It's No Fun Being a Girl

Gladys Talbot, across the room, is warming my left tit in her hands. The skin-pink silicone form trembles with absolute lack of desire: virginal and very detached. Gladys will lend me some body heat. She presses, palm over palm, as you would pack a B-cup-size snowball. She has my boob and the charming, kindly old bandit is gonna milk me but good. Me, Deirdre.

"There. It's warm now. Let me slip it in your bra."

"Ah--how much are those over there? The cloth-covered plastic ones?"

"Thirty-five dollars. But they're too hard, dear. You should have these soft silicone ones. They're more like a normal breast. You'll get a better feeling."

"Yes. I suppose. But it's only for one or two days, after all."

"Well, you're here for a purpose, aren't you? You want to be like most of the others. I carry those plastic prostheses for poor kids who come and can't afford better."

"But the silicone ones cost a hundred and five dollars."

"Yes. A hundred and five dollars each."

"Each?"

"You want to look your best, don't you? That's very important. You don't want to have hard breasts."

"Uh. No."

Poor Deirdre. She never could cope with authority figures. Gladys is coming on tough, as my grandma used to when she read aloud from Mary Baker Eddy: dogmatic, fervent. Gladys has the foundation-garment franchise here at the fifth annual Fantasia Fair in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where annually more than 100 well-off transvestites convene to enjoy being a girl. Her hotelroom furniture is sheathed with mighty corsets: cartilaginous, white, like the bleaching skeletons of some tubular fish. Gladys, I figure, has to have better hand strength than Dr. Death. Since Truman, she's been latching girdles shut around 200-pound men. At the age of 60-plus, she hangs silicone prostheses on a 6'4" gentleman the way, next Christmas Eve, she'll trim a lumpish tree.

Hell, how can anyone argue rationally with a corset and panty hose on? My 40-33-39 figure has been doled out--stomach flesh ebbs around to kidney space, so sausage tight I feel like someone else is standing up for me. I creak at each inhale. The cotton bust of My First Bra is wind-sock empty, waiting for developments. I'm well unstacked. Deirdre looks down, past the euphemizing nylon swimsuit. (Gladys required me to wear it--she's modest about everything but her price list.) My toes are crushed, (continued on page 170) No Bun Being a Girl (continued from page 167) choked by the down-slant squeeze of my three-inch-high strap footwear. Size ten and a half, also EEE--which is both my width and a sound I want to make. Yet, you know--can it be?--the champ's leg doesn't look half bad. A shapely milk bottle upside down.

See--golly, this is embarrassing--last night, Deirdre depilated her legs. Much Southern Comfort in one hand, much aerosol Neet in the other, I sat on my motel-room couch and mowed down my leg hair (plus some carpet shag). Then, with white jodhpurs of hair-munching gunge, I went to shower off.

And faster than you can Morse-code B-A-L-D, my leg hair turned to crummy black soot: gone like doodling on a Magic Slate. I felt myself up down there. Hello, who is this chick? The one with the soft, glossy, pink calves? Be understanding: Last I saw my legs was 1954.

"I'm glad you chose the silicone prostheses," says Gladys.

"I did?"

Splack. Splack. Guess I did. Gladys has just performed two reverse radical mastectomies. All this silicone up front makes me feel prowed: the little tugboat that could. Good place, I muse, to rest a book when you're reading. Wait, though, we have to test-drive a falsie tochis. Most T/V men wear them--sort of a breeches buoy with ribbed vertical padding at sides and rear. Unlike your average male, however, I'm already built like Phil Esposito in full face-off gear. My behind has sales resistance: It won't. Even. Ungh. Go. In. So I weave down, stair after unbalancing 45-degreeangle stair, to the make-up person, Carlotta, below. My feet are hammered home, wedges into firewood. The girdle has been practicing a Heimlich maneuver on my solar plexus. Over one arm, the blue jeans--livery of another self--seem desolate. I'd give my left boob to be back in them. Hosed thighs chafe and sing a cricket sound. I am woman, da-de-dah! Double-U, Oh, Em, Ay, Ennn!

