RANSVESTIA

My earliest memories of dressing are when I was seven or eight years of age. My sister had a "dress-up" set of clothes which included a burgandy satin dress. I fantasized wearing the dress for a long time. Then one day my parents were gone and my sister and went upstairs and pulled out the dress-up clothes. I remember stripping down to my underwear and pulling the much too large dress over my head. The first few moments of relief and estacy were followed by the most powerful guilt feelings I have ever felt. The dress came off almost as fast as it had gone on. Even so, Iknew that Iwould do it again, if only I could find a way to deal with the guilt.

My later trips to the dress-up bag were usually secret and brief. I tried other outfits but always settled on the satin dress. The sounds it made and the feeling of the satin on my body. are indescribable. To this day, when I hear the rustle of a skirt, I have a mental flash of that satin dress.

Dressing during my adolescense usually consisted of brief periods of traipsing around the upstairs in mother's slips (much too large) or my sister's dresses (much too small). I'm glad that no one took pictures of me then! During this time I still carried the guilt around me like a large ball and chain. I was convinced that I was the only one who wanted to wear women's clothing. I was one in a billion. Ithought endlessly about my problem. (Sound familiar?) After a period of time I learned that there were men who had changed their sex, and also that there were gay men who dressed as women. But I didn't feel that I belonged to either group. So although I had learned that there are others who cross-dressed, I felt even more alone; Perhaps I was one in two billion. The sense of isolation and guilt was almost too much to bear.

When Iwas eighteen, I entered a large university which has a good medical library. I hoped that here I would be able to find out what I was and why I was that way. I remember read- ing an old Havelock Ellis text which mentioned "Eonism" as separate and distinct from homosexual behavior. The sense of relief in finding out that I was not really alone was overwhelming. I know know "what" I was. It wasn't long before I connected Eonism, an early term, to transvestism. I visited the medical, graduate, and undergraduate libraries, hoping to learn more.

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