RANSVESTIA

just ghettoized but downright imprisoned! Having to LIVE mostly just in Peggy's room.

It wasn't just kindness on Aunt Margaret's part. Catching me up on parts of the girlhood I'd missed, I learned to make a room spanking- clean and lovely, press a slip, a dress, a gown as though fresh from the cleaners, cook a clever little late supper, change a diaper, mix a for- mula. Too, when she caught a facial expression, a head or arm or body gesture of mine she thought charming she'd call attention to it so that I'd remember, incorporate it as part of me. She improved her own dan- cing, teaching me to dance - both of us doing the follow-steps side by side. I was useful to her in many ways. As she was to me.

Things she said I remember as peculiarly heart-warming:

"Oh I know Peggy doesn't like all the frou-frou, girly-girly things I buy her. She's a born biochemist, thinks a straight skirt in a white lab- coat is high couture. Thank goodness - now that I have you to dress as I feel a girl should!"

"Boys will notice you

that has to come in time. But remember

a girl's role is to make the world more warm, more colorful, more beautiful. Her chastity is her own no girl HAS to."

'... you'll make some girl an ideal wife. Keep looking, asking, and you'll find just that girl."

Until I was eighteen my social circle

those who knew Susan for

what she really was consisted of maybe only a dozen girls who dug my living proof that the female of the species was enviable and worthy of emulation by one of those put-down types from the opposite side of the tracks my willy-nilly birthplace. Oh, and just several fellows. Girl-shy ones whom I could trust as gentlemen; who knew a good secret to keep for their own benefit when I revealed Susanne to them under the most flattering-to-me circumstances, you can bet! Like Ken- ny who overcame his wariness of sugar 'n' spice by practice-dating with me. "Made a gallant Cary Grant of him, Sue!" his sister admitted ... and Dick who hadn't learned girls expect doors to be opened for them. (My fury over a bumped forehead and nose taught him that in a hurry!). And diffident Davey who couldn't find a girl to share his jewel- setting of an open convertible. (Could I find such a girl for him!? I thought a good split second before a solution to his problem occurred to me.)