TRANSVE

RANSVESTIA

behavior she compared it more to my sister than to my brother whom she seemed resigned to as the rough one.

I didn't think of all that then and looking back at my development I may be reading stuff into my upbringing that wasn't there. In grade school I was rather delicate and so was Grace. Tom was as strong as a horse. I always have had slender fingers. Mother said they were patrician, inherited from my Grandfather and that Tom's were working hands inherited from his Grandmother, my Mother's Mother- in-law.

Our grandparents died when we were small, about 1935. My memories of them are vague. But I know there was something in what my mother said. It was an "anatomy is destiny" kind of situation, except that in my case the anatomy did not refer to sex, but to delicate bone structure. Early on I was tagged a gentle boy despite a fight in school in which I did creditably against a tough boy my own age. When we meet now our memory of the fight is about the only thing we have in common. When we get that off then we run out of conversation. Luckily we only meet about once in every seven years.

After our grandparents died the wing of the house in which they lived was unused. For years I stayed away from it for fear of ghosts, but about the age of thirteen I began to explore. I discovered a cache of old stockings, slips and knickers or bloomers belonging to my mother. I began to experiment with them. For reasons I will never understand I became fascinated by corsets. The word was one always destined to get a laugh, but there was something about the garment that fascinated me. Those original worn-out corsets of my mother's were not in the best condition. Never mind, I liked to lace myself in, to put on knickers over them, and then put on a pair of stockings and clip the tops to the suspenders as we called them. Over here they are known as garters, but to us garters are elastic bands which serve the same purpose, but not so spectacularly. Then I would get an old pair of shoes and skirt. At this stage my mother was sacrificing everything to us children, and so her discarded underwear was very unspectacular, but it served its purpose. I selected the best I could find and brought it out to the hay loft where I thought I could hide it better. It was quite a while before I began to get sexual satis- faction from wearing these garments. Somehow wearing feminine apparel got mixed up with sexual feelings, and because of that I began to experience guilt feelings about what at first had been a fun

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