The Shepherdess and the Swimmer

Move-out day at a tech conference is what I imagine a hurricane feels like if the hurricane had lanyards. There are boxes everywhere, half of them full of things nobody ordered, and the other half full of swag nobody wants. My name is Garret, I'm thirty-five, and I co-founded a startup that makes scheduling software, which means I have spent three days pretending to care about server latency while secretly thinking about the bathhouse down the hill.

The bathhouse! The entire reason I came to this conference, if I'm honest with myself, which I usually am about once a week. It's this old stone building in rural Scotland with thermal pools and steam rolling off the water as if the whole place is exhaling. They've converted it into a conference venue, which sounds mad, but it works. Mostly. There's construction out front because they're building a wheelchair-accessible ramp, so there's scaffolding and bags of cement and a man with a level who has looked disappointed all week.

So there I was, at four in the afternoon, carrying a box of branded stress balls toward the parking lot, when I nearly walked straight into Daphne.

"Oh! Sorry," she said, shifting her own box. "Garret, right? You're the one who keeps fixing the demo when it crashes."

"That's me. The demo-fixing guy." I'm also, apparently, the guy who freezes when a pretty woman talks to him, but that's separate. "You're Daphne. The shepherd?"

"Software developer and shepherd," she said, grinning. "Thirty-two years old, five acres of sheep, one very opinionated dog. In that order of importance, depending on the day."

We fell into step, and then into a sort of unspoken relay, carrying boxes out to her truck. It's a battered blue thing with a livestock bed, and there was already a folding chair and a coil of rope in it, which told me more about Daphne than her whole bio on the company Slack.

"So how'd a shepherd end up writing Go?" I asked, setting a box down on the tailgate.

"How'd a professional swimmer end up writing Go?" she shot back. "Yes, I read your bio. You were on a relay team! That's so cool. I can barely float."

"I stopped competing six years ago. Started the company instead." I shrugged. "Swimming is lonely. Coding is lonely with worse posture."

She laughed at that, a proper laugh, head back. And then she asked what I actually wanted to ask everyone all weekend, which is whether the pools were open to guests after hours, and I nearly dropped a box of stress balls on my foot.

"They are," she said. "I asked. Twenty quid for a private slot after five. Private, mind. You get a whole changing room to yourself."

Now. Here's where I should explain something, and I might as well do it now. I like wearing women's clothes. There, done, that's the sentence. I'm a thirty-five-year-old man, six foot two, shoulders like a wardrobe, and about once a month I put on a dress and feel like myself in a way I can't explain and don't particularly want to explain to anyone. I've never done it with another person. I dated a costume designer for a year when I was twenty-seven and never told her, which is my single greatest regret that doesn't involve a stock option.

And I had, at that very moment, a bag locked in one of the private changing rooms at the bathhouse. In the bag: a green wrap dress, size enormous, bought in a moment of optimism. Underneath the dress, underwear I will not describe here because my mother reads these stories. Wait, no, she doesn't, this is an anonymous account. Fine. It's nice underwear.

"You've gone a funny color," Daphne said. "I only asked about the pools."

"Sorry! Yes, pools, great. I was just, um."

Boxes. Focus on boxes. I picked up the heaviest one I could find, which contained, judging by the rattle, forty mouse pads and my dignity.

"You've got that look," she said as we walked back toward the building. "Like a man leaving a party early because he's left the hob on."

"I don't have a look."

"Everyone has a look. Yours is 'guilty about something harmless.' I see it in the office all the time. Usually someone who's been watching sheep videos on a call."

We passed the construction site on the next trip. The ramp is half-built, all pale new timber against the old grey stone, and the cement bags are stacked under a tarp like sleeping cattle. I slowed down. I don't know why I slowed down, except that I slowed down, and Daphne noticed.

"Ramp's not finished," she said. "Accessibility by spring, the site manager told me. Which for Scotland means summer. Which means never."

"Is it just me, or is scaffolding weirdly hypnotic?" I said, which is the sort of thing you say when you're stalling, and she knew it, and I knew she knew it, and she let me have it anyway, which is why I like her.

