RANSVESTIA

tached. "For Tommy. Open in private," it read. My dread was so great that I opened it at once. Inside, of course, were the pink, nylon, ladies' panties that I had felt sure would be there. I clapped the lid back on and prepared to dispose of the package before my persecutors arrived. But the lingerie was of high quality, had all the sales tags still attached, and looked too expensive to be another cutting comment from my classmates. So I peeked inside the envelope and was unprepared to read: "The kids are mean. I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for you. I love feminine things, too." This time, I didn't feel that I was being set up for something cruel. I was touched and wanted my anonymous benefactor to see that the gift had been accepted and to feel pleased. I never knew whether a girl or a boy had sent it. Anyway, I purposely left the panties on the bus when I got off. I had no desire for feminine frills for the rest of my life. I actually believed that, too, for a couple of weeks. After that, though, I wished I had kept the panties.

Around mid-term my torment seemed to lessen, partly because I quit my inner struggle and accepted the idea that I really was the femme that my classmates' attitudes seemed to indicate that they wanted me to be, and partly because the novelty wore off of having someone like me in their midst. To them, I was simply the class Nancy, now, and that was that. My former friends, boys and girls alike, would have nothing to do with me ever again. From their viewpoint, I wasn't there anymore. Strangely, Barbara Morrissey, while she never spoke to me, always smiled at me whenever we passed in the corridors.

But to my surprise, girls whom I hadn't known before, one at a time, began befriending me, and I was grateful to them. I didn't know what had caused them to ally themselves with me, whether it was com- passion, curiosity, or something else. But I knew that now I had someone to be with between classes and at lunch. I began to arrive early at school to be with my new group, and after school, often we would go to one of the girls' homes to listen to records. I loved knowing that these girls knew of my femininity and accepted it, but we didn't make much of that in the beginning. Their acceptance gave me back some of my courage, and I began wearing lingerie again at home. It was too late to quit now, anyway. No one would have believed it if I had. We began to think of ourselves as a club. As a token uniform, it was decreed that on each clubday, everyone would wear dark nylon stockings to school with their ordinary school clothes. When I agreed to comply, it seemed to please the others. After only a few such meetings, the girls began to coax me, teasingly at first, to dress fully in feminine clothing at our meetings. I was still very shy, and so the decision was not an easy one.

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