TRANS

RANSVESTIA

me resolve to do something about it when I found the right doctor which I did in Dr. Bowman-see below.

A year or so later I was called back to the department of the medi- cal school where I had earned my Ph.D. Because of my position on the faculty I was able to attend the psychiatric conferences and learned a lot about mental disease and neurotic behaviour. One day they announced that they had a very unusual case that morning—a young man who had recently had his name changed to "Barbara" by a court order. Naturally my ears pricked up. The meeting was in a small medical amphitheater and I was sitting about three-fourths of the way up and about three-fourths of the way around. The doctor handling things announced that "Mr. Morris will give the psychometric details before the patient is brought in." Morris stood up at his seat to give the information. He was sitting a couple of rows in front of me and several seats closer to the center. This meant that when he began to talk everybody turned around to look at him and as I was in a straight line behind him it was as though they were looking at me. But the matter became very traumatic for me because as he talked he described the individual as coming from a Southern California college, gave his age and a lot of other details. It turned out that he had been in my own freshman class at my college though neither of us knew anything about the other one. Additionally, his personal transvestic history was almost identical with mine. It was as though this man, Morris, had reached into my head where I kept all of my secrets and then revealed them to the world. It was really traumatic. I blushed deeply and became very nervous. Then they produced the person-Barbara Wilcox-whose story was in Secrets magazine and a lot of other places back in 1941 or 42. At the end of that session they announced that next week they would present another transvestite. Naturally you couldn't have kept me away.

So I went to the conference and they presented a person some of you older readers may have heard of-Louise Lawrence. Well when it was over I lingered behind until I could talk with Mr. Morris and told him that it was a very interesting case that he had had that morning, etc. We chatted as we walked out to his car and then got in and talked awhile. He had a photo folder and on one of the pictures I noted Louise's address. Believe me I memorized that in about five seconds since she lived in Berkeley only about a mile and a half from me Next was the problem of meeting her. As this was during World War II my wife was taking a night nurse's aid class so on one of her

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