RANSVESTIA

and see everywhere today, but this was in the early 60s and things weren't so liberal then, by a long ways.

Well, I never got a reply to the letter. I thought I must have hurt her feelings or shocked her or something, though that hardly seemed likely considering the way she and my friend had written each other. But in due course I forgot all about it. One late afternoon, over a year later, I got a call from my wife at the office telling me that there were two Postal Inspectors there at the house who wanted to talk to me. So I spoke to one of them and told him they could hang around as I was about ready to leave the office.

I got home, found him and talked to him briefly and then asked him if, since it was now dinner time and my wife and son were at home, I could come down to the Hollywood post office after dinner and answer whatever they wanted to know and they agreed. So I ate dinner and then went down there taking along an educational scrap book I had assembled which presented the whole field of cross dress- ing in all its aspects. I got there and they were pretty nice about everything. They showed me a letter and asked if I had written it and I saw that it was the letter I had written to this "woman" over a year ago. It turned out that she was no lady but rather a man who held himself out to be a woman. It appeared that he was in some sort of trouble with the post office on other grounds and, as they do in such cases, they put a "cover" on his mail. That means that they noted the names and/or return addresses of all mail coming to him. By this tactic they can pyramid from one suspect to a number of others, who in turn, lead them still further. Of course, all police types operate on the theory that anyone who corresponds with a suspicious person is of necessity suspicious himself. So into this little "cover" drops my letter. They got it and held it for a year before doing any- thing about it.

Well, I couldn't deny that I wrote it but I told him that it was not only the only letter I ever wrote to that person, but it was the only letter of that frank nature that I ever wrote to anyone. He then showed me the name and address of the person who wrote the Gilbert stories (of which Tales from a Pink Mirror is one). I acknowledged that I knew him and had written to him several times in regard to the maga-