RANSVESTIA

otherwise it would be locked up for weeks while the authorities did their thing.

The coroner' verdict was accidental death. Although she had had a bad cold and had stayed in bed several days and had taken some sleeping tablets, there were still a number of them in the bottle and there was not enough in her blood to warrant a suicide theory. They felt that she had just enough to be dopey, went to the bathroom, probably fainted and fell, hitting her head on the tile and just never came out of it. But it was a great loss because she was a true friend to lots of TVs who used to write her regularly.

By 1963 Transvestia was well established-sufficiently so that competition appeared. There was one fly by night publication published somewhere in upstate New York that lasted all of one issue and was never heard of again. But there also appeared another more worthwhile and enduring effort titled Turnabout edited by an FP whose femme name was Sioban Fredricks. It was quite a respectable effort, well put together and readable. In issues one and two the editor was kind enough to put, on the very last page, an ad for Transvestia with a short sentence acknowledging it as the pioneer publication in the field and suggesting that the well read FP might do well to subscribe to both journals. The first issues were "straight" as far as I and my efforts were concerned. I don't even remember whether I was mentioned at all but if I was, it was not unfavorable.

But by Turnabout issue No. 3 in 1964, things had changed. I had been through all the hassle just described with Bob/Barbara Elin, the court case, the difficulties with Lynn, etc. and these had been en- larged, elaborated out of all proportion and spread far and wide across the country. Of course, New York was the other fountain head of FP activity, so anything about Virginia Prince, the "upstart," "dictator," "megalomaniac," "neurotic" (take your choice) from the west coast, was grist for the New York mills. The person known to some of you as Darrel Raynor, was also D. Rhodes, and Quiven Enright and probably several other pseudonyms and who eventually wrote "A Year Among the girls" in 1966, was the associate editor and a force behind the anti-Virginia movement. He had come to Los Angeles (as related in "A Year Among ...") and met me and

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