Let's get it straight. Gladys is a GG (genuine girl; i.e., real broad). Carlotta is a CD (cross-dresser, transvestite, male). Someday Carlotta means to go whole has: to have a new fixture put on her drainage and turn TS (transsexual). There are, you realize by now, as many initials in this trade as there were in the 1932 New Deal Administration. Carlotta has cordially volunteered to make me up: facial slum-clearance work. First, from the Fantasia Fair consignment boutique, we select a Miss Grundy dark-blue suit and blouse handed-me-down, I hazard, from some weirdo meter maid. My cleavage is more an overgrown gulch; kind Carlotta will donate her scarf to censor chest hair in it. Last night, I Schicked my sideburns off so that the wig, a brunette artichoke, won't have its cover blown. But my head is 7 7/8 inches and casserole shaped. Each half hour or so, the wig will squidge up, like a rubber suction dart losing its suck. Moreover, I begin to get wig-band headache syndrome. And I think: Deirdre, honey, it's gonna be a onenight stand for us.

Carlotta can pass. That is, she won't be read as male by beer-can and cherry-bomb-flinging yahoos out on Straight Street, U.S.A. Unusual right there: Not one T/V in ten could dupe even Stevie Wonder. At snap glance, Fantasia Fair might be a lavish open call for Charley's Aunt, but Carlotta--who spends half his/her life being her "brother" Carl--is feminine, vivacious and otherwise atypical, too. Ninety-five percent of T/V men, I am told, consider the ultimate operation at some time; yet fewer than one percent ever pawn their family jewels. Carlotta will. Already, (s)he has had a silicone breast implant. And his/her Adam's apple has been scraped down, almost a half inch taken off surgically. (The oafish male neck fruit is of less purpose than ear hair.) We chat about her psychic ménage à deux and that final trip to the T/V repairman.

"It [castration] can't happen right away. I have a daughter who's only about ten and I'm apprehensive about that. And I have my own business--slowly I'll have to incorporate Carlotta into it. She'll be in a predominantly male field. It'll be interesting to see whether she survives or not. You should do something about that stubble, deary. Too bad you didn't wax it off." Carlotta plasters neutral beard cover on. Then--dab, dab, dab, five-finger typing--she will blend it in. "Actually, Carlotta makes a better presentation than her grubby old brother does, anyhow. There's certainly more reassurance in this role. You know: I get up to speak to college audiences as Carlotta, and talk about the most intimate things--it doesn't faze me a bit. But five years ago, my brother couldn't get up and talk in a group of five or six people--and on a technical subject that he's known all his life--without stuttering. Some of this has rubbed off on him--he's much better now. Far more outgoing."

Yaaah; something unearthly about that matter-of-fact speech. It might just frighten me. Carlotta is happy, rational, attractive; how could Carl be so different? I stare at the mirror. Deirdre reminds me of Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot--nervous and on the lam. My red lips smack. Puh, a taste of après makeout. Deirdre smiles--naughty and, um, cocksure. I hope she has no intention of taking D. Keith over. She couldn't afford my lifestyle.

"Well, deary, you're done. Your petticoat is showing, but you'll do fine."

I reach up to resuction my wig and hit myself a good one in the bazoom. What're these things doing here? I'm flustered and girlish. It's a big moment for any CD--even a CD on consignment like I am--the debut, the first time out in public. Will I be read? Of course I'll be read. I couldn't pass in a Hasty Pudding revue. I step to the door and . . . and . . . someone opens it for me. Oh, cool. This woman gig isn't bad. Think I'll go find a guy to collect alimony from.

"Have a nice time," Carlotta calls. "And, dear, don't forget to put the seat down."

•

Out. Into Provincetown--where, this October afternoon, it is cold as a witch's prosthesis. P-town: the foreskin on old Cape Cod, that bent and flaccid peninsula. Sanctuary five years running now of Fantasia Fair. An open town: Dodge City for sexual hard cases. Last night, I found myself boogieing with three hetero T/V men in a lesbian disco. Downstairs, below Gifford House--G.H.Q. of Fantasia Fair--there is a gay S/M bar: You can order men on the rocks or straight up. Around P-town, T/V people could feel almost bourgeois, prosaic. And police will protect, not hassle them. To the indigenous P-town population, Fantasia Fair is just another bunch of strange conventioneers. Only local P-town women seem irked. Since this year's fair began, the straight tourist trade has given them an ironic, you-don't-fool-me look. But Massachusetts is not known for beautiful women. Already, I've heard someone call a mother with two children "You dumb faggot." Few Bay State women can pass in their own gender. It doesn't surprise me that Massachusetts went for McGovern.

