a faint beard and moustach

(Oh, the lucky ones!) Gloria creates a sensation at one of our meetings, she has found a place where they sell waist and shoulder padding guaranteed to give you a per- fect he-man look. So we all go crazy ordering these pads. I am delighted to go from my normal 19 waist to a perfect 38!! We help each other with advice. Anita has discovered a cream that will give you face lines and pimples and gives us the address of a voice teach- er--a very understanding fellow--who'll teach you to drop your voice. We all practice for a half hour at each meeting talking baritone. It is hard for the girls who have extremely high voices, but we fig- ure that if Anita could do it, so can we. Lee walks in wearing a perfectly gorgeous dark grey flannel suit with white shirt and striped tie. Her disguise is so perfect that she has even added the white hankie showing just a teensy-bit on the breast pocket of her jacket. She seems taller now. The secret? She's wearing elevated shoes (Adler, I think). She shows us how to walk in a manly way and keeps insisting that we should never, never sit with our knees to- gether, a habit that Gail just can't get rid of. Felicity has trouble taking long steps and just can't seem to get used to going around without a girdle. However she wins a round of applause when she tells us she has overcome her natural timidity. I feel like put- ting her to the test and (overcoming my normal squeamishness) I toss a live mouse into the living room. Felicity turns pale but refrains from jumping onto a chair and drowns the scream that threatened to leave her throat. Vickie surprises everybody when she walks in act- ually smoking a pipe!! Poor thing. She tries so hard to look and act like a man, but her femininity just keeps showing through despite the fact that her favorite outfit is a truck-driver's uniform. We all make a point of always tracking mud into the house and covering the rugs with ashes. We also agree to build a library for the group. We all chip in as a starter for a subscription to Popular Mechanics and a fascinating book entitled "The Care and Handling of Guns". Lorraine objects on the grounds that if we all start reading there won't be enough time for just talking. We point out to her that she must learn to hold her tongue. "Look Lorraine--says Karen--if you want to look and act like a man you must stop being the chatterbox you are. This irritates Lorraine no end and we have a great deal of difficulty trying to stop an incipient fight. Karen has forgotten to clench her fists and is waiting with nails ready to scratch. This despite the fact that it's part of the rules to keep our nails cut very short. Betty makes things worse by shouting: for heaven's sakes boys! cut it out! She knows very well that we frown upon the

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