Transvestia

"stick it out" for our benefit, (This they did and a di- vorce never occurred.) As a result of the stress placed on Mother by this development, she began giving less of her attention to P_________ and me, so we spent even more time in each other's company. We began having long discussions together about life, our parents, school, and naturally the subject of boys and girls. By the time I finally went away to college (I was 16 and P

was 13) we had become much closer to each other than is normal for a brother-sister relationship, all as a result of the peculiar circumstances surrounding our home life and environment. Many times I had found myself in the role of being __________'s teacher, simply because I was older, Often, in fact, I found myself acting more like an older sister than an older brother toward her. This was not only because of the rapport we had established (after all, brothers and sisters are supposed to fight constantly and keep secrets from each other---not play together and confide completely in each other), but also because of the subjects we discussed. In order to advise her in mat- ters of decorum, manners, and the conduct appropriate for a growing young lady I would have to assume the feminine viewpoint myself. I found this an easy role to slip in to even though I had begun dating girls myself and found myself quite attracted to them. (In fact, I'm sure I fell in and out of love just as rapidly and intensely as teenagers today). The prime difference between me and other boys was that although I was just as interested in girls, I was also (and this was most confusing and perplexing to me) extremely jealous of them because they were lucky enough to be girls. I would tell P about my dates and often found myself analyzing them from a girl's point of view regarding posture, dress, and mannerisms instead of from a boy's outlook. At the same time my sister began learning the wiles and ways of young females from her grammer and high school classmates and many of these feminine traits I absorbed and became aware of from her due to our open and frank discussions. Our range of feminine topics seemed unlimited. We talked about everything, including clothes, the art of flirting, and--after Mother told her the "facts of life" even sex (I was one of the few boys who knew what the local high school girls meant, using their own secret code of girl-talk slang, when they referred among them- selves to "falling off the roof", "Joan is visiting,

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