she always was him. I developed a conspiracy theory of sorts to try to explain how we wound up in these lives specifically, which I still think is 90% accurate, even if I couldn't quite finish connecting the dots between Laura and Damon. Ultimately, I was given a fairly sizeable cash "incentive" to basically ensure I will go away and never bother "Damon" again and never allow his wife to find out about his affair with Chantelle. The money remains in a secret account I will be able to draw on no matter what life I am living, as long as I have my faculties. The truth is I didn't have any leverage or intent to do damage, nor did I ask for the money, but we both feel a lot better when I sign the paperwork. It's over, our de facto divorce settlement.
A few months later, Keisha is going back to her mother, and Chantelle and I finally come to terms on a plan for her to return to her own body, much later than we had initially hoped. I am prepared to move forward as someone else, having ceded the life of Marc Green to someone else.
Summer 2024
At a gay club in Brooklyn, a handsome young man named Ryan Berardi -- a personal assistant by profession although he's between jobs -- spots the only guy who seems to look more out of place than him. Ryan's only there because "his friends" wouldn't take no for an answer, and, truth be told, he's been craving human interaction for so long he's willing to go anywhere he seems wanted. But he's not gay -- is he? After all, he is aware that he was a "straight woman" not that long ago, who sometimes harbored hopes for a physical reconciliation with "Damon," and who indulged in flirtation with males from time to time. He's a little ashamed to be "told" he is now a gay man, though, and thinks he must somehow find a way around it. You're only gay when you do something gay -- right? Sexually, he was in limbo... until meeting "John."
He couldn't even understand the appeal on a conscious level. John was older, with gray temples, crow's feet, and lines around his mouth, and aloof. But something about his presence was appealing. Something about his words sparked, maybe just because it was the most intelligent conversation Ryan had had in longer than he could remember, even as they shouted over the noise of the club. And maybe it was because John so clearly wanted him, and he wanted to be wanted, something he hadn't felt in... lifetimes.
At which point they started "doing something gay" with each other.
Lying in bed in the arms of a rough, hairy man, "Ryan" can almost see... not a future, but at least a very enjoyable year ahead. That wasn't so bad, in fact it really hit the spot. But an extremely quick social media search reveals John isn't who he says he is.
Over the last year, I've chalked it up to everything from hormones and libido, to my own chronic loneliness dating back to my original life, to a rationalization that if it weren't me it would be someone else. I stayed in that affair for my own selfish reasons and for him. Something was clearly aching him inside and I didn't think he would find what he was looking for in his life as it was, so... well, you know the rest. It was a complicated entanglement to say the least, even before we went to the Inn. I feel like I recognized something of myself in him and thought I should do for him what I would have wanted someone to do for me -- get me out of a situation that is simply not tenable. I would come to regret that.
Winter 2025
Around 8 PM on a Saturday night, Ed Levesque is having a cup of decaf coffee at a diner with a woman nearly nearly young enough to be his daughter, and nearly old enough to have given birth to Marc Green. She's relating the customer service experience she recently got from her cell phone provider, and the "old man" is riffing along, perhaps surprising her with his up-to-date knowledge. They're making each other laugh far more than one would have expected.
As much as I wished I could stop my affair with John, I wished I could start one with Christine.
As with him, it was a very unlikely attraction -- she looked every bit her age and didn't exactly have a lot of effort to devote to disguising it, but in the body of Ed Levesque, I was beyond caring. Like John, she was someone I enjoyed spending time with for her own sake, someone with whom I had a lot of common ground. Unlike John, she didn't seem to have a dark side or be damaging anyone with her presence, other than Ed's daughter, who, not knowing the source of the money I kept handing out, had a lot of problems with me suddenly getting so friendly with a woman young enough to be... well, younger.
Physically, emotionally, practically, the elements just never came together. I think I'll always feel a little sad about that, but if I haven't learned how to move on from these things by now, it would be surprising.
A few weeks later, John, in the form of "Cayden" will absolve me of the guilt I feel for bringing him to the Inn, telling me the experience has in some way been good for him. I'm still not entirely sure I've forgiven myself, but what's done is done and, more of a relief, has been largely rectified. He's where he's supposed to be, and I'm on the path I'm on, wherever it may lead.
It's hard to believe I've been all these people in my life, and now I'm on my way to becoming another. I wrote all of the above in transit to Old Orchard Beach but didn't hit publish until I got here. A family issue caused me to delay my arrival and now we're at the end of what is supposed to be my two weeks, and I hope it's clear sailing from here.
I know there are a lot of possible bad outcomes, but unlike other people I have to be here. I have to give Ryan back what's his. I'm hoping for that elusive fresh start, for the day I don't feel haunted by all the people I've been, but in the end, if something terrible happens, it should happen to me, a person ho knows what they're getting into, rather than some unsuspecting innocent.
I just have to keep moving, accumulating all these memories until I just get full up and find a place to stop.
-Marc/Ryan/Everyone
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