On the contrary, by the time I reached high school, I was holding down a part-time job and had begun to purchase clothing of my own. As I could still wear Mother's dresses and money was scarce, I only bought the things I could no longer borrow, such as hosiery and shoes. That was when I discovered how thrilling it could be to buy myself something new for the very first time. And how marvelous it was to really have my own things for a change! Still, I always pretended to be buying them for her and always felt terribly guilty about the whole thing. Not only because of the dressing, but because of the deception as well. I have never liked lying for any reason. Time and again I would solemnly renounce it all and plunge myself into some terrifically masculine activity in order to "prove myself" only to return eventually with renewed interest and

zest.

""

All along I avidly read everything I could lay my hands on concerning my problem and did manage to learn that I was a "transvestite, but as my sources had little more than a generalized idea of what that entailed, neither did I (at latest count, I think, Time magazine, has in occasional articles appearing over the past fifteen years, used the term correctly three times).

About the same time I began to encounter a nagging sense of inadequecy about my feminine role as well as my masculine one. When viewing myself in the mirror, dressed, I began to be highly critical of my appearance and conclusions were not at all encouraging. As badly as I wanted to, I just didn't look much like a girl, not an attractive one at any rate, and the realization that I might never be able to, filled me with great regret. This dreadful frustration persisted for some time, but I suppose the absolute nadir came shortly before my senior year, when I went to a theatrical supply house on the pretext of representing a drama group (a reluctant liar, but a resourceful one) and purchased my first wigs. This was well before fashion wigs became popular, and the colors and styles of these two were not well suited to me at all, a fact soon discovered upon arriving home. I could barely wait to try them on. They had looked so pretty on the stands; on me, however, they looked simply horrible. My unskilled attempts at makeup only made matters worse. It was an awful disappointment and I recall thinking that

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