RANSVESTIA

Roy smiled back. "I was just wondering if you'd like to come on a date with Dot and me. I know a really great guy who'd just love to meet you." Valerie's eyes flicked over to me. She must have read the disapproval in my face. After all, she knew what she really was, and this was taking my involvement with her just a little too far. As a roommate she'd worked out fine, but my mind was still reeling under the exotic impression she'd made on my senses the night before. It was wrong that a man should be so feminine as he was. Even the way he was was girlish, his nylon stockinged legs so perfectly shaped and poised as he leaned on the sofa, just a little of his silk-ribboned petti- coat revealed in the pose he'd chosen.

"Sure," Valerie smiled back at Roy. "I'd just love to double date with you and Dorothy. Any time at all." There was not a doubt that she knew I didn't want to go out with her, but she'd accepted anyway. Roy wanted to go out to a movie Sunday night. He invited Valerie to come with us, but this time, maybe because she noticed the daggered looks I was giving her, she declined prettily, saying she had to be ready for an early job on Monday.

I could hardly discuss what I was feeling and thinking with Roy, though he seemed to get the message that I was upset with his asking her to go out with him. He asked me about it and, well, what could I say? I said it wasn't that of course. I claimed a headache and Roy didn't press it. But when he left met at the door, he said he'd talk to Earl and call me. I went to Valerie's room to talk to her, but if she wasn't really asleep, she was making a really great job of faking it. In the morning, too, she was gone before I even got up, and her 'modeling bag' was gone. I didn't get a chance to talk to her, then, before Roy called and told me he'd booked us a table at the Tropicana, the swankiest of all the night clubs in town, for the following Friday and that Earl was just dying to meet Valerie.

When I told Valerie what Roy had done, she just nodded at me and said she'd get free. She was so calm about the date that I was shook up. She quite casually accepted that she was going to the most 'in' place in town, where evening dresses were obligatory, and she didn't turn a hair. Going there with a man as her date didn't seem to upset her either. In fact, it was upsetting me much more than her, him or whatever. I found that I couldn't broach the topic with her at all. The very thought that Valerie was in fact a man herself left me tongue- tied.

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