How It Began

by Jo-Anne (5-T-3)

Retrospection is a valuable analytical tool yet an extremely deceptive mechanism owing to that happy perversity of human char- acter by which we tend to recall the good over the bad by an almost hypocritical ratio. Retrospection is also closely allied with that intellectual lifesaver, rationalization, to such an extent that we usually find only that which we unconsciously seek. Serendipity plays no part in an interrogation of the soul. Nonetheless..

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I recall my first transvestic experience with almost photogr- aphic clarity. I was ten. In some hiatus in a ten-year-old's summer of constant physical activity, I was clothed by a neighbor- hood girl in a dress of richly purple satin. My mouth was heavily painted and I emerged from a garage in a state of giddy and youth- ful euphoria only to encounter my mother and one of my best friends. I was immediately impelled to flee, to escape, yet stood there in a kind of delicious horror and wanting to shout, "Wait!. You don't understand! This is....is how I'm supposed to be!" I said nothing and the moment passed and laughter and sunshine expunged all mom- entary terror.

There was, however, no erasure of that entrancement, that rav- ishment of the soul that then occured. I have been hopelessly confirmed in Eonism ever since despite many early years of struggle.

I recall that experience with all the graphic explicitness I have set down here--and more--yet I could hazard only the layman's unlettered psychology as to the meaning of that experience. But meaning aside, I hold this statement to be unarguably true: whatever psychological seeds were scattered on that well remembered day, they fell upon uniquely conditioned and receptive ground.

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I was then artistically sensitive and was quite aware of an attitude for and about girls that was unique only to myself. I would stare for minutes at a time at my female classmates, those lovely creatures who enjoyed that soft, round and enchantingly ruff- led and ribboned state of being so manifestly different from my own. I mean this staring quite literally. I have been admonished from

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