Tyler/Lauren: Status quo

I don't know why, but I figured I would be the "newbie" on this little blog for at least a while, since it doesn't seem like that many people who stay at the Inn, overall, find it (or bother, if they do.) I told Carrie she could contribute if she liked, but she's not much of a writer. As to those who have recently joined "the club" I don't have much in the way of advice, or even comfort. But, uh, good luck I guess?

(Fact about me: I am bad with sympathy/feelings, just ask anyone who's seen me at a funeral.)

I want to write a lot, but I find myself stuck on the fact that nothing is happening, besides the constant background noise of the family, and Lauren's friends constantly sending her pointless texts that I am obligated to answer back. This generation, I swear, if they can't constantly be in touch with each other they don't know where they are. It's affecting me, too: I'm constantly checking the phone to see if I missed something. Besides that, I think that if I didn't look the way I do, this would almost be a dream existence: all this free time and no responsibility, no job, nobody to look out for. Instead, I'm facing boredom bordering on depression.

Lauren's friends have provided a surrogate entertainment system for me. I've dropped into their lives like one might a soap opera (do those still exist?) It's confusing at first, but once you get to know the characters you become intrigued by their lives. I'm making little diagrams, with Lauren's help, of who's dating who, who dated in the past, who she's on good terms with, who she hates (publicly and privately) who hates her (publicly and assumed) etc etc. Add Seann to that list, who has repeatedly posted the word "whore" on her Facebook wall (although the first time it was "hoar." So there's that.) I find it a little sad that I find this somehow more stimulating than studying for hours on end. I promise not to bore you with the details unless they somehow become relevant. (I mean, what's relevant anymore? Or irrelevant, for that matter?)

More important is what I know about the family. Lauren's mother Susan was married to Paul Sherman for only two years or so - it would seem to be a shotgun wedding, if I've got the timeline right. He moved around a lot, and kept only barely in touch while Susan raised the kid on her own. Sometime later she met Albert Blanchard, who already had a daughter named Tasha  (b. 1992) and was either already divorced, or getting divorced, or maybe still married, Lauren didn't seem to know the full story, and I don't blame her. Tasha and Lauren did grow up together a little bit, because Tasha's mother briefly lost custody to Albert while she was unemployed. Then Tasha turned 18 and moved out on her own.

Susan doesn't really like Tasha, Albert is pretty distant toward Lauren. I think they reckon since she's almost done high school and they've got these other two kids about to hit puberty they can leave Lauren to her own devices... or at least palm her off on her big stepsister. That don't mean they ain't keeping tabs on her - I can't hardly leave the house without them asking where I'll be and who with.

They're not poor - Lauren gets an exorbitant allowance compared to what I got when I was that age (I had an afterschool job, Lauren seems barred from getting one) - but they're not thriving as a one-point-five income family with three mouths to feed, in a bad economy... part of the shrinking middle class, as Meghan pointed out to me.

Susan works part-time as a maid, which counter-intuitively seems to explain why the house isn't overly clean: she doesn't bring her work home with her. She looks permanently exhausted, with bags under her eyes and probably a bit prematurely aged, only in her early 40s but looking a decade older. Albert's a skinny guy who is probably about my old height, and bald except on the sides. He manages a fried chicken place (hello Breaking Bad?) so he's the breadwinner, and brings work home a few nights a week. This is infinitely preferable to Susan's cooking, no offense to her: it's a lot of mac & cheese, hamburger helper, meatloaf... basic meals that remind me of the less pleasant parts of my youth.

I'd kill for a pizza. But anyway, Lauren's constitution and appetite means I don't eat a ton of this stuff anyway. Lauren's skinny, and I know enough about teenage girls to guess why. I don't aim to make a ton of changes to her life, but I would like to get her healthy, enough so that it's not so easy to see her ribs. There's this frustrating clash between what I want to eat and what I can handle eating, which leads to an irritable Tyler.

In fact, speaking of my mood... I don't know, I find myself slightly more emotionally volatile than I am normally. Things that irritate me bother me, that I used to just shrug off as "the way of the world" suddenly strike me down in my core, and I find myself wanting to drop everything and hide in my room. I've become a literal teenager, probably due to swirling hormones mixed with the actual trauma and the fact that, well, there's a lot going on in this life to stress me out and trigger these little moments. I just chafe at being pulled this way and that by Lauren's social group, her family, and my own urge to fuck off and run away. Meghan might be satisfied to know I actually did break down and cry a few times in the last few weeks

Besides the parents, there's also the twins, 11-year-old Kylie and Kevin, running around. Kevin's a little brat (not my first choice of word either) always bringing his friends over and loudly playing XBox. Kid's got a mouth on him, let me tell you. Kylie's at gymnastics three nights a week, so I hardly even saw her until school got out. She's pretty well-behaved, except when she loses her cool, then she wails like a banshee.

