RANSVESTIA

my wife at my aunt's house when she came down from Minneapolis to see her mother. We bought ourselves a new car and drove back to California. We had a nice trip and I thought things were going fine and didn't know that there was a time bomb already ticking in her head. The upshot was that a couple of months after we arrived back in L.A. I got a call at work about 10 a.m. It was my wife who informed me that she was taking my son, the family silver, her clothes, etc. and going to live with her sister. It turned out that the psychiatrist, having heard that I liked to wear women's clothes, told her that I was un- doubtedly a homosexual and that she should get a divorce. So, since Gods and shrinks are always right, she took the advice and filed for divorce.

There was a lot of family trauma connected with the divorce. My family was socially prominent and the "news" that their son was a transvestite was not looked on with pleasure. So although both of my parents knew about me by this time I was given to understand that if I didn't get the situation resolved and kept out of the paper I was dis- owned financially and socially. Well, the upshot was that she got the divorce, about 75 percent of the assets, the house, child support, custody-the works. I could see the boy every other weekend. As those of you who have been through a divorce with children know, it was heart rending and destructive to all parties. My son resented the break-up of the home, but learned to manipulate both of us by telling each what he figured they would like to hear about the other, etc. It went from bad to worse and finally we had another court battle over permission for me to take the boy on a trip over Christmas to visit my sister and her kids. My "ex" countered with not only a protest against permission but an effort to cut visitation rights completely on the grounds that I was an unfit parent. We both lost in that I didn't get to take him on the trip but she didn't succeed in cancelling my visita- tion "privileges." It was quite a farce at the trial considering that the subject of masturbation came up and the psychiatrist that I had testi- fying for me told the court that it was normal since practically every- body does it. My "ex," her mother and their attorney were all hard- shell Baptists and this hit them pretty hard. The attorney was particu- larly incensed and insisted on questioning the shrink over and over again about it. I went up to him during a recess and asked him if he had ever masturbated. He harrumphed a few times and then allowed that maybe he did-"when I was a boy." I told him in the hearing of the "ex" and her mother that I was very relieved to have him admit it since if he denied it he was either a damned liar or damned ab- normal. That stopped him in his tracks.