I figured now that I’m officially out and about in the world as “Rylee Thomson” it was appropriate to borrow a bit of lingo from her world.
With our entire lives reduced to a letter stuffed inside a suitcase, it was time for Kaitlyn and I to start the journey back “home”. We both had to admit that getting through TSA was a little nerve-wracking. As paranoid as it might have sounded, there was just that little bit of fear that, somehow, security would call us out as not being the real Clint and Rylee. But nope, we got waved through with the appropriate “Sir” and “Mam” that our new genders required and that was that. Just a regular old flight, one where admittedly I appreciated the extra room that my reduced body size gifted me.
After that, it was just a drive-share ride back to Shannon’s place, where the original Clint had left his car and where Rylee was currently living. It really shouldn’t have surprised either of us that “Mom”had custody of Rylee, even if she was basically an adult now. For a brief window of time there we had thought about trying to convince Shannon to let me finish out the summer with "Clint" before heading off to college, hoping to try and stick together a little bit longer for support. Having already gotten on her bad side with this “last minute extended vacation”, however, we ultimately decided it’d be easier to stick with the current arrangement. It wasn’t like Kaitlyn was going to be that far, anyway, as Clint was currently staying in an apartment elsewhere in the city.
It was early evening by the time we arrived. The house was nice enough, just a standard slice of American suburbia with it’s two floors, a two-car garage, a front yard with like one tree and a flowerbed to give it some decoration. Taking deep-breathes we headed in to the first real challenge of our new lives.
“Well, it’s about time you two got back,” a woman’s voice calls out from the open-concept kitchen/dining room area.
Rylee gave me real type-A personality vibes from the conversations we had, and looking at Shannon, I could take a real good guess where she got it from. Apparently, she’s an accountant, and she looked the part sitting at the table, papers neatly stacked as she typed away at a computer. Her graying but still brunette hair was done up in a sloppy looking bun, her white button up shirt slightly unbuttoned to get some relief from the warm summer air. At our arrival, however, she promptly closed the computer, folded her hands in front of her, and stared us down from over her thin-framed glasses.
“So, how was the play?”
“The pl-oh, right, the play…”
I briefly go into the details of that community play, doing my best to come up with some kind of analysis or commentary on it befitting someone who was supposed to be a huge theater nerd. It had been something about a woman finding out more about her recently deceased younger sister’s life through a D&D campaign she had wrote. Shannon didn't seem too interested in the details of it, but whatever comments I had about it seemed to satisfy her enough to not require me to relive English class all over again (I was going to have plenty of that later after all). She dismissed me to my room to unpack, but it was clear that “Clint” wasn't out of the doghouse yet. From upstairs I could hear everything, especially because I just snuck around the top of the stairs just around the corner.
“Seriously, Clint, you can’t keep indulging in her every little whim just because you want to be ‘supportive’. We had an agreement!”
“I know, Shannon, and if we had known about the play before we left we could have worked it into the schedule. The circumstances just lined up that…”
“I don’t care about what the ‘circumstances’ were, I care about whether you’re going to get some backbone one day and tell her no. Do you know how frustrating it is to have to always be the bad guy, especially when you go around behind my back and – ”
“Look, it’s all my fault,” I said as I revealed myself, startling the two of them. I figured if I didn’t intervene then things were going to get rough real fast for Kaitlyn.
“I know it was wrong to take advantage of being ‘daddy’s little girl’ like that just to go see some play that, honestly, was just okay. I was impulsive, and I swear it won’t happen again.”
Apologizing must have been an unusual occurrence for Rylee as Shannon’s expression quickly flipped between confusion and frustration as she tried to process things. Sensing an opening, Kaitlyn came in for the emotional kill.
“No, I’m the one who should be apologizing. Your mother’s right, I really should have told you no and stuck to the agreement. I guess I was just being a bit impulsive myself, seeing as how this is going to be the last real vacation we have together before you go off to college…”
Setting aside my own feelings of being reminded of that impending separation from my one ally in this new life, it apparently worked to disarm Shannon enough that she just let out a frustrated sigh.
“I…appreciate that you two recognize you made a mistake,” she said, still clearly surprised to have been saying it. “Let’s just get ourselves all settled for the night. Rylee, go get yourself unpacked, and Clint, have a safe drive home.”
