Erika FCO-3-L

TRUE STORY

HOW IT ALL STARTED

A few years ago I succeeded in obtaining my own apartment all to myself, so that I was free at last to indulge my taste for the feminine. A week after getting installed in my new home in Toronto, I took a vacation and went to Montreal on a shopping excursion. I arrived late in the afternoon, and after checking into my hotel and having dinner, I went out to "case" the city and decide where to commence my shopping the next morning.

Being inexperienced and believing myself to be the only person on earth having this particular objective, I was naturally very jittery about approaching a saleswoman in a woman's specialty shop. But the desire to dress was too intense to brook denial. I had to do some- thing and make a start somewhere. Accordingly, having decided upon a shop, I was out and about at opening time the next morning. I went into a phone booth, looked up the number, and dialed.

A woman's voice answered. Without beating about the bush I said outright that I wanted to choose a woman's outfit to wear myself. Would she be willing to have a man come in and buy things for him- self? She replied, "Yes, come and see me and I'll fix you up."

When I got there it was a few minutes after ten o'clock in the morning. There were just the proprietress and a woman assistant in the shop, both in their fifties. I introduced myself as the man who had

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