Better Late Than Never

HISTORY

by Jean (5-A-8) FPE

I was 34 years old, married and the father of four children that night some six months ago when I stepped out of my car, walked up to the local book-newsstand, started browsing and discovered myself. Until I picked up the paperback entitled The Sex Life of a Transvestite the word was not even in my lexicon, let alone any understanding of what it meant.

I had left home that evening with the avowed purpose of indulging my hunger for escapist literature. I was tired of dealing with the problems of the world, and I desired reading material that was fast-paced, racy and completely lacking in any qualities of abstruseness. In short, I desired nothing more that evening than to take a vicarious and graphic venture into the underworld of sex.

The bookstand was well equipped to satisy this type of desire. One whole section was loaded with paperbacks dealing with sex-hetrosexual, homosexual and all the variations in between. It was a long gamut to run and true to the browser's code I looked leisurely and linger- ingly, mentally comparing one cover picture and jacket blurb with another with an appraising exactitude which I fancied was the literary equivalent to that used by a woman shopper at a bargain basement sale.

Then, as mentioned, I spotted THE book. Curious, I picked it up and thumbed through it casually. Nothing extraordinary happened. I felt no hot flashes. The sky did not open up; there was no rumble of thunder or crackling of lightning. No bells clanged in my head and no comic strip light ulbs appeared all lit up in their little balloons. nlike the Monkey's Paw, the book did not quiver uncontrollably in my hands,

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