RANSVESTIA

and otherwise render boylike my unmistakeably feminine hair-doing. When I had to make like a boy for social-acceptance nonsense! (Which was too often.)

1968 and approaching that optimum-ripeness-age where one can be not only sixteen but downright sweet about the whole thing if am- bitious about young ladydom - which was I ever! Encouraged cheer- fully by girlfriends relieved at my being so remote from the threateningness of males they'd encountered, who found my hair welcomed their skillful fingers, combs and brushes and that I was the very last to fake up a "masculine" protest at maedchen braids, twiney. bouncy pigtails (thence on to the ribbons, colorful yarns that spice up so such hair fancies).

Too, experimenting with makeup fell naturally to girls of our age. Not only not protesting I luxuriated in squeals of delight when they used me to guinea-pig their face-flattering pigments.

"What that DOES for you, Suze!" chortled my neighbor's niece. "Makes your face, Suzie, almost truly 'Susanne-ish'." (Suze by tacit understanding was the name of the to-be-improved-upon raw girl potential I'd let them discover. "Suzie" or "Susie" — the next step up from the blandness of boydom. "Sue" when I'd achieved a conven- tional cuteness. "Susanne" or "Susanna" whenever I'd plateaued to a positive young lady comliness.)

Carole, first freshman girl president at school, daringly, he felt, proposed this one gilding-the-lily afternoon in Peggy's (my neighbor's niece) away-from-home room next door: "Sue is Susanna from the throat up but still plain ol' Suze from her shoulders to toes. Let's remedy that, Peggy!"

Peggy and dark-haired Carole, after serious confab a trois with me, has decided I should be "her" and "she" to make things "decent" in our grooming orgies. And less weird to overhearers when chattering about me in the halls of Lincoln Junior High.

Peggy looked me over, muttered something not flattering about me looking like an under-nourished, washboard-breasted and not-too- hip-Haight-Ashbury broad, then said positively, "A wild but cool dress, an eager training brassiere with high hopes, the right fruit salad (meaning jewelry!), and definitely untomboyish shoesies and hose would cure Sue's shortcomings. Are you an all-the-way chicklet, Sue!?"

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