Fantasia Fair is sponsored by the Human Outreach and Achievement Institute--groin child of one Ariadne Kane. Ari, whom I have met beforehand in Boston, is tall, dark and winsome: an (continued on page 238) No Fun Being A Girl (continued from page 170) exuberant, articulate transgenderist androgyne (hold on, I'll define that later). Ari doesn't deceive many people: If maleness were metal, she'd make airport security detectors scream. Now and again, Ari can remind me of Uncle Milty in drag on the Texaco Star Theater. No Bostonian, though, will harass us--out of courtesy or (more likely) pure indifference. Ari is exceptional; your standard-brand T/V would never dare walk along Commonwealth Avenue in--hum--broad daylight. But T/Vism is Ari's vocation; she has often been on TV as a T/V. Her Outreach Institute was founded to provide services and information both for the helping professional and for the "paraculture" (i.e., T/V, CD, TG, A, TS). Think this over: They estimate that one percent of adult Americans are paracultural. A subnotion: 1,600,000 people who dry off with either the His or the Her towel.

Between October 12 and October 21, 1979, at Fantasia Fair en femme there are:

A stockbroker.

A banker.

Three or four lawyers.

A sheriff.

A police chief.

A good half-dozen corporate executives.

A political-campaign manager.

A gynecologist.

Several officials in local, state and foreign government.

One engineer (who had been a Luftwaffe pilot).

One engineer (who had been a Royal Navy destroyer commander).

In fact, the military seems to recruit men for whom dress parade can mean more than just dress parade. Ari told me about Naval Commander X: Some years ago, this person decided on a surgical sea change. Problem: The Navy didn't want to pay for it. Problem: X had a lot of very strategic and potentially embar-rassing nuclear-submarine data. End problem: Not only did the American taxpayer subsidize his sexual discharge but--enjoy this--when last seen. X was a female three-striper. Talk about your classified military operation.

At Hargood House, I listen as the computer-company president leans into an expensive credit-card call. "Three million . . . bid . . . contract." Hang up. "Hah," he asks me, while spangling on a beauty spot, "what d' you think he'd say? I mean, hah, if he knew he'd been talking to a six-foot-three drag queen?"

These are influential men--phone-in-the-Mercedes men. Intelligent and articulate, very civil. They accept D. Keith and his poor waif friend, Deirdre, with quick grace. Men of all ages, from 28 to 84. (Yes, 84. And 77. By that time, nature, I suspect, has done some kind transgenderizing of its own.) The sample here, no doubt, is skewed somewhat. Lower-middle-class TG men would probably find Fantasia Fair prohibitive. Per room, per week, it costs an arm, a leg and the stuffing in your hubba-hubba heinie. (Ariadne: "We support the Outreach Institute that way. You can't just ask people to make donations. The paraculture doesn't operate that way. It has a lot of self-centered individuals.")

TG men, at Fantasia Fair, anyhow, function under great job stress. Gender change serves as a blowoff valve. This statement is typical: "I couldn't get through the week if I didn't know I could become Diane on Saturday.

Ari put it another way: When en femme, "I can't be touched by any of the trivia of the world. I was using cross-dressing as an incredible tension mechanism."

Some likened TG to the preparation that actors work up. "I was out walking." Jo Beth told me, "and I really looked good. Or I thought so. I was into the part. Then some kid called me a queer, and it all broke--my concentration went. I had trouble remembering where I was." What we have here. I would suggest, is a controlled and useful schizophrenia. Carl, Carlotta: separate people. And only one has to show up at the office tomorrow morning.

Even Deirdre, with her hire-purchase feminine intuition, can sense it. A door opened. My coat held. Small deferences extended. I loll around in a novel passivity. My usual assertive, loud, death-of-the-party temperament is on furlough. Also, Deirdre prods awake my native voyeurism--she is a one-way mirror, a keyhole. I can observe people on the streets of P-town and they can't see me--not me, Keith, anyhow.

I understood then what Deirdre understands now: that a handy, reversible schizophrenia is as refreshing as five days and seven nights at the Hasta Mañana Hotel in Acapulco. No deadline. No rent payment. Ward of the state. TGs can commit mental mitosis and then return pretty much at will (though T/V is, in its way, compulsive). By taking French leave of gender, emotional and occupational tension will be bypassed. Moreover, in this state, "brother" is seen with a healthful third-person objectivity.

"Hello, may I speak to Carl?"

"He isn't in at the moment. This is his sister. Carlotta: can I take a message?" Sure beats hiding on the floor with your Venetian blind drawn. I could get jealous.

•

Here, to enlarge your consciousness, I append a glossary.

Cross-dresser (CD): Someone, anyone, who wears the laundry of another sex. Your wife, with her Gloria Vanderbilt jean set, is CDing.

