RANSVESTIA

offices and factories, and the office girls take their lunch-hour in two shirts, beginning at 11:30. Well, there I was in the fitting-room of a woman's fashion shop, inside a bra and half inside a girdle, while a swarm of girls were milling around the shop looking for bargains and likely to be needing all the fitting rooms at any moment. To make matters worse, the door of the fitting-room didn't fit the frame too well, so that there was a quarter-inch of wide open space between the door and the frame. When I looked through this fissure to see what was going on, I had a reasonable facsimile of a panoramic view of the activities in the shop; the place was literally heaving with customers, but the saleswomen were going about their business as if nothing out of the common were in the air. There was a rack of clothes just out- side my fitting-room and I could see a girl examining the goods on the rack. She and I were not more than twelve inches distant from each other.

I started to perspire, wondering what to expect-or rather what to choose-out of all sorts of possibilities which were propagating their kind with sans-culottic frenzy. But every TV who reads this will agree that the determination of a transvestite is superior to that generated by any other orientation. I had got so far, and I wasn't going to leave empty-handed-or ought I say undraped? I abandoned the first girlde and got the other on; then I tried on the blouse and skirt, and with the providence on my side, found the fit just right. When I tried to pull the black gown over my shoulders, however, I found it a little tight, and I was in such a sweat that I couldn't get it to slip down over my skin. I had to take it off and give up.

Eventually, I got out of the bra and girdle and into my legitimate clothes. I'll give you one guess as to my feelings as I came out of the fitting-room with the pretty clothes over my arm and started to run the gauntlet of all those girls in the shop. But, as far as I could observe, I made my way to the sales desk without anybody taking the slightest notice of me. I paid for the blouse and skirt, and handed back the dress, and made my way out.

It is said that there are some people who do not learn from ex- perience. Let me assure you that I am not one of them.