RANSVESTIA

was falling forward, out onto the floor as I desperately tried to maintain my balance in the high-heeled shoes.

Then they were all laughing at me. A couple of them helped me to my feet and steadied me. Then, with me trembling on every uncertain step, they helped me across the room to where they had leaned length mirror up against the plain wall.

I stared incredulously at the image staring back at me.

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The wig was an explosion of blonde curls around a face that was too breathtakingly beautiful to be my own. They had applied make-up to my face! Now the strange taste in my mouth made sense. It was the ruby richness of the lipstick on my curved lips, and I could taste it as I let my tongue explore the curvature of the cupid's bow they had made my mouth conform to.

Slowly,I brought my hand up and let it rub across the smooth white- ness of my satin, powdery face, letting it trace the lines of my nose, and explore the edges of my eyes where they had plucked out almost all of my browline, arching the brows upward into a narrow arch of ebony richness.

I turned to face them, utterly overwhelmed by a strange paralysis of absolute helplessness. I was afraid to take a step in the high heels, afraid of again loosing my precarious balance and pitching forward. My hips, my waist, my whole body, was paralyzed now by the corset's taut con- striction about my waist.

There was suddenly no need to fight them anymore. They had unlock- ed some deep force within me, something that was causing me to have a strange exhilaration as I teetered there before Sylvia and the others.

What had I really related to them during the time the LSD was rip- ping my very soul apart? There was the one dress-up occasion there with Judy — but how many other times had I done it?

And what difference did it make, now?

These girls had wrenched my very being apart, they had looked into every hidden crevice and crack, there was nothing left to hide or hide. from.

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