I had been treated by another human as a girl, without pretense or strain. This woman and I had had a woman's evening together. This had proved such a terrific contrast to all my previous life that it just broke the barriers that night in the hotel.

My growth started from that experience. The first thing that be- came evident to me was that I had been blackmailing MYSELF through fear of discovery. I asked myself who in the world did I least want to know about my TVism and the answer was my father. I therefore de- termined to tell him and thereby break the blackmail. I did. I met him as Muriel and told him all about it. It was tough on him and tougher on me, but it helped because I had killed this fear and I no longer had to worry about it.

Several years later I was divorced. My wife had gone on a trip and while away had consulted a psychiatrist who, on the basis of what she alone had said to him, told her that I was undoubtedly a homosex- ual and that she should get a divorce. This was hard to take. 1) I didn't want the divorce, 2) I was not a homosexual, 3) she took my son, house, and everything else, and 4) she was unwilling to even try to work things out with professional help. So my life was wrecked, but that didn't stop her. About 2 years later she went to court to try to deny me any visitation or weekend custody rights with my son. The grounds were, of course, that I was an unfit father and should not be allowed to have my own son with me unchaperoned. Of course, the whole TV bit came out in the papers--picture and all, but the judge was one of the few wise ones and ruled in my favor. I was permitted to continue to have weekend custody. This too was a horrible exper- ience, but I grew because of it. Again public exposure was the thing that I had feared the most, but it had brought upon me, so I could now afford the luxury of not worrying about it anymore. It had been done.

I was

I forced myself to do another difficult task at this point. going with my present wife at the time, in fact she stood with me all during this trial. But the day after it we went back to the weekly dance at the church where I had appeared so many times at parties. Many of my friends had read the papers and seen my picture, but I appeared anyway and brazened it out. This too gave me strength. You know, they temper metal by fire and cold water. Intense fear, emotion, and release tempers people too.

Well, to cut a long story short, I married my present wife with her having full knowledge about the whole TV bit. She had not al- ways understood, in the early days before our marriage we talked a lot

7.