RANSVESTIA

"Thanks to Somebody I'm happiest being a tease; a provocateur of a girl rather than a sure-fire inammorata." To make it sound less evilly frustrating, let's say simply, I'm the one who adores being looked at, reacted to ... creatively; in the eyes of the beholder. I like to start, fan, fires for the nice feelings to all concerned - let the more liquidly- inclined girls quench them.

As it's almost de rigeur these days to freely admit, I am crashingly not a virgin. Accidents do happen. But that's secondary and really un- wanted; I like to sense fires burning long after I'm out of sight, our of earshot. I s'pose it's unwomanly (and I've been taken to task for that) not to want to be in "his" bed; but I prefer to be, as the Windsong ads sing, ... always in his mind." In as many his-minds as possible. If the male population insists (by double appraising looks, by importuning for conventional conclusions) that I'm all-girl who am I to say (or prove) they're all wet?

It's their dogged insistence that I'm from Adam's rib I'm after; it's so reassuring to add their insistence to my own inner insistence, to run nymphe-like just beyond reach in our asphalt sylvan glades. "Thou still unravished bride of quietness" is my ideal. Maidenly to the core, that's me!

All this foregoing is to underline I'm not an unfulfilled woman. I'm grateful for my girlhood and for ever-maturing satisfactions. Actually not very confused by "that other life." But I suffer petty, unreasonable angers that I didn't have my adolescence in the last ten years. Had I been twelve in 1965 ... Well, here's what (SHOULD have) happened!

I WAS twelve in 1955 (see?)! The soft, silly, gently curling hair that was my Indian-haired sister's bitter envy was allowed to grow long, long, LONG! "It's very mod, very in with "boys" (sic!) of his age. I'm glad he's a joiner," announced my mother a little defensively. And "At least he keeps it clean, brushed ..." She didn't know the positive hours I spent brushing it, learning to set just the right curls to fall in JUST the right waves, putting it up at night in ever more complex braids and swirls, wearing just the right flouncy-colorful little night cap to hold it in place. Shaping the bottom to roll luxuriously on my shoulders, cutting near eyebrow-brushing bangs.

Then virtuously, to appear sorta boylike, combing my bangs in- visibly back into my hair, dunking my head in water to tangle, mess up