Transvestite (T/V): A heterosexual male CD, and particularly one who is more responsive to feminine livery than to feminine behavior. E.g., some troglodyte who chews Red Man while wearing a peignoir.

Transgenderist (TG): Any T/V who has also plagiarized the social and cultural effects of womanhood. (Strictly speaking, then--and hereafter our speech will be strict--Fantasia Fair is a transgenderist. not just a transvestite, conclave.)

Woman: Any person--male or female--who acts as women, conventionally, are supposed to act. (This will put Gloria Steinem and Germaine Greer in some yet-undisclosed phylum.)

Female: A biological broad.

Genuine girl (GG): Ditto.

Transsexual (TS): Someone who has had the definitive operation and can now sew all his pants flies up. (I Know: there are many female-to-male TSs. but I have to save something for the next article.)

Androgyne (A): Ariadne Kane.

Ariadne was seven when female raiment first made sheep's eyes at him/ her. This is quite typical: the precocious, prepubic passion for Mom's or Sis's chifforobe. Then, for a while feminine attire is just a quickie, with fetishistic or masturbatory uses. After that--also typical--there is a bid parental confrontation: Who's been taking the stretch out of my girdle? Major melodrama ensues, no-son-of-mine-is-gonna-be-a-fruit. etc. The family G.P., who can't tell T/Vism from cradle cap, will be called in. Shame and confusion.

Years then drag out, with only sporadlic cross-dressing--one patent-leather pump here, half a bra there. In adult-hood, though, some kind of primitive size-44 trousseau is accumulated: Ariadne or Carlotta or Diane begins to evolve a parallel persona. Most T/Vs progress no further than this. But, given luck, gall and usually a fortunate contact with veteran parapeople, group cross-dressing is essayed. At last, 100 or so reach the $64,000 pyramid: Fantasia Fair and a chance to let Atlantic breezes puff up under their dirndl.

The plot outline may be similar the causes, however, are not. One thing is crystal-dark--nobody has even half an inkling why men cross-dress. T/Vs and TGs represent the most diverse sexual or social subgroup I have ever wandered into. As Dr. Stan Rosenberg, who led a TS seminar at Fantasia Fair, told me: "There is no characteristic family constellation of living patterns. The kind of thing you find, say, in homosexuals--the dominant mother and the father who is passive. Or certain kinds of deprivation in childhood. These have not shown up with TGism or TSism." TG is mysterious and incurable. Most T/V men have quit wondering why (though guilt can't be taken off with Nair). They're at Fantasia Fair to learn--and hone--the coping strategies of how.

Ariadne is atypical in this: She has a compassionate and even accommodating wife. (Change that to spouse: We start talking about her wife and my mind will go FZXYT!) They shop for clothes together; they walk arm in arm, a sorority of two. (Ariadne and "brother" share their mutual spouse; brother is in roughly four days out of seven.) As you might guess, cross-dressing doesn't improve marital shelf life. The divorce rate among T/V men is immoderate. A wife, after all, would appreciate knowing who wears the panties at home.

And children get spiritually confused: It's a wise kid who can recognize his own father en femme. What boy would want to say, "My daddy can scratch your daddy's eyes out"? (Male children, in general, are aghast, as though father were trying to confuse their Oedipus complexes. Female children are some what more nonchalant.)

When the revelation comes late on, even a magnanimous wife will feel fearful or inadequate. Or jealous. Madeleine--a first-time Fantasia Fairer from Texas--described her spouse's apprehensive and rather poignant send-off. "She was crying at the Dallas airport. She said, 'Please, I want my man to come back."' You can sympathize; 20 years of marriage and all at once her husband is a spouse.

Picture a TG. It isn't hard. Someone, say, who looks like Lee J. Cobb with a golf-course divot on his head. Free-association time: What word comes to mind? Poove! Nance! Thirp! Fag! Foop! Queer! Queen! Quite wrong. The large majority of TG men are heterosexual--just like you. In fact, transvestite--as described by clinical psychologist and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld--meant only "heterosexual men who wear clothing of the opposite sex." Gay street queens and gay female impersonators, though, have debauched transvestite. Which is why Ari will prefer the neutral term cross-dresser. In truth--sorry about this--Fantasia Fair has little or less to do with sex. It's an exploration of gender role.

