RANSVESTIA

Then, up came the Haight-Ashbury one day, in a forest green tautly supple turtleneck and a similarly color-dominated pleated plaid skirt. Not the Haight me. Plaid knee socks and turned-leather green (too!) loafers, lighter-green perky feathered Robin Hood cap perched upstairs. (I remember what I wore every telling Susan-experience of my life, so you'll have to listen.)

At Auntie Margaret's, of course. "Don't you get piqued at having to turn into a pumpkin everytime you go home, Sue?" (Pumpkin meant "boy" in our secret slang.)

I was seeing how far I could spread my accordian pleats. The- more-skirt-the-more-of-a-girl had always been a secret whim of mine.

"Yes and no, Auntie M. I can change back into a pumpkin in secs with hardly a trace, and there are some goodies playing at boydom (pause I could extend the pleats to full arm-length!). The biggest goodie, though, is Cinderella-ing back into the freedom of me-dom she-dom. That change is so refreshing, so... inspiring each time; a new me almost daily."

I was over at Auntie Margaret's nearly half the week now, with Peggy going to her college. She referred to me, across the board, as her niece now.

"I'd miss it if I couldn't prove and prove again what I am like I do."

I was stretching the skirt, elbows forced to the crooked-backwards point, over my head. The skirt was so richly pleated there was no loss of modesty in this gesture!

"Well, something came up when I was in San Francisco. I've talk- ed to your mother about it and they think it's a splendid idea."

I dropped my skirts and stared at her. San Francisco, like Paris, is a woman's town "with flowers in her hair" like Henry Van Dyke writes. Susceptible pumpkins pervasively go Cinderella there in droves. Cinderella-types like me can go unworriedly a broad there so to speak.

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