RANSVESTIA

distrustful and not give it to the group leader but always go myself to the airport or hotel desk so that the leader would not notice the man's name attached and asked awkward questions. So everything would go smoothly next time.

As the result of the appearance of a very inadequate book on the Art of Female Impersonation by Pudgy Roberts I decided to write one that would really cover the needs of our kind of people. Pudgy is a gay queen and a stage impersonator and while his book gave some suggestions for stage appearance it was practically useless as a guide for straight FPs. So I sat down and wrote the How to be a Woman Though Male book which many of you know. I was, and am, pleased with it. It has been reprinted twice and although there are a few items now outdated-for instance hardly anyone wears hats or gloves anymore except in the winter's cold-by and large it is still the only book on the subject that really covers street wear, public behaviour and deportment. If I do say so it is a must for anyone intending to "go public." I wrote it from my own experiences of the previous 40 years and had it checked over by two wives.

1971 in the summer found me in Europe again, visiting my Scandi- navian friends in Sweden. I flew from there to Copenhagen and changed planes for a flight to Warsaw in a Russian-built, Polish Airlines plane in which, like in old railway cars, half of the pas- sengers sat facing backward. I was going to Warsaw to meet a tour group which had already done Leningrad and Moscow. I didn't want to go to them that time because I was going to save them to do as part of bigger Russian adventure which I did in 1975. Anyway, I arrived in Warsaw and was met and taken to the hotel. It was about noon and the tour wasn't due in till about 10 that evening, so I set off to explore the "old town" by myself. It was hard to believe that here I was, as Virginia yet, behind the Iron Curtain and wandering around by myself. I didn't know a word of Polish either.

After I had walked through the principal part of the old town and admired the way it had been rebuilt exactly as it was before the Nazis came-they did it by consulting paintings of various parts of the cities which were in various galleries all over Europe—I wan- dered a little further. I was standing at a street corner consulting my little map trying to figure out where I was, when a man came up and asked if he could help-In English. I explained I knew one street but which was the other, I couldn't find a sign. He explained where I was,

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