RANSVESTIA

with my first wife and her sister-just us three women together. I had the satisfaction of being told that I made an attractive lady and we had an interesting evening. It took 20 years for such an acknowledg- ment but I got it.

It was something of an irony that shortly after having my second. marriage go down the tubes, that in 1967, I should have a revised version of The Transvestite and His Wife published. It had been written first in 1962 as a sort of pamphlet type book. However, there were things in it that various wives disagreed with and other areas of omission which had become apparent to me. As a result, I rewrote the book. I was able to make arrangements with a publisher who did his own distribution by mail order. It got a lot of new subscribers for Chevalier and happily it did its job in a lot of marriages. I wish I could say that all wives were converted by reading it but unfortunately, I can't. Some refused to read it at all, others read it and then complained that it was "biased." That is kind of dumb since they already knew their feelings--why should I present their side to them. One gets a feeling that women who take this point of view really don't want to change their mind and were afraid that the logic of the book might be too much for them and they might have to change their mind.

Although the printing eventually sold out, it didn't sell at the rate the publisher would have liked and he, therefore, didn't wish to reprint it. So he returned the plates to me. I have reprinted it twice since then. It has done its job however, and has helped a lot of fami- lies adjust to the behavior and for that I am very pleased.

1968 was a year with several significant events. Early in the year I attended a nude encounter session. Yes, you read it right—NUDE. I had known the psychologist who pioneered nude therapy for some years but one night he gave a talk at a Unitarian group I happened to be attending. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that this would be an ultimate experience for me. I had thought that after talking to dozens of men's service clubs; I had worked my way out from under guilt. But events, like the guy who wanted to know whether my wife or I had the baby, led me to think that I really hadn't proved anything as long as they only had my word for it that I was a male. So I decided that if I could maintain my "selfness" as a woman when I was nude and my maleness was obvious to the eye rather than the ear,