RANSVESTIA

number of marriages and prevented several suicides and that I had the letters to prove it and I didn't see why it should be discontinued. He turned back to the DA and said what did he have to say to that and he in effect played the same record over again. Then back to me and I again protested the idea of closing the box and stopping the magazine. The judge then sentenced me-ready for this?—to three years in the Federal Penitentiary and five years of probation and said nothing about either the box or the magazine. He had to sentence me since I had plead guilty.

Well, I was glad enough that he hadn't interfered with the maga. zine but I was absolutely aghast at the prospect of the five years of probation because that meant that you couldn't break ANY laws for five years or they can lay the original sentence on you-three years in the pen. In those days there was an anti-masquerade law in Los Angeles. Thus, if I was out dressed and got picked up I could spend the next three years in the pen if the judge so decided. It's one thing to be in the closet and wanting to get out but it's a lot different to be used to being out of it as I had been since I was 18 and then to be crammed back into it. I was fit to be tied. My attorney saved the day by suggesting that I give lectures about the subject which I could do while dressed and that he would fix it up with his own Kiwanis Club if I wanted to do it. I was petrified at the idea of standing up before a bunch of men while dressed as a woman and telling them all about it, but on the other hand, it was the only apparent solution to the probation problem so I agreed.

I wrestled with the problem of what to say for several weeks and finally got a speech written that enabled me to build up an explana- tion for the phenomenon before I had to name it and admit to it. It went over pretty well. There were a couple of visitors there from other Kiwanis clubs and they asked me if I could speak to their clubs. So, I was off to the races. One thing led to another. I got into a program reporting sheet and good "grades" which led to a lot of other invitations. I didn't get paid for 90 percent of them but I did get out. I came to realize that in the 20 or so minutes they gave me to speak, I could not begin to go into the subject completely so I put together the pamphlet titled, "Introduction to Transvestism" which reappears as the first six or eight pages of the "Transvestite and His Wife book.

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