RANSVESTIA

lot of prospective buyers coming up and checking me out and com- paring me against the other cars for paint job, upholstery, tires, mileage, etc. I rather expected someone to kick me in the shin as they kick tires when looking over cars. But little by little I learned to dance passibly.

Then all of a sudden things blew up in my face. My career at the dancing school was unexpectedly cut short when I found one day that the attorney for my wife, in the process of the divorce, had permitted the newspaper to get hold of my picture and information about the divorce. So there was a big article and picture entitled, "He Gives Lec- tures as She" - referring to the lectures that I gave to Service Clubs. It went on to tell that I published Transvestia and gave the names of the other stories, etc. This article came to the attention of the school proprietor and he was all primed the next time I appeared for an ap- pointment. He told me he had no personal objections to my private life, but a thing like this going on, with my using the ladies room, etc., would not be good for the school. So forthwith I was cancelled out.

Unfortunately I had not yet learned all I wanted to learn about dancing before I got the axe. I had been through the various kinds of dances but didn't know them well enough to carry on on my own if ask- ed. So I signed up for an Arthur Murray school after several months and the paper story had been forgotten. This provided some little extra training but not much because the floor was small and whatever kind of music they happened to be playing, the insu uctor would be trying to teach you a waltz, fox trot, rhumba or whatever to it. That wasn't too successful so I dropped out.

Finally I got brave and went to a public dance hall in the down- town area. It was not in any way a low-class, dime-a-dance sort of place but a perfectly nice public dance hall where people of all ages, mostly older ones, went obviously for the purpose of meeting other people. Here I got broken into a good many of the faces of life from a woman's point of view that is. One such experience provides the reason for this piece.

While I was no exceptionally great dancer at this time I could cope satisfactorily if the man was any kind of a leader and I soon found out what every woman who dances knows that great numbers of men have no idea how to lead and expect the woman to be a mind reader. Since she is supposed to follow him, if she makes a mistep it is her fault. He feels no need to indicate that he is going to change steps