TRANSVESTIA

Had they actually transformed me? Or was it just a partial transfor- mation? I suddenly felt very weak just asking myself, and I would have pitched forward had it not been for Ruth who was rushing up to me. "Ruth are, are you still all right," I asked.

“Oh, yes, darling, oh, yes," she said, leaning into me, embracing me, and delicately kissing me with a throbbing passion. Then she backed off and said, “Oh, Donna, you're, you're just lovely."

"You mean, you you wanted

“Oh, darling," she murmered, "that was all kidding about making you appear in the window downtown

blaming you for it.”

"You mean, Ruth," I choked, "this scheme to make me into a woman?"

about them hurting me, and

this whole thing was just a

"Of course, lovely," she pouted. "But you're not a female, you're feminine and there's a world of difference," she said.

"I don't understand," I muttered.

"Sylvia has always known how I wanted someone like you. When she called me that first day, well we just knew that finally it could be possible, finally I could have the kind of guy I'd always dreamed of —

“But the drug, and this

""

"It was the only way we could have unlocked the part of you that you have been hiding from all your life, silly. You've been trying to prove what a big strapping he-man you were, trying to run away from the hid- den gentle part of your personality. When Sylvia told me she had some of that LSD we all decided to try it out."

"

"But my voice

I mean

"It's your same voice, oh, maybe a little more relaxed, more naturally your voice, now that you're not trying to make it sound so fake and all.'

"And and I'm not a girl, a female?"

20

*"