She's also got some weird boundary issues. We were at the mall a few weeks ago, and she had me take her into a certain ladies apparel place, where she remarked that she hoped when she grew up she looked more like Tasha than Lauren. Then she puffed out her top with her hands to demonstrate what she meant.

Um... kay. I did not think girls thought much about that before it happened. But it's no different from my friends and I all comparing muscles and pit hair when we were that age (hint: we didn't have much. Yet.)

There's one other thing I've been doing... somewhat reluctantly, somewhat because I'm interested. Lauren was in singing lessons, on Thursday nights, and while I can't exactly pick up where she left off, something tells me Lauren was not that great of a student because nobody seemed all that alarmed by the warbling, self-conscious, off-key rendition of "Do Re Mi" I let off. Still, there are worse hobbies to pursue, I suppose. Beats gymnastics. And slightly easier to fake your way through.

That's pretty much the lowdown on my life, for now, the status quo as it is. When I can, I spend time with Meghan, although with her working nights and me in school there wasn't a lot of time for that until recently. I'll leave it to her to tell you about her life, because for all I know there's things she doesn't want to tell the internet.

I guess all this is my way of defensively wondering if it's a problem how settled I've gotten within a month. I referenced the "Lauren-shaped" dip in the bed, and I feel that's like a perfect metaphor for what's going on. How fucked up it is that this life is all set up for me, and it's not what I'm used to, and even more than a bit uncomfortable, but... it's shaped for me. For Lauren, who I happen to currently be.

Tyler/Lauren: Bare truths

The First Night

One thing I have to say about Lauren's room is that it was neat. It was a study in how many ways there are to store clothes, because there are two dressers, a loaded closet, shelves, a shoe rack, a cosmetic table, and bins that contain her winter clothes. The fact that she even differentiates between winter clothes and summer clothes boggles my mind. The only non-wearable possessions she seems to have are technology: a laptop and of course her phone. This girl seems to own no books, no CDs, no DVDs... although in a day and age where iTunes and Netflix are the norm, I can see why she wouldn't. People just don't own things anymore.

I haven't sorted through the entire wardrobe yet, having carved out a small number of items I feel comfortable wearing: t-shirts and pants. It's too hot for long sleeves, and this body seems to react to extreme heat something fierce. From what I've seen, most of Lauren's clothes are designed to free up as much skin as possible, highlighting her figure.

The overprotective brother in me thinks this is not okay, and girls that young shouldn't show off their bodies so much, but the part of me that is dying of heat exhaustion thinks it's fine. I wish there were some middle-ground between "loose, breathable summer clothes" and "modest coverage" for this girl. But there isn't: I'm looking at a summer in pairs of shorts that are smaller than what I used to wear for underwear.

When I first got here, I finally came to grips with the fact that three days of just living had made me grimy as hell. This issue was already lurking in the back of my mind from the time I read Lauren's letter, but I made efforts to rationalize it: I'm a caretaker of this body. I'm going to have to look sometimes, to touch.

The sliding door of her closet is a wall-sized mirror, so no matter where I go in the room, if I don't have my back to that wall I can see myself. Have to see myself. I walked close to look myself in the pretty blue eyes.

"Hi Lauren," I said to my reflection, "My name's Tyler, I'll be... you, for a while. Sorry about this."

Closing my eyes, I pulled my t-shirt over my head at the neck - I reckon sooner or later I'll get used to the extra drag created by my hair. Then I slipped my thumbs under the waist of my sweats and pushed them down to my ankles - beneath, I had actually been wearing a pair of my own jockey shorts, which slipped off on their own, being that there was enough room for two Laurens in there.

I clasped my arms around the delicate regions and pointed my eyes at the ceiling to open them. Slowly, slowly I brought them down until I was staring myself in the eye. Then I let my gaze scan from my reflection's bare feet up along my legs, crotch, torso, breasts, and neck until finally I was looking myself in the face again. Modestly, I cupped my breasts with my hands and, in a vain attempt to complete the coverage, tried to crook one leg over the other to guard my, er, lower half.

