***Before we start. Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters except
the ones that I have made up from my head. Rory, Tristan, Chilton, etc,
are not byproducts of my psychotic imagination, but rather belong to the WB
and Amy Sherman Palladino. In addition, as a warning, there will be some
swear words (not the harsh ones) in this chapter and the coming chapters.
Please be forewarned. In addition, unfortunately I try my best to reread
the chapters before they are uploaded, but sometimes my editing skills fail
me, and so there might be some mistakes in the text below.***
You may ask. who the hell am I?
I mean, I don't exactly fit into this story. I'm not sweet, and I don't have a love interest that will make all little girls everywhere swoon and giggle and whisper "so cute!"
And my name. Definitely a disappointment. I'm not a Mindy, Cindy, Emily or Judy. Not even one of those cutesy names that end in "a" like Jessica, Amanda, Andrea, or Tamara.
It's Lauren. Right. And in France, Lauren is a boy's name, except they write it with a "t" at the end. Laurent. And they pronounce it with a lift too, making the name sound sophisticated. But when they discover I'm a girl, and completely un-French, they kind of all grimace, and sigh.
The bane of my existence. Sighing. It's like one of those fads. people do it just because it's a crowd pleaser. I fear for the next generation, because I truly believe that they won't be able to express their discontentment without making that wheezing sound that makes them seem as sophisticated as my Dad when he's sneezing through one of his allergy attacks (It's the damn pollen, Lauren. I can't stand the damn pollen).
So to answer all of your questions? What exactly is my contribution to the story?
Well, I'm the girl who fought with popularity and lost. But no, I'm not the nerdy, gawky teenager who woke up one day with the desire to overtake the societal structure that is the social hierarchy in educational facilities across the nation, and aided by a Wonderbra and an awesome hair stylist, I took the high school system by storm.
Rather, I was the poor soul who woke up one day to find that everybody was calling her beautiful while mentally calculating behind her back exactly how many dollars her Daddy was making a year. The answer?
Too much.
*** Geez.
Can we say cheesy?
Next thing you'll know, she'll convince you all that she's some kind of pity case that's one step away from the Salvation Army and soup kitchens.
God dammit, Lauren. You always make me look bad.
Do I go on and on about my sterile relationship with my parents or the fact that my last girlfriend thought that a tankini and sarong were appropriate garments to wear to my cousin's wedding?
No. I just take life as it is. One day at a time, one painful mishap after another.
I don't ask for pity, like some people that I know.
And the whole name thing? It's Tristan. Not Joe or Josh or Joshua. Tristan.
And it's not like I moan and groan about the fact that I didn't get a choice in the matter for the past seventeen years of my life.
Like most things, I just take it as it is.
*** Okay. Enough. Are you going to be telling the story, or shall I?
Because quite frankly, Tristan, you can't tell a story worth a shit.
So you may be wondering, how did we both become best friends? How did a semi-intelligent, sophisticated and sane young woman ever find herself with a guy best friend who thought that refined living meant eating Pogos with linen napkins instead of paper towels?
How, you ask?
Simple. Because we were both bored with our worlds. I mean, come on! One day, I was quietly enjoying my incognito status at Chilton, and then there's the incident where Buddy Laraday manages to sneak into the secretariat and suddenly its all over school that Daddy was number 23 on Fortune's richest and most powerful list, and that while studying in Monaco, I'd managed to go out with not one, but three distant members of European royal families.
So suddenly, I'm catapulted into the limelight, and then there's all these expectations. Like where I buy my clothes. Like what I eat for lunch. Like who I hang out with.
So why Tristan?
Well, he's not so bad once you get over the gloating and cockiness (but don't you dare let that go to your head, Tristan). And he was in the same situation as I was. Bored with the people around us, and unwillingly stuck atop a societal pyramid of supremacy.
So that was that.
But just so long as we're on the same page here, there was, I have to admit, a moment of brief insanity.
Yes. I, Lauren St. Martin, once dated for a very brief moment in time, Tristan DuGrey.
It was probably the single-most stupid, foolhardy, incredibly ridiculous-
*** Again, can we say exaggeration?
Four dates, and she gives you the impression that they made her want to join one of those cults where they make you wear purple turbans and declare your love for some guy named Francesco.
Besides, dates with me are never bad. In fact, all I've gotten was positive feedback. in more ways than one. Plus, nobody could ever claim that they weren't stimulating.
Anyway, the point is, she was bored, I was bored, we became bored together, and after one night where we went further than we should have, we called it off.
Us. Together.