With one last round of good-byes and promises of keeping in touch by text, Kaitlyn was off to go and be Clint and I was left here for the first time, alone, with being Rylee.
What’s crazy is, I’ve slowly started getting into the routine of it all.
The first day or two I got away with sleeping in, and once Shannon went off to work I was left to my own devices to explore.
Rylee’s room definitely screamed want-to-be actor. Shelves with various little awards and picture frames from past performances. A tv stand stuffed to the brim with DVDs of movies and recordings of stage plays. And perhaps it had been a bit judgmental of me to have expected posters of, like, boybands or something, but instead her walls were decked out with posters of the latest big hits and what I presumed personal favorite shows. Clearly she knew what it was she wanted to be, and now I had to be that too.
But hey, I got through that first night convincing enough, right? Maybe there's an actor in me after all.
Things started to pick up once Shannon noticed I wasn’t doing Rylee’s exercise routine and started shaking me up at six in the morning to get started. I was surprised that for someone who clearly wasn’t happy with Rylee’s career choice she was so adamant about getting me back onto this schedule. Once I thought about it more, though, it made sense. First off, Shannon seems to have the attitude that if you’re going to commit to something then you better damn well see it through. Second, I think morning exercises were the only thing the two of them did together regularly, making these moments some of the few times the two truly had a moment to bond before things got full teenage angst again.
Still didn't exactly make me enjoy doing the exercises, though.
Like many of the other guy’s who had gone to the Inn and woke up on the other side of the gender fence, I wasn't exactly wanting to think about my body. Stuffing it all into athletic wear that left little to the imagination wasn’t helping matters, though I did appreciate the sports bras helping to flatten things out on top a little. I’m not exactly an expert on sizes or anything so I have no idea if Rylee’s particularly gifted in that department, but there’s enough there that they dominate my view whenever I look down.
More important than what I was wearing, however, was the actual exercises themselves.
First off was stretching, and not just any stretching, but apparently rotating and moving every single joint in the body followed by hip circles, squats, spine rotations, shoulder passes, even jaw stretches of all things. If there was a body part it was getting moved, all in the name of encouraging body awareness and loosening up those parts that were at risk of injury or wear when doing a performance. Appreciated the latter, not so much the former. Even with the rational awareness that this was my body now and I was going to have to get used to it for at least a year, it was hard to not feel just a little like a creep to have to become so intimately familiar with every last bit of it like that.
After the warmup, depending on the day, we’d either go on a run for cardio, do some strength training to help build up endurance, or my favorite option, rest day. It was usually at that point Shannon would break off to go shower and get ready for work
Which, ugggh, leads to the second half of the routine”: “emotional and sense work”.
Look, I’ll admit, I’ve always been a little bit emotionally…God I hate that the best word I can think of is “constipated", but it's the most appropriate.
Basically, it's always been really hard for me to get really emotional in any kind of way outside of the strongest stimuli. If I'm put in a situation where people expect a strong reaction, I just can't. I remember one time my parents threw me a surprise birthday party, and when the result was just dull surprise all I could offer was “I saw all the cars and balloons on the way in.” So, when I get tasked doing an “emotional ladder” where I start at the lowest level of an emotion and slowly escalate, I can’t help but feel that my personal “10” isn’t exactly what’s expected of me if I need to perform at a “10”.
Except anger, I think I can do anger pretty good right now.
After that my options include “think of an object and act like you’re interacting with it” , “tell a story about an emotional event and try and recall every detail you can”, “describe everything you see in a room for five minutes”, and my personal favorite “stare at something with full attention for five minutes straight.”
Obviously, I’m not doing all these every day, but regardless of which ones I do by the time it’s all done I can't help but feel a little exhausted. Not physically, at least: Rylee's in good shape and clearly conditioned for all this. Emotionally, though, it can feel weirdly draining to force yourself into these emotional states when you've always been so bottled up. Unfortunately, I have a whole life to live now so I can’t just hop back into bed for the rest of the day, but Rylee, if you’re reading this, I hope you’re appreciative of all the work I’m doing on your behalf.
…and whoever ends up being me, perhaps, if you could, maybe take up some of those exercises? Apologies if I wasn’t in the greatest shape but, well, guess it wouldn’t hurt to pick some of them up once I’m back in my body…
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