Ariadne is to gender role what Lewis and Clark, both, were to the Louisiana Purchase. "My behavior would best be described as bigenderal. Not transgenderal. That is, I can live comfortably in either role for long periods of time. I've got freedom and I love it. The course that I've followed leads to a dissolution of the dichotomy in gender roles. Androgyny gets you out of the bullshit of saying 'I'm a guy' or 'I'm a girl.' There is nothing I haven't done as a woman--short of sexual encounters, which is not what I'm into. Being a woman doesn't require having a specific anatomy. Best thing to do is go in front of a supermarket and see all the women filing through on a Saturday. You'll find that there are so few different characteristics between males and females--unless they really effect them. Of course, it's very hard, in the absence of some visual cue, for a man to express his femininity. So I wear feminine attire. That's a superficial first stage. I've grown now to expose the repressed part of my personality--the feminine. I've allowed it to emerge and become part of a person that is neither totally masculine nor totally feminine, but totally human. An androgyne."

Inveigling pitch, no? A golden age when men can weep and women can goose each other. A grade-A homogenization of the sex roles: no plug, no socket, just one androgynous universal joint. "Gender is a fragile thing," another TG cautioned me. Naturally, the triumph of this CD-T/V-TG-A platform plank will engender the obsolescence of that plank. When men and women look alike, there won't be any reason--or any way--to cross-dress.

•

And all at once--cue the string section--I'm in love. D. Keith is, I mean. That slut Deirdre can eat her liver out, for all I care. It's dark here, the music and the bourbon are custom-blended; romance has stolen in. I flip a possessive look at Barbie, my disco date. Just try cutting in on us, buster--I'll break your metacarpal bones. Barbie is fetching, marmot cute--petite, with unstoppable legs and a power-pack 34-22-34. The most plausible TG in Provincetown. We've been Y.M.C.A.ing it, man and woman, for more than an hour now. I suspend disbelief, suckered by sheer finesse. Amazing what a little sleight of breast can do.

God, the preparation. You need at least six rough drafts to make one woman. TGism is marvelously expensive--in cash, in time. You have to stay fashionable for two people and the IRS won't let you file a joint form. (Barbie's "brother" is employed by local government; not what she'd call a great sugar daddy.) As we drive back to the motel, Barbs will debrief me--a double agent behind enemy lines. Although a debutante (first time out in P-town), Barbie has the love for realistic detail that we usually associate with a prostitute pretending to have an orgasm.

"A month ago, I started slapping myself with this real foul after-shave lotion at work. See, I'll need time to deper-fume when I get back home. The lotion will give me cover. Also, I have to wear long-sleeved shirts even in summer. You can't have hair on your arms, then no hair, then hair again--like Mr. Hyde. And then there are the kinetics of it. For example, this afternoon--walking down the street--I almost stepped aside to let a woman pass. Tennis, too. I wanted to play tennis en femme and in public up here. So I practiced a Tracy Austin two-hander. That's funny. After practicing, I went out to play as brother. First swing, I almost fell down. I wasn't used to playing without that extra weight upstairs. And, you know, five pounds of breast gives you a lot more hitting power."

For the record, I ask her about trans-sexuality. "We all think of it--at some time or other. But, well . . . my experience is that only TGs with a very strong sex drive should have the operation. They want sex with a man: but heterosexual sex. Gay relationships put them off. As for me, I'm celibate pretty much. I haven't had sex in seven or eight years. It's, oh, kind of dead down there. I don't know why. It just doesn't seem important."

Urchin sea breezes coax: The long swerve of Cape Cod is permissive now. My car has pulled up outside Barbie's room. Time, in the normal course of a normal night, to recognize and seal our closeness here. Take inventory, Keith: a spill of close-kinking brunette hair, the catchy upstart nose, one chipped and vulnerable tooth. To be frank, I haven't felt so heavily male before--protective and hung like Florida. Respending, ever the Pre-Raphaelite, to art rather than to desire. This adroit new person knows more about femaleness than any GG I can recall. Being woman has to be a full-time transaction with the world, which is why most women aren't. I cheat near, arm on the seat back; my pulse ticks 100, 110. After all, this is our first date. Barb may not be that kind of girl. And if she slaps me, I'll probably end up on North Queer Street. Lean down; kiss her good October night.

Well, why not?

One snide remark, friend, just one, and you'll have deciduous teeth again.

•

For the rest, a fat and yellow nausea gripped at me. It was like being above, then below deck on some roller crazy sloop. Above, aware: I see waves and can match my balance with them. (I think, Well, this is a man wearing feminine getup, and so what?) But below deck, caught unaware: invisible and sleazy sea motion stirs puke in me. (I glance up to see, all at once, the nightmarish aspect of men seized by deforming femaleness.) I have had such dreams: dreams of my father, captive, possessed by a mincing lady ghoul. And my esophagus is open. I want to barf all over their high-heeled feet.

