FICTION

KAREN PHOENIX

A STORY OF REBIRTH THROUGH FIRE

Joy-England

As always when I went on an extended trip I'd taken two suitcases with me--an ordinary one, containing all the normal needs of a man on a lengthy absence from home and an extraordinary one, ivory coloured with a red trim, red nylon lined, in which lay clean and pressed a selection of my other clothes and of my make-up and jewellery. Also in it in a special compartment sat my favourite wig just back from the hairdresser. And the things in the second case I greatly preferred to those in the first.

Before I was fifteen I had accepted that I have what the world terms a problem. Not that it is to me-not by a long way—but as I knew then that the urges that I feel are wholly unlike those of other men I felt compelled to keep them hidden deeply inside me while I tried to find out the truth about myself. I don't mean different in the usual way-all my urges in that area are strictly heterosexual—but in the way I long to appear to myself and before the world.

By the time I was nineteen I'd read everything I'd been able to lay my hands on which appeared to bear on my case and while I found nothing which I could pin down as being the cause of my desires I at least learned enough to know that the condition is incurable (as if, having once experienced the ecstasy of complete transformation one would want to be 'cured') and came to terms with myself.

Being stuck with this problem it seemed to me to be sensible to make the best of the situation, and to do that I thought I could do better than join an amateur theatre group. In that way I could learn how to act and then could transfer the knowledge I gained to my private life to ensure as far as possible that I would behave as a

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