I know this has been my body for a few days, but I couldn't get over how frail and helpless I looked under my clothes. I started to shiver and shake.

You've never seen something so pretty looking so unpleasant.

I decided to focus on little details. The freckle above her lip, her perfectly straight, white teeth, the little intents where she has her ears pierced, the little crown of eyelashes encircling her baby blues. I tried to force my grimace into a pained smile. The girl looking back at me was pretty, but you could tell she was sad and not hiding it all that well.

I wrapped myself in a bathrobe and headed for the shower, which did not have the finest pressure I've ever felt, but I get it. I took my sweet time, rinsing my sweaty parts, hairless legs and underarms, behind my knees and ears, dumping loads of shampoo into my hair. I was trying so hard to be thorough and functional about it that I must have spent forty minutes in there before turning the knob off. I feel like someone should have checked to make sure I was still alive, but that's the benefit of being a teenage girl: nobody thinks twice if you're in the bathroom forever.

I made the mistake of trying to dry my hair in the washroom, which took way, way longer than I'm used to, which is when the door opened on me... and I met Lauren's 11-year-old half-brother Kevin.

So, I guess those locks on the bathroom are just decorative.

I stood there slack-jawed. I probably could have covered up better, because at that point I was still buck naked with a shower casually slung over my shoulder, not particularly covering anything. I could have shrieked at him for not knocking, pushed him out, done anything, but I guess I was still deep in self-absorption that I waited for him to back hurriedly out, after presumably getting way more of an eyeful of his sister than he ever expected.

Wet hair and all, I slumped back to "my" room to comb out the tangles. I changed into some pajamas, laid on my side and curled up into a ball, feeling like I could use a drink.

That's the moment I've been thinking of since I got here. Less than an hour in, I had already embarrassed myself and potentially traumatized a member of Lauren's family.

School

One of the first things I did after discerning what had happened to me and Meghan was to notify the real Lauren that we had "landed" so to speak in their bodies. This was accomplished by leaving her a lengthy, rambling, disoriented message swearing up and down that her life was in good hands, and then confessing it was probably odd to hear all this in her own voice and maybe it would be best to communicate through e-mails.

As it happened, she and her stepsister had wound up in the body of a couple from Austen, Texas - what's with people coming from all over to go to Maine? (Well, I guess I did.) So I guess making a visit is out of the question. As Alice Delacroix, she's supposed to be a personal chef, but is more suited for dishwashing. Her husband, Clay, aka Tasha, is an investor of some kind, which seems like a high pressure job, but I don't know what's needed to make a go at that.

She gave me the passwords to her various online accounts, and told me she would e-mail herself all the relevant homework she had been sent on vacation with, which she had special dispensation to turn in late. That was lucky, but that leaves the final exams for the year, which I have no idea how I'm going to tackle in her place. Cram hard, I suppose. Then, if I pass all those, I still have to live through her senior year.

So Tuesday morning, I woke up in my little Lauren-shaped divot in bed to the sound of an insistent knocking on the door. I slumped downstairs to find a busy breakfast scene, with Susan, her husband Albert, and the twins Kevin and Kylie, having a free-for-all. Susan looked at my ragged sleepclothes and immediately noticed something off: "Honey, you're usually up for hours by now, are you ok?"

I thought about telling them that no, I wasn't okay, but Lauren had missed plenty of school and it fell to me to sit in her place. I sucked it up and said I was just wiped after the vacay.

"Sounds like you've got a frog in your throat," Al piped up, commenting on my conscious attempts to grumble my way through having a girl's voice with a southern accent.

"It'll pass," I said, pouring myself some corn flakes, to the astonishment of the rest of the party.

"Since when did you eat breakfast?" Susan asked.

I shrugged. The old Lauren may have starved herself, but I don't intend to. I ate quickly, then dressed once again as grungily as I felt like I could get away with. To wit: I still didn't touch Lauren's underwear drawer.

I walked the kids to their school, which was on the way to mine, which I found only through the magic of GPS.

At 8:30, I made it to the doors of Eisenhower High. 12 minutes later I was 12 minutes late for Biology. Something about my first class in my newly de-aged now-female body being biology feels like it should be delightfully ironic instead of just sad.

After taking the only remaining seat and getting a strong talking-to from the teacher, I settled in for 40 of the boringest minutes of my recent existence.

And so it begins... more to come.