It wouldn't work.
It was a good thing that nobody ever knew about us. That was the year Dad cheated on Mom with mistress #3, some bridge-playing socialite, and Lauren's Dad's company was acquired in the single biggest merger in US history.
More gossip would not have been healthy.
But bachelorhood was good for me. I figured, what the hey? At least ten more years before my parents even attempt to convince me to settle down, and in the meantime, I had plenty of money to spend, and plenty of girls to spend it on (if I was ever so inclined).
*** Can we say delusional?
Sure, put on that whole, I was damn happy façade. I know better.
I could see him frown at everybody around him. He was bored. He always was. Actually, I think he never stopped being bored, even when we went out.
Tristan was bored. I was bored.
Something was bound to happen.
But not in the way you would expect.
So one day, I was looking for my pair of Gucci sandals, the black ones that I bought in Italy two summers ago, when I remembered that I had lent them to Rebecca, my endearing, though evermore annoying younger sister.
And what did I stumble upon in her bedroom? Piles of romance novels. Everywhere. Hidden in her closet, in her desk, under her bed. They were all Mom's too, though she probably forgot all about them once she had originally read them. My sister had slowly transferred them from the library downstairs to her room, cramming them into every available inch of space.
At first I thought that my sister was reading them for the steamy sex scenes that could predictably be found in between pages of witless banter and flirtatious undertones.
But no.
Get this. Rebecca is the world's greatest romantic. And I don't mean that in a good way, either. As soon as she grows out of her freckles, and a guy starts looking at her funny, she'll suddenly believe herself to be head over heals in love and pledge her undying devotion to the lucky bastard under a starlit sky.
I'm not kidding. She confided in me about this when I spoke to her about the romance novels. After the original, "how dare you invade my privacy speech," there was a tense moment or two when I thought she would never give me back my sandals, but eventually she did and told me all of this.
She reads these novels because that's what she thinks love is all about.
I would have told her otherwise, but she wouldn't let me. Instead, she went straight for her video collection and started putting random tapes into her VCR.
Apparently, she was addicted to this show called Matchmaker, in addition to her addiction to the romance novels. This is a program where a friend tries to match you up with a potential life mate. Rebecca wants to go on that show and be matched with a James Van Der Beek look-alike.
But suddenly I got this mental image stuck in my head.
I was bored. Tristan was bored.
And then there was Matchmaker.
For some reason, that night, finding Tristan's potential life mate had seemed like a good idea.
Even more surprisingly, I actually followed through with it.
***
You may ask. who the hell am I?
I mean, I don't exactly fit into this story. I'm not sweet, and I don't have a love interest that will make all little girls everywhere swoon and giggle and whisper "so cute!"
And my name. Definitely a disappointment. I'm not a Mindy, Cindy, Emily or Judy. Not even one of those cutesy names that end in "a" like Jessica, Amanda, Andrea, or Tamara.
It's Lauren. Right. And in France, Lauren is a boy's name, except they write it with a "t" at the end. Laurent. And they pronounce it with a lift too, making the name sound sophisticated. But when they discover I'm a girl, and completely un-French, they kind of all grimace, and sigh.
The bane of my existence. Sighing. It's like one of those fads. people do it just because it's a crowd pleaser. I fear for the next generation, because I truly believe that they won't be able to express their discontentment without making that wheezing sound that makes them seem as sophisticated as my Dad when he's sneezing through one of his allergy attacks (It's the damn pollen, Lauren. I can't stand the damn pollen).
So to answer all of your questions? What exactly is my contribution to the story?
Well, I'm the girl who fought with popularity and lost. But no, I'm not the nerdy, gawky teenager who woke up one day with the desire to overtake the societal structure that is the social hierarchy in educational facilities across the nation, and aided by a Wonderbra and an awesome hair stylist, I took the high school system by storm.
Rather, I was the poor soul who woke up one day to find that everybody was calling her beautiful while mentally calculating behind her back exactly how many dollars her Daddy was making a year. The answer?
Too much.
*** Geez.
Can we say cheesy?
Next thing you'll know, she'll convince you all that she's some kind of pity case that's one step away from the Salvation Army and soup kitchens.
God dammit, Lauren. You always make me look bad.
Do I go on and on about my sterile relationship with my parents or the fact that my last girlfriend thought that a tankini and sarong were appropriate garments to wear to my cousin's wedding?
No. I just take life as it is. One day at a time, one painful mishap after another.
I don't ask for pity, like some people that I know.
