Isaac/Ainsley: An Undoing

Hey everyone-- I'm not dead, and I'm only questionably insane. November was an especially eventful and difficult month for me, as you'll hear about soon enough, and I've only recently worked up the mental energy to finally expand my notes about it into proper blogposts. This one took place about... two months ago!? Holy shit. It was a different time...

You'd think Ainsley and Sara would be able to afford an apartment with thicker walls.

I was in my bedroom at about one in the morning. That's not especially late by my standards, but Ainsley is one of those terrible creatures whose body demands to wake up early regardless of whether it's a workday and I was pretty exhausted. I'd placated SugarBunny, finished Ainsley's skincare routine (honestly, not a bad distraction), and just when I was finally about to go to sleep I heard the door unlock. That's not a strange occurrence by itself; Heather goes out late fairly often, so I could ignore it until I heard a man's voice joking back with her.

I've never had any kind of boundaries talk with Heather but I'd always just, assumed. Why would you ever want to bring anyone into our, our fortress of privacy, the only place in this world we're allowed to be ourselves? Let alone unannounced? At least my freshman roommate had the courtesy to let me know in advance when he'd kick me out. For the first time ever SugarBunny agreed with me on something and he woke up, barking like mad at the interloper and I had to decide whether it's my responsibility to calm him down. Fortunately that shooed them into Heather's room before I could get annoyed enough with the barking to intervene.

Unfortunately I'd rather listen to more of SugarBunny's greatest hits than the sound of my middle-age roommate getting laid. I'm not going to bother describing these two's failure to keep relatively quiet, but they had me giving up on sleeping entirely and working on my knitting project. I've always hated how they feel but I should really invest in some earplugs.

He finally left at around 3:30. I guess it's fortunate that he didn't stay until morning and give him the possibility of encountering me as I'm getting ready for work, but his presence set off SugarBunny again on his way out. That was the last straw, and I left my bedroom to approach Heather in the living room.

"Hey. Can you not--"

"Look, I didn't know your dog was gonna react like that. So, sorry about that."

"He's not my dog, a-and even besides I just mean, the time! I could hear."

"Oh?" My roommate looked like she's just barely holding back a smirk. "Yeah, huh. Well, we had to learn about this place's acoustics one way or another. Hey, I tried, okay? There was a problem with the water at his place and we didn't have anywhere else."

I just nodded. I already regretted starting this conversation at the exact moment I finally could've gotten some sleep. But Heather had to add, "Look, you're allowed to have fun too, y'know?"

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. I had roommates my first time around, this age. I know what it's like, you've got the same right as me."

"So your idea of an apology is to say you'd let me do something you and I both know I obviously wouldn't do?"

"You wouldn't. But you could. I'm just saying."

I can't believe this woman. "No, and I don't know why anyone in, in our situation does it! Seriously! Doesn't any part of having sex in someone else's body feel wrong to you? Like it's violating, somehow? I know, there's no part of the Inn experience which isn't violating, but we don't have any choice in most of it! This is just, does none of this make you, you know, weird you out? At all?"

"Kid, all I said was you can have fun. I'm not the one who said 'sex'."

"Oh come on you were obviously--"

"Uh huh, sure." Heather grinned. "But seriously, you don't get it. And it beats knitting."

"There's nothing wrong with knitting!! I picked it up as a desperation hobby so I don't completely lose it in here. We both lived through the pandemic, I bet you had one too-- you should try it sometime! I can just burn the evidence when we head back to the Inn. Also, in this body I don't have to wonder if anyone's going to look at me weird at a fabric store for-- hey!"

"You're acting exactly like half the angry moms I have to deal with back home, I hope you realize."

"Just answer the question! I feel like I'm losing my mind here and not for the reasons I usually am. I look at that blog, and half that thing is just wall-to-wall sex! 'Oooh, I just found my new body's dildo, what ever am I going to do with it?' 'Should I fuck 'my' ex who keeps texting me, or that guy I met at a bar?' 'Hey everyone. I bet no one here's ever written about what it feels like in a woman's body, here's that 'cause I'm being so original!! Everyone wants to hear about that! There's nothing weird at all!!' Doesn't anyone think that's wrong? The only reason people ever hesitate is because they're weirded out about being the opposite sex and getting their orientation rewired, or they're worried about their own relationship! It's never about if it's ethical to do it in the first place! God!"

If nothing else I think I made Heather also wish she'd just gone to bed.

"You... You need to get your head out of your own ass. Seriously. Are you really a 20-year-old guy? I didn't know anyone half as high-strung as you when I was in college. And Sara was pretty obviously living her life this way to begin with, so it's not like I'm doing anything she wouldn't."

"You didn't even ask?"

"Isaac. You don't. Get it. You don't know what it's like. You're young. You've never... Do you have any idea what this is like for me?"

"No, I don't know what it's like to end up in a life I'm actually capable of enjoying."

"It's not-- Okay it's not just-- Shut up. It would've happened even if I was Ainsley. You don't understand what it's like to get thirty years younger overnight. I was a smoker for twenty years. I quit forever ago but one breath, one breath here makes me... I don't have any joint pain anymore. I don't get migraines, I don't get hot flashes, every waking moment in this body reminds me what I lost. What all of us lose, and we're supposed to shut up and accept it 'cause there's no way to ever get it back so don't even think about it."

She continued. "I feel like everything's been supercharged. Like I'm alive again. Like I can be someone and I have more than an inevitable downhill to look forward to. I, look, I didn't make the right choices, a lot of the time. I got married before I was ready and I wasn't the world's best mom, okay? I did what I could. But you have no choice but to keep on living with your mistakes, after all. There's no escaping your past. At least, there's not supposed to be."

"Ains-- Isaac, you're too young to screw up like I did. I hope you never understand. But am I just, just not supposed to take advantage of this, before we go back and it's all taken away from me again? All at once instead of gradually? I left part of myself behind at this age. For now, this year, I get to find her again. The right way. And you can't stop me. So quit being judgey and maybe focus on not wasting your life, wherever you're living it, you little prude."

I'm only slightly ashamed to admit that I ran off back to my room immediately once staring at heather in silence got too awkward to be sustainable. How does anyone even respond to that? She never actually addressed whether any of what she's doing is wrong and yet I still feel like I'm the asshole. Am I crazy? Am I the only one on the blog who feels this way? What's wrong with me?

I returned to my knitting project instead of going to bed.