Because they are, there is no tender word for it, grotesque. Saddle-of-beef hands that a dainty, dwarfed engagement ring will satirize. The burlesquing horse-lip mouth. Cheekbones, low and male, dished out with hectic rouge. A comprehensive lack of style. ("Unfortunately," Ari has sighed, "many TG men tend to dress the way their mothers did. In 1948.") Do they know how they look? Yes, I think. As you know the inevitability of your own death--not as a pressing matter. Here at P-town, they are mirrors for each other. Yet not often do they accept the pessimistic image back. Jo Beth did mention one man, class of '78, who saw a TG his own shape high-stepping down Commercial Street. Six foot four and cellar-door-backed. That was group validation enough: He rolled up his negligee and left.

Voice. Voice is the Wassermann. Doesn't matter how often Ari might insist, "Oh, Tallulah Bankhead's voice was deeper than mine," I still register her insecurity. When in public--at the restaurant, on television--she will begin to speak with a silly, lilting falsetto. Then give it up after five or six words. Deepness isn't the big mumbling block; timbre, pitch, quality are. Somehow, moreover, your natural male voice, set in the context of lip gloss and base, comes out a gawkish bray. Dissonance has been set up between eye and ear. One or two TGs could pass a close inspection; none, I think, could pass long distance.

And hair.

Seen along the kidneys in a low-backed gown. On hand, finger, toe. On nape. Around the pocky tattletale craters in cheek growth that catch make-up and store it away. TG men waste more time coping with hair than a chronic lycan-thropist would. There are four procedures: (1) Close shave: up and down, east and west, over and over, with and against the grain. (2) Depilation, which can foment attractive dermatitis. (3) Wax, a painful hair-razing method. "You apply runny wax. Then, after the wax has set, you rip it off in inch-wide strips. Quite a slap. But it'll last about ten days." (4) Electrolysis: A fine needle is inserted along the follicle, then slid down to its root. R & D at Auschwitz must've come up with this one. Zzzzat! Turn high-frequency current on. To bald the entire face and body, figure 150 to 200 hours of tweezing pain at, oh. $30 per. And still your bearded face will look like a bearded face, only without the beard.

Nonetheless, they stick it out. Why? Because TGism is the moral equivalent of nymphomania; because they have to. This is not an idle pastime. Panties are addictive--once in command, your female persona is more tenacious than a Genovese loan shark. Every TG can recall that moment of sinking remorse and guilt when a bra was burned in shame. Still the obsession would return like a psychic malaria. Fantasia Fair, understand, was never meant to be therapeutic. It is an extension course in nubility. Each morning, Carlotta will hold her make-up-and-deportment class. Ari has a seminar program: "Legal Aspects," "Transsexuality," "Being Yourself in Public." And there are examinations, so to speak: Fashion Show, Talent Show, Swimsuit Pageant. It's as though paranoids had met to learn a better way of being afraid.

Granted their concept of womanliness is somewhat pre-Flood--girls just like that girl who married dear old Dad. As more and more lib women desert the conventional homemaker role, more and more TG men come out of the trunk to fill it. If you want your socks sewn and your back rubbed--no lip about self-expression and consciousness raising--marry a transgenderist. One TG, to point up the cartoon cliché, told me she couldn't parallel park her car when en femme. Another dropped a lighted match so that D. Keith could ignite her Virginia Slim. You've taken a giant step backward, baby. Listen to Liza's opinions of this male-chauvinist-pig nonsense. Liza is a beautiful transsexual. Ari had invited her to speak at the TS seminar.

"I just don't understand them. I think transvestism is morbid. I never dressed as a woman before my operation. That never crossed my mind. I was a woman trapped in a man's body. My male genitalia never developed fully. [Castration--for those of you who think your balls are valuable--is done on an outpatient basis. One-day service, like dry cleaning. In and out the same afternoon, with an ice pack on your crotch.] And their idea of women is sheer caricature. For instance, they insisted that I wear a skirt to the seminar. It would, you know, reflect badly on transsexuality if I didn't. Ridiculous. Listen, they hold pajama parties here at night. What woman over 13 would go to a pajama party?"

