Dave/Jade: Off to Europe

It’s been a pretty hectic time since we left the Inn, so I haven’t managed to send any updates until now.

After changing into Jade, I went looking for my travel companion in the morning and found her in the next room with a somewhat bewildered look. I explained what had happened, and she took it all in, surprisingly with very few questions — I guess she was just stunned.

We took stock of where we were supposed to be and what we were doing next, and saw that we had a few days before our flight out of JFK. Not wanting to do much travelling before then, we decided to head straight to New York and booked a bus that afternoon.

Getting dressed for the first time was...an experience. I pulled on yoga pants and a loose T-shirt. I found a sports bra, which wasn’t too hard to figure out after some trial and error. I’d originally planned to go without, but the movement was disconcerting, and the bra definitely helped with that. Then came the panties. They looked impossibly small and uncomfortable, but to my surprise, they weren’t bad at all — in fact, far more comfortable than the prosthetic-packed briefs I used to wear when I was Chris.

Tash, who used to be an 18 year old girl from Philadelphia called Sophie, also wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of backpacking through Europe. But staying illegally in the States would risk deportation, which would almost certainly ruin our chances of returning to the Inn next year. So, we decided to just go along with the plan and make the best of it.

I went through Jade’s messages and found out her boyfriend was planning to meet us in London in September. Yeah, her boyfriend. That’ll be fun to navigate.

New York was… New York. Loud, crowded, expensive. We did the usual sightseeing: Empire State, Ground Zero, Central Park, some obligatory Statue of Liberty photos (from a long way away — tickets were long sold out). We tried to play the tourist game right, posting pictures on Instagram, keeping up the illusion.

We stayed in an 8-bed all-female dorm. Being surrounded by young women while still feeling like a man in his 40s on the inside — it made me hyper-aware of myself, my body, how I moved, how I looked. I kept my head down while we were there.

We got invited out by some Dutch girls from our dorm. That night, I drank more than I expected and had more fun than I thought I could. They gave us their contacts and said we should look them up in Holland. We might just do that.

On our second morning, Tash pulled me aside on Broadway and said, "Umm, there’s blood on your shorts." I immediately panicked and rushed into the nearest hotel to find a bathroom. I mustn’t have inserted the tampon properly – I’m new at this. The thin pad I’d put in my panties as a backup hadn’t caught everything, so I cleaned up as best I could. I obviously didn’t want to keep walking around with a blood stain on my shorts, but the only clean clothes I had back at the hostel, that were suitable for the weather, were dresses and skirts. Tash tried to convince me to wear one, but I’m not ready for that yet. We found a clothing store, and I bought black shorts, on which you can’t see stains as easily as the beige shorts I originally had on.

Eventually, we flew to Dublin. I felt nervous going through passport control, knowing I wasn’t the person in the passport photo, but no one blinked. Jade has family in Galway, and we were meant to stay with them. We caught a bus across the country. I expected the trip to last a lot longer than the 2 and a half hours that it actually took. Ireland is a lot smaller than you think! Jade’s uncle picked us up and drove us to their home. There’s one guest room with a double bed. Sharing with Tash was awkward — neither of us were thrilled — but we didn’t have a good excuse not to.

We both need money, so we started job-hunting almost immediately. Luckily, Galway’s full of pubs, and the tourist season is kicking off, so we found work quickly. Having run a café last year as Chris, the environment was fairly familiar. I’m getting hit on more than I know how to handle — which is both flattering and strange. I still haven’t figured out how to respond, but Tash has been more helpful than she knows.

Ireland is a nice country though, and the people are really friendly. Maybe this will be OK after all.