And the whole name thing? It's Tristan. Not Joe or Josh or Joshua. Tristan.
And it's not like I moan and groan about the fact that I didn't get a choice in the matter for the past seventeen years of my life.
Like most things, I just take it as it is.
*** Okay. Enough. Are you going to be telling the story, or shall I?
Because quite frankly, Tristan, you can't tell a story worth a shit.
So you may be wondering, how did we both become best friends? How did a semi-intelligent, sophisticated and sane young woman ever find herself with a guy best friend who thought that refined living meant eating Pogos with linen napkins instead of paper towels?
How, you ask?
Simple. Because we were both bored with our worlds. I mean, come on! One day, I was quietly enjoying my incognito status at Chilton, and then there's the incident where Buddy Laraday manages to sneak into the secretariat and suddenly its all over school that Daddy was number 23 on Fortune's richest and most powerful list, and that while studying in Monaco, I'd managed to go out with not one, but three distant members of European royal families.
So suddenly, I'm catapulted into the limelight, and then there's all these expectations. Like where I buy my clothes. Like what I eat for lunch. Like who I hang out with.
So why Tristan?
Well, he's not so bad once you get over the gloating and cockiness (but don't you dare let that go to your head, Tristan). And he was in the same situation as I was. Bored with the people around us, and unwillingly stuck atop a societal pyramid of supremacy.
So that was that.
But just so long as we're on the same page here, there was, I have to admit, a moment of brief insanity.
Yes. I, Lauren St. Martin, once dated for a very brief moment in time, Tristan DuGrey.
It was probably the single-most stupid, foolhardy, incredibly ridiculous-
*** Again, can we say exaggeration?
Four dates, and she gives you the impression that they made her want to join one of those cults where they make you wear purple turbans and declare your love for some guy named Francesco.
Besides, dates with me are never bad. In fact, all I've gotten was positive feedback. in more ways than one. Plus, nobody could ever claim that they weren't stimulating.
Anyway, the point is, she was bored, I was bored, we became bored together, and after one night where we went further than we should have, we called it off.
Us. Together.
It wouldn't work.
It was a good thing that nobody ever knew about us. That was the year Dad cheated on Mom with mistress #3, some bridge-playing socialite, and Lauren's Dad's company was acquired in the single biggest merger in US history.
More gossip would not have been healthy.
But bachelorhood was good for me. I figured, what the hey? At least ten more years before my parents even attempt to convince me to settle down, and in the meantime, I had plenty of money to spend, and plenty of girls to spend it on (if I was ever so inclined).
*** Can we say delusional?
Sure, put on that whole, I was damn happy façade. I know better.
I could see him frown at everybody around him. He was bored. He always was. Actually, I think he never stopped being bored, even when we went out.
Tristan was bored. I was bored.
Something was bound to happen.
But not in the way you would expect.
So one day, I was looking for my pair of Gucci sandals, the black ones that I bought in Italy two summers ago, when I remembered that I had lent them to Rebecca, my endearing, though evermore annoying younger sister.
And what did I stumble upon in her bedroom? Piles of romance novels. Everywhere. Hidden in her closet, in her desk, under her bed. They were all Mom's too, though she probably forgot all about them once she had originally read them. My sister had slowly transferred them from the library downstairs to her room, cramming them into every available inch of space.
At first I thought that my sister was reading them for the steamy sex scenes that could predictably be found in between pages of witless banter and flirtatious undertones.
But no.
Get this. Rebecca is the world's greatest romantic. And I don't mean that in a good way, either. As soon as she grows out of her freckles, and a guy starts looking at her funny, she'll suddenly believe herself to be head over heals in love and pledge her undying devotion to the lucky bastard under a starlit sky.
I'm not kidding. She confided in me about this when I spoke to her about the romance novels. After the original, "how dare you invade my privacy speech," there was a tense moment or two when I thought she would never give me back my sandals, but eventually she did and told me all of this.
She reads these novels because that's what she thinks love is all about.
I would have told her otherwise, but she wouldn't let me. Instead, she went straight for her video collection and started putting random tapes into her VCR.
Apparently, she was addicted to this show called Matchmaker, in addition to her addiction to the romance novels. This is a program where a friend tries to match you up with a potential life mate. Rebecca wants to go on that show and be matched with a James Van Der Beek look-alike.
But suddenly I got this mental image stuck in my head.
I was bored. Tristan was bored.
And then there was Matchmaker.
For some reason, that night, finding Tristan's potential life mate had seemed like a good idea.
Even more surprisingly, I actually followed through with it.
***