around the "zocalo" or public square. My sister had a cute pair of black patent heels, and my mother had a long hair switch that I arranged into a wig. I slipped into a green dress with scooped, low neckline, and put on a navy blue coat. It was also the first time I wore a bra. I sat at my mother's dressing table, painted my eyebrows and lips, and applied powder to my face. Then I put my sister's ornate silver comb im my hair which literally topped of my disguise. I stopped: "Why," the thought came to me, "do I like to dress as a girl?" Was I a homosexual? The thought had nagged at me daily. If I was shy around girls, maybe it was because I wasn't a man. The thought occurred to me more than once that it would be nicer to be a girl, since men speak to them and they only have to wait passively until they are spoken to. How very confused my young life was!

And so dressing began to give me the few happy moments I had as an adolescent. In my fantasy I saw in my mirror a happy young girl, pretty and attractive. When "she" was alone in the house, "she" would run through every room, dancing to the music from the radio, or would pose prettily in front of the mirror: always the blythe spirit! And above all, "she" liked me . . . because "she" talked to me! In reality, I grew more shy each day with real girls. In front of them I stuttered from discomfort to embarrassment or became voiceless. It was so ridiculous that the girls began to make fun of me. For these and other reasons I soon preferred to avoid talking to girls. I began to feel that the girls who did talk to me did so only out of pity.

Ahhhh, but my depression disappeared when I played the role of Ana Bertha! I saw in the mirror a real girl! But . . . a girl needs a boy. "Maybe," I thought, "I should be out on the street looking for a man. But what if I am discovered?” Carefully I opened the door to the street one evening. I stepped to the shelter of a nearby tree. The cool night air that caressed my legs delighted me. “Shall I go downtown? No," I thought, "I can't possibly do it!" I was still standing under the tree when a neighbor passed and said, “Ah,

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