The Return Trip

The following weeks flew by and my days and nights were pretty well set. Into Madrid in the morning, back via the abattoir and dairy, dropping off the empty churns; unloading the next days’ goods then cleaning out the van.

In the afternoons there was paperwork and invoicing the government and my evenings was computer work and going to bed with Parnima when she was at the farm. I had developed a program to count the Palace products and deliveries so could now predict closely what they would need on any one day. I found that I was not using much make-up and spent almost every day in jeans. Henri went out of his way to consult me on farm business and I got to know the rest of our casuals. At the end of November there was, at last, something to break the monotony.

I was invited to a pre-Christmas party by one of my contacts at the Palace for the last Saturday in the month so, after all of the chores had been finished, made sure I was clean and tidy and dressed in one of my, now seldom used, slippery dresses. I was, by this time, only using a padded bra, having had the falsies removed in October, and when I had dressed to leave, found it hard to remember how to make myself look really good. I did get my face into some sort of order and took one of the small vans into the city and parked at the Palace, using my parking pass. Inside, my partner for the night greeted me with a kiss on the cheek and told me I looked ravishing. We sipped drinks and talked and circulated. I met up with Eduardo and Valentina, who looked like a devoted couple. I commented on this to Valentina who divulged that they were to be married in the New Year. I hugged her and told her I was happy for them and then gave Eduardo a kiss on the cheek.

A bit later on I saw my friendly judge with his wife. I could hardly believe my eyes as she looked radiant and he looked like he had aged five years. When he took my hand and kissed me on the cheek he whispered “Be careful what you wish for, my dear.” His wife gave me a hug and an air kiss and exclaimed that she was happy to see me as I had turned her life around when I last spoke to her. I also saw a couple of the older Napoleon and Louis crowd but they did not recognise me as they had hardly looked at my face when I was being serviced by them. All in all it was a good evening and I disappointed my partner in not agreeing to go home with him as I had to get up in the morning and load the van.

Driving home I reflected on the men I had seen tonight. I had been taken by more than a few but felt no more badly, or well, of them because of it. I was now my own girl and was building a business, something I was pretty good at. The following week our back-up generator arrived and was installed. We had decided to get one that was big enough to power the house and the henhouse as well so we became self- sufficient if there was a full failure.

December, I was told, was an odd month as my crew came back to the farm on the thirteenth and the others returned on the twentieth. The whiskeria was closed for the Christmas and New Year; my crew going back to Madrid on January the tenth to start the cycle again. Our local customers were at their lowest ebb and many also shut for the week. The Government, however, never shuts. The only days they did not take a delivery was Christmas Day and New Year’s Day so we had to stock up the cold room with extra churns and meat as our abattoir and dairy also took some time off. The good part of the period was that Jordana and I alternated with the driving and all of the other girls took turns in the passenger seat, all getting two visits to the Palace during their time home.

January tenth, my old crew went back to the whiskeria for their two weeks and life went on at the farm. Parnima was home for a five week period before she had to go back and we had slept together almost every night so far. After the others had left, she told me she wanted to move in with me and we moved her stuff into my rooms, putting another wardrobe in the corner of the sitting room for her clothes. It was very homely in the evening with the two of us in easy chairs, her watching television and me working on computer or farm papers. I came to the conclusion that we were almost like a married couple and I was taking a male role more and more as time went on. I spoke to her about this and we went to the locker where my pack had been stored, all those months ago, and brought it back to our rooms.

I looked through my pack and realised that, even if I wanted to wear my old clothes, they no longer fitted me as I had trimmed down quite a bit. I thought that I must have been a very drab looking man. My English passport would never get me through customs as I was now much prettier. On my trips, in and out of Madrid, I pondered on this and came to the conclusion that I was more like Eduardo now, back to being a man who thought with a female brain; but I was not like him because I looked more like a woman. I had not touched a dick other than my own for several months and no longer thought about it. My anus had closed up again to its normal size and I no longer had to wear a tampon. In most things I was reverting back to the man I was when I arrived at the farm. Well, not quite, as I was now sleeping with a woman on a permanent basis.

