Transvestia

was an ardent follower of Buddha and in his efforts to attain perfection, he became convinced that the only road to follow was the road of femininity. So he dressed as a woman and lived as one, and upon his death he became a Goddess, the most revered of the Buddhist Gods. At this point in the narrative I al- most choked Lily. Knowing this all along, she had remained silent! Instantly plans began to shape up... How about a shrine to Koon Yum at the resort? Lily will get an image of Koon Yum, in Chinatown, a good sized statue of the Goddess--and we've even chosen the flat rock upon which we'll build the shrine. Now, let us match this Eastern bit of religion with the legend of Venus Castina, in some respects Koon Yum's alter ego from the West. The ancient Romans did not say that Venus Castina was a man, but at any rate, she was the Goddess who lent ears to the ang- uished prayers emanating from feminine souls locked up in male bodies. (This proves that our "girl with- in" philosophy is old stuff, nothing new to it.) To me, the amazing thing is that such beliefs were quite common in those days and nobody thought of sending for the psychiatrist!

So we have Koon Yum in the East and Venus Castina in the West. (Castina, by the way, comes from the Latin "casta" which means "chaste". In other words: who had to be

a Venus who listened to female souls chaste simply because they hadn't a body to go with their feelings.)

As Lily and I played around with the idea of erecting two shrines at the resort: one for Koon Yum and another for Venus Castina, I suddenly remembered the remark with which I opened this column: the religious approach to TVism is order to obtain ac- ceptance. Let's toy with the idea for a while, just for kicks. We all know that the US constitution is extremely sensitive when it comes to regulations that might limit religious freedom. We even have to stand helplessly aside when the Muslims gather for their rituals to preach hatred towards whites. They are

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