"Silks

and Satins"

by Charles Elkins

We are the transvestites.

We love to dress in women's clothing.

Some of us wear lingerie and oftentimes nylon hose under our men's attire. Some of us specialize in specific types of garments, some in a certain fabric. Many of us are heterosexual, many homosexual. Sometimes it's a form of narcissism, sometimes a sexual stimulant, sometimes a nameless drive.

Usually we keep our addictions secret, just ourselves alone in a room. with a mirror. Many of us are married and only a comparatively few of us let our wives know of this deep-seated need.

Usually we'd like to think of ourselves as women, have a girl's name we use for ourselves when en femme. Just a small percentage of our numbers could really hope to pass as women. We'd delight in being other Cocinelles or Christines, but the truth

of our sizes and contours is erased only by the dream world we seek.

Ours is a lonely lot. The homosexuals we sometimes meet bewilder us by asking "But why the need for women's clothing?" Our psychiatrists, usually unsuccessful in freeing us of our desires because we rarely really seek this release, counsel us to maintain our secrets locked inside. The society that could forgive us sexual promiscuity or even homosexuality scorns this oftentimes greatest need we have.

Divorces are common in our ranks as our wives discover evidence of this other want and lack the understanding to accept it as an inseparable part of our beings.

When we do make contact with each other it's often just to share quarters and sometimes wardrobes, or to exchange letters and occasionally Polaroid pictures. Often we have little in common, being from highly diversified walks of life or having varying needs.

One may envision the fantasy of women compelling him to don their garments, perhaps binding and teasing or torturing or spanking him. Another may find his greatest satisfaction in shopping in charitable institutions that sell used women's clothing, acquiring the girdles and slips, panties and dresses, gowns and robes and shoes of his sisters and buying his nylons from stores. A third may harm the lot of us by stealing things off clothes lines and from stores.

We walk down the streets, ride in public transportation, seeing even the humblest of women having the privilege of wearing the things we'd love to wear and knowing that this right can never openly be ours. We wonder if the silken dress, the high-heeled shoe, the vivid scarf, could be ours for the wearing if only . . . but we know