Apologies for taking so long to provide updates. Not to diminish what Caleb was going through these last few weeks, but things were a little busier for the employed middle-aged man than the teenage girl about to head off to college.
Still, glad to see he's embraced journaling as a technique for handling everything that's been going on, even if it's just built in as part of the routine Rylee left him to follow. I've been following suit as well, if at least to have my own journalistic records of events for my future perusal. After all, this whole experience is an amazing opportunity to reflect on...well, a lot of things really. If you read Caleb's last post, there is some prime anxieties regarding biology and its impact on our sexual attraction. It's such a shame that there's no way I'd be able to write up a case study regarding the Inn to submit for research...
Anyway, I'm sure you're all wondering, "Kaitlyn, what’s Clint's life like"?
Surprisingly, the most difficult part
of the transition was the job. Clint's a senior employee at a carpentry contract service where he was still apparently going out doing jobs. Fortunately, his status meant that when I announced that I would be stepping back to focus on management and mentoring there wasn't much surprise. Some grumbling, perhaps, because we were down an active man, but we'll likely hire someone soon enough. In the meantime, I try and fill in the
gaps of my knowledge with a combination of research (thank you
Youtube) and engaging in 'mentorship' that involves a lot of asking questions, "Like I'm a customer who knows nothing". That’s gotten a couple of laughs from how good of an “impression”
I was putting on. I had assumed eventually they'd catch on I legitimately didn't know anything, but they do say the Inn's magic seems to keep a fog of sorts on any thoughts that question smaller discrepancies. So, for now at least, I seem to be keeping job security.
The rest of Clint's life has been...different, at least. It seems that outside of work and family he hasn't had much of a support network. I've gone out to the bar a few times here and there with coworkers, tried feigning interest in sports and such, but otherwise most of the time it has been work, home, and calling Caleb. About the only really interesting part of his life I've got left to get into is his - and my - relationship with Shannon, which is where Caleb and I have had some overlap in experiences.
As I linked above, Caleb has been dealing with a lot of anxiety around the fact that compared to his real self, Rylee has a normal teenage girl's level of sexual attraction and desire. While sexual attraction and libido are two different things, and an asexual individual is perfectly capable of desiring sex for reasons other than sexual attraction, every sign points to him having been essentially sex repulsed. Suddenly having his body flip a complete 180 degrees on that has definitely got to be frustrating, especially when he lacks the, uhm, experience in managing the emotions. I've tried my best to talk with him about it, but he's still in a denial stage and seems more interested in trying to just ignore it till we get back to the Inn. To his credit, at least, he wasn't as bothered by the fact the first signs of it was directed towards men, but perhaps that's another bridge he'll just have to cross after dealing with this first one.
In comparison, my experience in that field with Clint has, if anything, been more of a general decrease in desire, but that's more of a result I think of Clint's overall age than anything regarding his orientation. Considering some of the inadvertent stirrings from "little Clint" when some of the younger guys at work have their wives or girlfriends swing by, I'm pretty confident that whatever changes happened are primarily the direction of the attraction than existence.
Speaking of which…
After the blowup between us due to Rylee and I's "extended trip to the Inn", I invited Shannon out to dinner as a sort of peace offering so as to maintain a good relationship. As long as she was the one with custody of Rylee - and thereby Caleb - it felt important to do so. Plus, I had talked with the original Clint about how I had been looking to go into counseling and offered to help him figure out a plan to perhaps reconcile him and Shannon. He was hesitant, but at the end of the day the separation really did seem to be more one him and Shannon felt was a necessity than something they wanted to do. If I could help patch things up, wasn't I obligated to do so?
She was, of course, surprised at the fact that I was offering, but once I offered to just pay for her to go out for a nice dinner if she really didn't want me there, she agreed we could go out together. It was a hesitant agree, but you have to start somewhere.
Side note, it is distressing
how little variety men have in options for going out for a nice dinner. Clint's closet had basically one suit, navy blue, and that was it. To be fair, Shannon wasn't pushing the boundaries of fashion either, wearing a modest but figure-hugging black dress, and she definitely was maintaining a good figure for someone her age. A testament to that exercise routine she did with Rylee, I presume. I must have been staring a bit too obviously as while she didn't say anything she did seem to give a little smirk as she sat down.
We exchanged a couple pleasantries and got our initial orders in when she started getting to more serious business.
“So, while I have you here, we
need to coordinate about getting Rylee to-”
“Why don’t we talk about
something other than Rylee tonight?”
I was aware that at some point we would need to coordinate the logistics of getting Caleb to college, but that wasn't the goal for tonight. See, I suspect that a big problem with Clint and Shannon was that, as they got in years, work and raising Rylee had taken up the majority of their attention. It was a classic problem, really, growing separate due to a lack of keeping up the romance between two partners as life got in the way. Redirecting things away from Rylee, just for a little, would hopefully set a good foundation for solving that problem.
The fact it would help to fill in some gaps in information I had about him and her helped as well.
She went along with it, keeping to whatever other topics we could talk about. It was awkward at first, trying to figure out a line of conversation we could keep up. I had to push my active listening skills to the max, hoping that my asking questions was taken as a sign of engagement than faulty memory. Once things got rolling, and we got a little wine in our systems, things seemed to lighten up. By the end of the night, she was actually smiling and laughing and willing to call the evening as a whole "Nice".
And that's where we had to leave it, because one good dinner wasn't going to fix everything after all.
Still, it was at least enough that the first real sign of progress came shortly after we had finished moving "Rylee" in and had gotten to our hotel for the night to rest up before the drive back the next day. I had expected the two of us would get separate rooms, but at the check in counter they handed over two keycards to the same room.
“We got college tuition to help pay for, no point wasting money on two rooms when we can just use two beds,” she said, and she kept to that as the two of us stayed in our own beds the whole night.
Still, that’s a start! If I
can make sure Clint can keep things up once he's back in this body, I think there's a chance that the two of them will work things out.
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