I did something rather crazy last night....
I'm currently in my home country Switzerland for a few weeks to visit friends and family for the first time since I started transitioning. Everything has gone really well so far so I needed to step up my game a notch. A few weeks or even months ago I received an invitation to a college reunion dinner with a bunch of classmates which I haven't seen for over 15 years. Except for one guy, nobody knew that I came out as trans and transitioned so I decided to just drive there and show up without warning. I mean, what could possibly go wrong and what else would you do on a boring Thursday evening in central Switzerland, right?
So there I went to meet 9 guys and a girl who had no clue I would show up as Jessica. I just mentioned that I have a "little surprise". When I got there I noticed one of the guys, walked straight up to him and said: "Hi Dan, how are you?". He looked at me with a very confused face and just said: "Hi!" and then a few seconds later while checking me out he looked even more confused but managed to say:"You look somehow familiar but help me out, please!" My friend who knew was standing next to me laughing out loud so I told him that I used to be known as [dead name] and then you should have seen his eyes pop.... OMG it was so hilarious... Right then, another guy came and I wanted to greet him too but he walked straight up to me, said hi and gave me a long hug.... Now I was stunned...
Unfortunately (ok, not really), these were the most exciting encounters. Everyone else knew by then what was going on but it was not weird or awkward in any way, we just had a fun and interesting evening and while I was able to educate some of them on trans issues, most other discussions were just normal topics and nobody even cared about my "slightly different look" plus nobody misgendered me, it was pretty amazing. All in all, it was another great experience and showed me that the world has really progressed and my entire transition has been far smoother so far than I would have ever imagined. I'm very grateful for that.