ransvestia

way. Actually the place was tacky and not without the smells of both age and bad housekeeping. The chairs and sofa were broken down, it was small, in short it was pathetic that people who in the outside real world were ordinary guys, professional men, owners of their own businesses etc would have to gather in such a place in order to express something that was in all of them. But there was no place else to go and Johnny was a willing host though all he could furnish was the place, being on welfare.

Well, after two or three years of such "gatherings," somebody got the idea of putting out a magazine, newsletter or whatever you might have called it. It sounded like a good idea. Johnny, over the years, had managed to strike up an acquaintance with a couple of dozen other TV's around the country and they exchanged letters and pictures so there was a very small little clique that we could count as a prospective subscriber list. I invented the name Transvestia and I wrote the first promotional piece about it. We chipped in money to get it mimeographed and for envelopes and postage and Johnny sent it to all the contacts he had, asking for their support and $5 as a donation.

I've long ago forgotten how much we collected and how many "sub- scribers" we had but Johnny and a retired lawyer who lived in the vicinity constituted themselves the staff and began to put it together. I contributed a piece called "Muriel's New Year's Eve." (I called myself Muriel in those days which was before the cigar became well known, at which point I dropped the name.) I reported on my experiences on the previous New Years Eve in San Francisco where I had gone with a girl friend as a girl and made the rounds of several of the impersonator bars, hotels, etc. Others contributed articles, poems, etc. and the editors put it together. They managed to sustain. themselves through two issues at which point it expired. For one thing, they printed it on mimeograph paper which is heavy and there- fore required considerable postage; secondly, it could only be printed on one side and thirdly, it is a well known fact about lawyers that they are unable to say anything in 10 words if it is possible to expand it to 50, so Eddie poured it on and after two issues the costs of pro- duction and mailing had used up all the donation money and it fell on its face. It wasn't run remotely like a business and so it didn't survive like a business might have and as Chevalier Publications has for twenty years because I learned the lesson from Johnny and Eddie's failure.

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