The crew changed on the twenty-fourth of January and Parnima went off to Madrid for her stint. I was actually quite sad to say cheerio on that Friday morning as I went to load up the van. On the first of February Eduardo and Valentina married in Salemanca and I was able to go to the wedding. They were going to Rome for their honeymoon. Afterwards I went back to the farm and took off my nice dress and wondered if I would have ever been invited to a politicians wedding if I was still fully male.

Parnima was back on the seventh and we fell into our usual routine for a couple of weeks. That was, until we started seeing reports on the television about the virus that was starting to spread. It had already appeared in a number of countries and I worried for Eduardo as it was already in Italy. They came home on the fifteenth and they were both well, having not visited the northern cities. On the thirtieth of January the WHO had released a general warning of a public health emergency so I figured that we should monitor this closely. Our Prime Minister was sure that Spain could not be affected and everything carried on as usual, even as other countries started closing their borders and restricting their populace to stay at home.

The crew changed on the twenty-first and I told Parnima to be very careful and to make sure that no-one should be allowed into the whiskeria if they had flu-like symptoms. She said that we would never get as bad as the Asian countries and I told her to still take care. I rang the whiskeria and asked Brutus if he could get hold of a heat camera to fit on the outside door so that he could monitor the temperature of customers. Within days he rang me back to tell me that he had forced Pavlina to restrict a few customers that showed a fever return, much to her annoyance.

I went to see Vanda on the afternoon of the fourth of March and got her to get the girls together. I told them that going back to Madrid was going to be dangerous for them. I said that the world cases of virus infection had doubled yesterday and that there were over four hundred cases in Italy and many in France, as well as the far flung countries such as Russia, Sweden and Iran. I had spoken to Eduardo and he had told me that, if the Prime Minister does listen to his advisors, he would lock everyone in their homes without notice and I told them that if they were caught in Madrid they would be in great danger. There were already a dozen or more cases in Madrid and Brutus was detecting would-be customers with a fever every day. I must have been believable as she rang Parnima and told her that it had been decided to close the whiskeria for the next few weeks. Parnima agreed as she had heard some awful stories in Madrid, herself.

That decided, the girls here were asked if they wanted to stay on the farm and they all said they would. They were told to pick up supplies when they were coming back from their runs and we listed a number of things that we would need, including genuine PPE. I had looked up previous pandemics and had made a note of all the items that had been stripped from the shops. Vanda took the bus and picked up the others that Friday. Brutus and Emilio had volunteered to stay at the whiskeria to make sure it stayed secure so, on the following week, I picked up a cooker and fridge and we put them in the dungeon, the only room with a tiled floor. They commandeered two of the bedrooms and brought in their own clothes and personal items. Brutus and I set up a video link so that we could communicate any time. Pavlina had told us she would stay at home until we needed her again and the casuals were told that we would contact them later.

I knew that Pavlina and a few of the girls thought it was all a bit crazy but came to realise how close it was when the Prime Minister finally announced the full lockdown on the fourteenth. That was also the date that the rest of our business stopped. One by one we got phone calls from our customers that they were being shut down and would get back to us when they reopened. The Government, however, carried on as before and we got into a system where the other girls took turns as passenger again, all getting their ID’s.

After about a week we had a visit from Eduardo and a couple of other men. They wanted to know if we could supply the local hospitals and we were then delivering again. We were now sending out the small vans twice a day to the hospitals and I was doing two runs to Madrid as we were now supplying more of the Palace. They had found that the normal supplier could not get the goods out of other countries any more. On our Madrid trips we dropped supplies at the whiskeria for the boys and sometimes could pick up required items from the suppliers warehouse.

