ransvestia

main old ranch house with bedrooms of various sizes tucked away here and there, upstairs and down; a big sort of a barn across the road which had been fixed up as a kind of night club with a little bar at one side and a "stage" in the middle with an old piano for music. There were several other small cottages close by which also housed parts of the crowd. We had the pleasure of having Dr. Beigel, an eminent psychotherapist from New York, and Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, who was part of the original Kensey team, spend the weekend with us. One of them afterward commented with some degree of surprise that it was "the most asexual weekend I have ever spent." This only served to indicate the state of the psychiatric "art" (not a science in spite of the medical background) of the time (1962) which assumed that any male who would get into lingerie and dresses could only be doing it for sexual purposes and inasmuch as there were about 60 of us there there ought to have been a lot of assignations going on behind every bush. Naturally, as we all know, that isn't the purpose nor the satisfaction of dressing and so it didn't go on and led to that comment.

What did go on was continuous excitement, hilarity and fun from sunrise till almost sunrise again though we did have to get a few hours sleep. I will never forget the experience of climbing out of bed and, in my nightie, slippers, and robe, going into the bathroom to find six or seven other "girls" in nighties, slips or panties and bras with faces all lathered up and all shaving away those ungirlish whiskers. That was hilarious. But everyone was in the spirit of it and it was a big laugh all around. And I might comment at this point that the ability to laugh at the whole phenomenon of cross dressing is one of the saving graces of the behaviour. In one sense it is utterly ridiculous and thus laughable. At the other end it is pathetic that the genuine, honest and sincere need and desire to experience that otherwise buried other side of yourself has to be expressed only with consider- able caution and with great concern for secrecy and security except under very special times and conditions. It is one of the greatest sources of pleasure in my current life that I have managed to escape from all those limitations.

But back to the event. After everyone got dressed and made up suitable for public appearance we gradually appeared a few at a time for breakfast which was whipped up by Marie and her helpers. It was delicious and filling and started us off for a long and full day. We sat and talked with each other and with the non-TV members of

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