Transvestia

come an officer, and spent eight rough weeks at Parris Island at the Marine boot camp one summer. So here is one gal who has been a "leatherneck". I decided that too many Marine officers were getting shot in Korea, though, and abandoned the effort after that one summer. The draft got me on graduation and I joined the Army for two years. I am amazed that I was able to complete the two years duty and receive an honorable discharge without getting court martialed for something.

One of my problems is that I have always resented authority. Was this due to my disciplinarian parents? Probably. The closest call I had in the Army was once when my fellow basic trainees, who resented me for some reason, gave me a traditional "GI shower", a humiliating experience done late at night where you are forced to scrub yourself with heavy scrub brushes while they stand around and jeer and laugh. I guess it is supposed to wash the whatever-it-is-they-don't-like-about-you out, but it only made me mad. I was an FP all during my Army stretch, keeping my "civilian clothes" (so I said) with a friend. Had she ever opened that suitcase she would indeed have discovered some "civilian" clothes! I finally got an honorable discharge, which I really thank God for, and through a quirk in the regulations, was com- pletely free of the usual reserve obligations most draftees were saddled with.

I got a fine job in 1954, my first after college and Army, and in the spring of 1955 married a wonderful girl. That fall I decided to return to college on the GI bill and get a second degree. She got a job and was to help earn the income so we could do it. Naturally I continued my avocation when she was not around. Foolishly I kept my cherished necessities in an unlocked container in what I thought was an out-of-the-way location. She discovered them, demanded to know what was the meaning of it all, and so I dressed and showed her. No wig, no makeup, a real caricature you can be sure. She was appalled, we separated shortly thereafter, and were divorced less than one year after the hitching ceremony. Dear reader, I knew so little about myself then. That was long before the world had Virginia or TVia.

I dated lackadaisically for a time, quit school, got

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