RANSVESTIA

hair. When a gown called for some cleavage and I came across a little too strongly, she managed to be there when I changed to go home. She noted the bra was lace and not padded and not with falsies. I can remember her quizzical look.

"Peggy, I've been meaning to ask you, how far do you intend to carry this deception? I can remember when you came with suit and tie. Now you have pierced ears, very feminine. You have eyebrows that weren't plucked and shaped but removed permanently as was your beard, very feminine. And now I see that the figure you sport is not just the fleshiness of a man but the breasts and hips of a woman. Are the hormones you've been taking under a doctor's direction?"

I had listened, saying nothing. Then I tried to give an answer. "Well, Barb, since I moved into the Mallets' house, these changes have come gradually but naturally. I feel at ease like this. I'm not on hormones! At least not knowingly. I see the Mallet's doctor regularly but he says I'm O.K." I continued dressing.

"Have you married Erica?"

"No, not yet," I touched up my make-up. "We keep putting it off and her mother doesn't say anything about it. She seems to want me to go further rather than criticizing me, although I don't know what further would be."

"Further? There's only one step further you could go to now, Peggy, or should I say ex-Dave. That would be to surgery to become a com- plete woman bodily. You sure have become one in every other respect."

That startled me and set me to thinking. Yes, Mrs. Mallet was point- ing me in that direction. Erica wasn't really but she could go along with it. Maybe they together had a plan to make me a full-time woman-revenge or some other scheme. The family doctor could well have been brought into it and I fell directly into the pit. And here I was-in most ways—a woman physically and almost psychically. But how was I to find out? And was Erica really involved? How did I get the hormones? She was on the pill and certainly wouldn't take hormones yet the food and drinks were all enough in common that it couldn't be that way. I didn't know how but felt I should find out.