Thankfully the abattoir and dairy had to keep going as essential businesses so we were not denied the meat and dairy products. We also had more cheese from our neighbour as they had their own customers dry up. All of our vehicles now sported the government sticker so we could travel freely. We had filled up with diesel just after the New Year but needed to get a refill in early April. The sheds were now full of essential supplies, the cold-room was usually filled and the chickens were still laying.

We now did all of our deliveries wearing scrubs and a mask and carried plenty of sanitiser. All vans were now disinfected and washed at the end of the day and it would have been harder if we didn’t have the full house to share the work. This carried on as the death list in Spain alone shot past twenty-five thousand. The saddest day for me was when Joseph emailed me that Portia had been taken into hospital but only lasted another two days. I knew that it was the bullet damage to her lungs that killed her. A week later Eduardo let me know that the judge had passed away but his wife was on the recovery list and a couple of days after that Brutus told us that Pavlina had gone. We were pretty sure that the puta population of Madrid had been decimated, how could it avoid it?

Life, as we knew it, had gone; likely, for ever. We remained busy and the farm became our life. All of the girls chipped in and took over some of the field work when our casuals failed to show up. Henri, with his wife, came to live with us in the let next to mine. She was originally a bit miffed when she found out that all of us had worked in a whiskeria, but came around and pulled her weight. As far as it went, we were well off. We had ready supplies of meat and dairy for our own use; vegetables and eggs from our own fields and we could go anywhere we liked with our government stickers. Our income was very good, when the government got around to paying us, and Eduardo pulled a few strings so we started to get paid in the usual thirty days by the Palace and the hospitals.

At the end of May Parnima announced that she was pregnant and there was much rejoicing. I was now a father in a dress! Well, not often these days as I was in jeans and boots fairly constantly. A week after that I got an email from Joseph to tell me that Portia had left me thirty percent of her business in her will. He also had thirty percent and the other forty percent was already in the hands of the employees through the profit sharing set-up. He actually now had thirty two percent with his share but, between us, we were the controlling shareholders. He said that he would be happy to work with me if I wanted to use my skills in the business. That would be something to think about after the lockdown ends. As a footnote to his email, he told me that the executors will be in touch to see what I wanted to do with the mansion, as she had left it to me as well.

By the middle of June we had discovered that the farm was where our future lay. All of the girls were happy they did not have to go into the whiskeria and several had taken up relationships with male hospital staff that they met while doing deliveries. Of course, there were no dates, as such, but I was sure that these would occur when we could go out more freely. Some movement was allowed now but many places remained shut.

Parnima and I were now classed as the couple who ran the farm and I could now step back from the driving and take care of the paperwork. Joseph was now sending me emails asking for my advice on every day business problems and a couple of times I went into the company to sort out problems. I was looking androgynous now, neither one or the other, and he was somewhat surprised the first time he saw me. He was all business and I appreciated that. I had taken Parnima with me and we collected the keys and looked at the mansion and thought that we could take ourselves out of the farm and live there with our child while I became a full-time executive in the security business. We could do it as a same-sex couple and I could wear my nice clothes again. The other girls will have enough to keep them busy when the cafes reopened and I predicted that they would need a couple more vans.

So, we crept towards a time when we could go back to normal, or whatever the new normal would be. The girls had decided that a more normal life would be good for them and would sell the whiskeria premises when the time was right. I had two jobs (at the moment), a new wife and family to be, and a totally different outlook on life. I was no longer Gene the nerd, nor was I Gene the puta, but now considered myself as just Gene the manager and businessperson who knew a lot about computers as well as now knowing a lot about farming. I had no male clothing but hardly wore the dresses I had so lovingly purchased and everyone thought of me as a tomboy, but, what the hell, I knew that the way I looked now I could never be an accepted male. When we moved to Madrid I would live as a woman but, at the end of the day, at home with the family, I would just be me.

I suppose that I had found the minor miracle that I had been searching for, in that I discovered out what I really am. I am a man – who wears a dress.

The End
Marianne G 2020