They do, indeed, have pajama bashes. Most every night, I was given a standing invitation to lie down at one. Why pajama parties? Use your brain, Fred. What fun is unusual nightwear if nobody can see you wearing it? Try to imagine the scene: five or six pink, satiny men in a motel room, drinking ladies' drinks and mentioning their unmentionables. Any TG will know more about female apparel--fabric, cut, size, price--than Halston. Hair small talk. Make-up small talk. Small talk about the last time a cop pulled "sister" over for speeding. But never militant T/V-lib talk. TGs, I suspect, don't particularly want equal rights or social acceptance. Since most of them pass about as well as a wimp-armed quarterback, acceptance would only mean being seen through. "Oh, go over and tolerate him." Not much turn-on there. T/V is, to some considerable degree, a noncontact sport. The gusto grabbing comes in adventure, in risk--to walk "unread" through your local supermarket frozen-food section, say. A kind of clothed streaking.

Sip. Gossip. And plant your photo album on anyone with a vacant lap. This is yet another irreducible element of TGism: narcissism with a capital I. Only bank tellers get photographed more often. Each TG has an elaborate picture portfolio. Any posed snapshot is worth a thousand disappointing face-to-face encounters. Ari has also brought video-tape equipment along; before it, they model the latest in themselves. Practice a pelvic walk; learn to cross their legs without showing what they haven't got. Ari: "Well, it could be narcissistic. When I'd look in the mirror during childhood, I'd say, 'You're just ravishing.' I could imagine myself looking like a dreamboat."

The ex-R.N. destroyer commander was rather more emphatic: "If any T/V says he isn't narcissistic, he's lying. And we all think we look a hell of a lot better than we do." Narcissism: Even my beautiful Barbie is carrying a torch for herself.

"Keith?"

"Uh?"

"Who're you voting for? In the Miss Femininity Competition."

"What? Not you, too? You don't need that kind of validation."

"Oh, yes I do. I do. Oh, yes."

Where does this conversation take place? At a pajama party in the gynecologist's motel room. I lean back: one hand fumbles out to put my pink lady on the bed table and I touch. . . . Ach. What in geek's name have I touched?

A fershlugginer Modess pad is what!

"Oh, excuse me." The lady doctor is perturbed. "I'll just get that out of your way. De-dum. There."

"Barbie," I whisper. "Pssst, Barbie."

"Yes."

"Did you see what I saw?"

"Well. It makes some of them--of us--feel more comfortable."

"Please. Spare me. No one--I'm sorry--no one needs a Modess pad to express his femininity. Come on Barbie, that's just bullshit."

"All right. It bothers me, too. It's a reasonable question--I have to think about it myself. We do use too much equipment. I think next year I'm going to dress without false breasts."

"Jesus. I hope so."

And, sorry, this is where I get off. Where I pass Ari--and other TG apologists--going Up on the Down escalator. Their argument is seductive; their Doin' My Own Thing generation credentials are chic and impeccable. I don't disavow the secret ingénue in me. Heck, we all hatched from sperm and egg: Given a different coin flip of the genes, I might have been my sister. But can't femaleness--shouldn't femaleness--be expressed by men in a male context, through tenderness, sensitivity, whatever? Why is this complete syllabus of outward and visible signs needed? Needed, in particular, by TG men. Women cross-dress often enough, yet you meet few if any who assert their inner jock-hood by co-opting male physical traits. Even your best bull dyke doesn't wear, oh, synthetic five-o'clock shadow.

Ari herself insisted that "being a woman doesn't require having a specific anatomy." Checkmate: Then why the gay deceivers, the counterfeit hip fat? I know what Ari would answer: "It's very hard, in the absence of some visual cue, for a man to express his femininity." Ok, I'll grant that premise--if the man must signal his maidenhood to others. But, question: Does Ari wear an ersatz bust when alone? You bet. So who is she trying to signal, then? No one. Or herself. In truth, TGs have a very immature and stereotypic sense of womanness. One that has to depend on the prop department, on a fraudulent mirror image. They are less assured, by implication, than any male who can acknowledge the mother in him without trick lighting. They are, I'm afraid, a crude parody, as outrageous and uptight and hollow, in their way, as your worst posturing macho asshole.

And all the rationalization, though stylish, is just so much make-up. A local anesthetic for guilt, which every TG--no matter how far along the yellowbrick road he may be--continues still to feel. TGism is benign: I'll defend any man's right to wear a tutu; as avocation, deer hunting and loud rock music are much less attractive. But TGism is not an avocation. Nor does it exist because men--in philosophical protest--want to advertise their ladylike better half. It exists because it is a demanding and irresistible compulsion. No one can say what the etiology of this compulsion might be, but perhaps TG men are in some way deficient, less able, to get at the female pronoun in their sexual vocabulary than "normal" men. Ari isn't an androgyne: Androgynous and androgyny mean "uniting the characteristics of both sexes." Ari had disjoined, not united them; separated them into Ariadne and whoever she is when she isn't.