"It's because you're stalling," she said cheerfully, hoisting a box marked MISC onto her hip. "You keep looking past the scaffolding at the changing room door."

"I do not."

"Garret. You've looked at that door four times in six trips. It's a door. It's not doing anything interesting."

I put my box down on the tailgate and stood there with my hands on my hips like a man about to give a TED talk. Do I tell her? I barely know her. But she's the sort of person who owns sheep and a truck and laughs at your bad jokes, and the conference ends tonight, and the bag is in there, and the pools are private after five, and I have wanted to do this with another person since before I can remember wanting anything else.

"Can I tell you something slightly weird?" I said.

"Those are my favorite kinds of things."

"I left a bag in one of the private changing rooms. I need to go get it before they close up for the night. And I've been working up the nerve to go back in there because..."

I trailed off. Great ending, Garret. Really stuck the landing.

"Because?" she prompted, leaning on the tailgate.

"Because of what's in it," I said. "It's, hm. It's a bag of clothes. Women's clothes. Mine. I like wearing them. I've never said that out loud to anyone, actually, so thank you for being the venue for that historic moment."

There was a pause the length of one sheep saying something rude. Then Daphne set her box down very carefully, like she was setting down a full glass.

"Okay, so, fun fact," she said. "I have a bag in my truck right now with a black pencil skirt in it. And a blouse. And shoes I cannot walk in, which is why they live in the truck. I'm Daphne, I'm thirty-two, I like wearing men's shirts and also occasionally nothing but lipstick and a suit jacket, and it's lovely to properly meet you."

I stared at her. "You're joking."

"Do I look like I'm joking? I appear as a woman holding a box marked MISC who just confessed to a pencil skirt. That is not a joking face."

"So when you said you wanted to know about the private pools..."

"I asked on Friday," she said. "I've been working up the nerve since Friday. And then you went funny-colored about the changing room door and I thought, no, surely not, that would be too convenient."

"Ha," I said, way too loud. A man with a level looked over. "Sorry. Ha."

So there we were, two adults in a parking lot in rural Scotland, both of us holding the same secret like it was a hot pan, and neither of us had to explain a single thing. Do you know how rare that is? I've spent years thinking I was the only person on earth with this particular combination of interests, and it turns out the other one was carrying stress balls next to me all weekend.

"Right," Daphne said, clapping her hands. "Last box. Then we go get your bag. Together, if you want company. And if you want, we could get our private slot after five and... I don't know. See what happens. No pressure, either way, say no and it's forgotten."

"I would like that very much," I said. "Both parts. The bag and the five o'clock."

"Good. Because if you'd said no I'd have had to go alone, and these heels are not to be trusted on gravel without a spotter."

The last box went on the tailgate at 4:07 PM, which technically made us seven minutes late for our own move-out, but the venue guy said the conference ended when the last lorry left, and the last lorry was ours. So really we were the conference. Felt important. It wasn't.

"Right," Daphne said, wiping her hands on her jeans. "Private changing rooms are through that door, past the little cold pool nobody uses. Do you want to grab your bag and meet back here, or...?"

"Or," I said, because my mouth answered before my brain finished the paperwork.

"Or it is." She grinned. "God, this is like planning a heist except the loot is lingerie."

"Is it lingerie in yours?"

"That's between me and the pencil skirt."

We went in through the side entrance, past the front desk where a woman with reading glasses looked up, saw two adults with conference lanyards, and looked back down, which is the correct amount of interest for a front desk person to have. The corridor to the private rooms smelled like the thermal pools, that faint sulphur-and-steam smell that gets into everything, and the stone walls were sweating a little the way old stone does.

My bag was in room four. Daphne had booked room six that morning when she asked about the evening slots, so she just unlocked it and propped the door with her heel. "Come in when you've got yours," she said. "Unless you want privacy, in which case, also fine."

"I'll come in." I grabbed my bag from room four and did.

Room six was small and warm and had a bench, a hook, and a fogged