Chapter 2

Ken sat on his suitcase in the arrivals area, searching the crowd for his new American family. Where were they? He had landed over two hours ago and was still in the airport. Phone calls to their house only got an answering machine.

The crowd ebbed and flowed around him. Families with children, overweight limo drivers with hand-printed signs, business colleagues, young couples ... everyone else seemed to find each other. Joyous reunions were played out over and over before Ken's envious eyes.

In a moment of dizziness, Ken teetered on his suitcase and toppled to the floor, legs sprawled wide and skirt splayed open. He slowly got up, brushed off, righted the suitcase, and sat back down, holding his hands to his face and massaging his eyes he tried to shut out the confusion and melee which swirled around him.

Ken was dirty, hot, and fatally tired. He had been awake for 37 hours, having slept only fitfully on the plane, and he was so tired that he had no coherent thoughts, only panicky feelings. He wanted nothing more than a clean bed and a cup of warm tea with milk and honey.

The night before he had stayed up until 2:30 in the morning, waiting until everyone else was sure to be asleep. Picking up his suitcase he carefully crept out of house and left by the back door. Walking down the street to a local grocery store, he called for a taxi. Hopefully, his parents would both leave for work and, since it was a school holiday, would not bother to wake him. With luck, his absence would not be discovered until late today.

Ken, afraid of nodding off, stood up to stretch his legs, wincing as his pinched toes complained. 2" heels, he had reasoned, no problem! But his feet were now in real pain, and so he quickly sat back down, nearly falling again on the unstable suitcase which he now realized was missing a foot.

Ken looked down at his rumbled clothes and thought back to when he had picked them out with his transsexual friend Sandra.

"No, no!" his friend Sandra had said. Sandra was a fairly famous architect in the city and so was fairly well traveled. "You don't want to wear that!"

Ken had originally picked out a short, pin-striped skirt with a wide, open-collar shirt. "Why not?" Ken asked. "It looks just like this outfit I saw at DKNY."

Sandra shook his head. "No, no. They don't want you to look like a Yank, see? It's way too short and revealing. I mean, you've got the body for it, no problem there! I don't know how you do it. But no. What they will want is for you to look like a proper English lady. Try this instead."

Ken took the hanger from Sandra and went to try it on. Sandra had picked out a light brown suit, narrow-cut, classic, and hemmed just to the knee with a soft light-weight wool fabric, and a fashionably long suit jacket.

When Ken stepped out of the changing room Sandra whistled. "See? It's perfect! You are the very picture of a modest, but capable, young women. That's what they'll be looking for."

Ken looked at himself in the mirror. The cut on the jacket was perfect, and wonderfully accented his narrow waist. Ken turned over the price tag price tag and gasped. "But Sandra! It's much too expensive. I can't possibly afford it!"

"Tut tut!" Sandra clucked. "It's my treat."

But now, he looked horrible! The light brown suit that had looked so sharp was now rumpled and dirty. His stretch cotton blouse, chosen to generously hug his curves and accentuate his fake breasts, now felt sticky and damp. He resisted the temptation to scratch his chest where the under wire bra dug in cruelly. He desperately wanted to impress his new American hosts. "But how impressive can I possibly be, like this?" he fretted.

Ken thought back with longing to his transsexual friend Sandra and his wife Sarah. Lost and alone in this huge new country, he was already homesick for them. It was through a transgender support group that Ken was first put in contact with Sandra. Ken never actually went to any of the meetings, it would have been impossible given how carefully his parents watched over him, but the organizer of the group had suggested that Ken talk to Sandra, who lived just a short bicycle ride away. For nearly half a year, Ken had held on to Sandra's phone number, unable to muster the courage to make the call. It was only after the terrible fight with his parents that he found the courage to do so.

Not reserved or snooty at all, the Dickinsons welcomed Ken wholeheartedly into their household and unconditionally accepted him as a young woman. Sandra was English, but born and raised in California. His wife Sarah was a seamstress who loved to sew pretty dresses, and was more than delighted to have one more willing and appreciative model to wear her designs. Ken never ventured from home dressed 'en femme' for fear of running into his real family, but Sandra did, and with relish. He was so flamboyant that he could carry off any outfit that Sarah devised. How he could be so honestly oblivious to the curious stares around him was a source of inspiration to Ken, who had lived his life fairly dictated by the perceptions of others. Perhaps it was Sandra's job, as an art and architecture critic for one of the London broadsheets, which gave him the strength, for in his job he had to put up with a great deal of enmity from those who disagreed with his opinions.

The first time that Ken went to visit, for tea, was just after the stitches had been removed from the blow to his head. Although Ken was too discrete to blame his parents, some bitterness inevitably leaked out, and he suspected that Sandra and Sarah had an inkling that the cut was not entirely accidental. Perhaps because of this, Sandra and Sarah started calling Ken their 'adopted daughter', a pet name which brought a contented smile to his lips, even now. They encouraged him to call them "Mum" and "Dad", and it was through their care that Ken gained back some of the self confidence, fun, and love of experimentation that he had lost. "They saved my life," Ken reflected simply, for after meeting them he soon abandoned his plans to commit suicide.

It was in the spirit of adopted family connections that Sandra and Sarah eventually agreed to become accomplices in Ken's plan to become an Au Pair in America. Being around Sandra, and watching American movies and shows, Ken had naturally come to assume that America was chock full of tolerant, creative, fun-loving, uninhibited people, and so he had sent in his application to the Au Pair program, taking the name of his sister, Kathy, and listing the Dickinsons as his guardians. Sandra and Ken handled phone calls and interviews easily and honestly, albeit from their more liberal point of view.

Even though Sandra did not himself dress full-time as a woman, he had absolutely no problem with Ken passing himself off as one, for Sandra knew dozens of such transsexuals in England doing the same, many of them married like he was. "Listen carefully to your heart," Sandra often said, "for it will never steer you wrong."