•

Watch Deirdre eat. She's at a--oh, dear, I can't resist--she's at a T/V dinner. Hosted by Fantasia Fair each year at the Provincetown Universalist (very Universalist) Church--in connection with their Encounters of a Fifth Kind alternate-life-pattern symposium.

Ugh; what have we here? How unhygienic--someone has left lipstick on my glass. Guess who, schmuck. No wonder the three-bean salad has a castor-oil-and-beeswax taste. My fellow ladyfriends--my lady fellow friends--are supportive; they know what this debut has cost me, though several, Deirdre can tell, don't recognize her at first. It's not that I pass; it's more that I've taken my hornrimmed glasses off. I'd wear them--I'm not being vain--but one earpiece has a tendency to stir my wig up. I'm afraid it'll spring off and pounce on the soup like an excited rodent. Deirdre leans back in a svelte feminine pose: cigarette pointed up, legs crossed. Zippp! Left leg has slid off right knee. Hup again: Zzzzipp again. Panty hose are slippery. I see now why women have trouble keeping their legs closed.

"Deirdre. Have you got your car?"

"Sure, Ari. Need a lift?" Deirdre doesn't like driving. Somehow, her high heel hits the accelerator 15 mph faster than her shoe tip. "Shall I get it?"

"Well. I don't want to put you out."

"No problem." What is this? I spend six hours practicing womanhood and still I have to go get the car? Are there women and then women, a double double standard? "It should only take me about ten minutes. I'm parked six or seven blocks away. Wait outside the church door."

Heeeere's Deirdre! Bumping and grinding down the libertarian main drag of P-town. I dream I am a woman in my Maidenform bra: No, a Jewish-American princess (why not dare to be great?). It's cold out, and who opened the big trap door under my crotch? I understand now why Admiral Byrd didn't wear a dress. My make-up rises, montane, on rugged goose-pimpling. Carlotta has shown me how to walk: Dip and rise, dimple the buttock--sort of like I'm shoveling manure with each step. I touch my left breast--dab, sneak--the way some Italian in a crowded subway would. It seems flesh authentic; my hand is impressed. But not the rest of me. The rest of me has no sensation. It's like, hum, feeling up your shoe. But I'm into the fantasy now. I've got that pelvic downbeat going and-----

"Transie!"

"Lookit the fag-got!"

"We're gonna get you, queer."

A white something buzzes my wig, then crack! against the building wall. Jesus, Mary and Ralph: I didn't pass; now I'm gonna be killed for my artistic ineptitude. They line up behind me for a strafing run: five unlibertarian teenage children on bicycles. I hurry; my grinds bump into my bumps. They peel out and dive, Messerschmitts on the tail of an ungainly Flying Fortress. I have a black belt in fear. My ankles are sprain loose, I feel helpless. If they make one miscalculation, I'll have a Schwinn mark up my back. Can't run in these shoes, can't throw a left hook off them.

Why me? I'm innocent--a sexual UN observer here. They execute linear Immelmanns and zoom in for another pass. My one chance is to walk absolutely straight: no wobble. Here it is--ssssss from behind--whish! A jab in the shoulder. I'm on my last heels--time for action. Time to kick off these asinine stilts and the hell with a run in my panty-hose feet. On their next pass. And, if they've got knives, remember to lead with your chest: You can afford damage there, even a massive silicone hemorrhage.

But nothing. With a hearty "Hi-yo, faggot," they ride off. And Deirdre is left alone.

•

She must've died some time that night, doc. It's just a big goose egg t' me; I don't remember anything. All I can tell you, her room was a Christawful slaughterhouse. You bet old Deirdre fought like the horse marines, hairy bitch that she could be. Frankly, I don't envy the guy. Coroner said she hadda know her assailant: There's no sign of a jimmy on the door. But God, doc. He was a psycho, for sure. A real Mr. Goodbar. I mean, he scalped her. And her tits: They found one under the porch lounge and one on the kitchen table wearing a hat. Kind of spread her around, he did. Clothes were all torn off, but they say he didn't bother to rape her. Tell you the truth, doc, I can understand that. Worst part was . . . Jesus, her face. He didn't leave any of it: Just erased. Gone, goodbye. Little red-pink smears on the bathroom mirror and around the sink. Y' gotta figure he hated her face.

"All this silicone up front makes me feel prowed. Good place, I muse, to rest a book when you're reading."