I was possessed by wonder and curiosity. A boy
with no discernible oddness, I wondered how it would be if
I were a girl. I had sisters and so could surely study the
subject up close. And there was my mother. Why wasn't
I like them? Why was my body like my father's instead of like
theirs? It made no sense, especially since it was clear to me
that I would much rather dress the way they did than in
boys' clothes.
Into the dark closet . . . the
shoes first, how would it be to put them on . . . Mother's shoes,
everyday, but forbidden. A boy, you are a boy, remember. When
you played dress up with your sister and cousin, you could wear a
dress, and girls' shoes even and no one cared and it was very nice and then the man saw me
and said Well, well, hello there, little girl, and I was warm then
and the man was smiling big . . . You can have the shoes if
you want them, Larry. Oh, they fit you fine and I've outgrown
them. You can wear them to school next year--first grade!
My sister Mollie and I liked to go to our cousin Joanne's house to
play. Mollie was a year younger than I, my cousin a year older.
Mollie and I were sometimes taken for twins. My other sister
was six years younger and therefore too young to participate in
our dress-up sessions. Joanne's house was on the other side of town, far enough
away so that it seemed an adventure when we went there--even
moreso when we were allowed to stay overnight. Joanne and Mollie
loved to play dress-up, and I didn't mind. In fact I loved it, too, though
I must have known that a little boy shouldn't like to wear dresses.
But because I was a little boy, I was allowed to do it. A little boy
had a certain license to do girlish things. I could even play with
paper dolls, but, truthfully, this did not appeal to me so much as
dressing up, pretending with my sister and cousin to be a lady.
. . . naptime and Mollie was
asleep she always went right to sleep
and I lay there so awake and thinking, the house so quiet, it
would be a time I could try on one of her dresses, a pinafore, who
would ever know, and I took the pinafore out of the drawer and
held it up to me and then tried to pull it on and it was too tight it
didn't fit should have taken off my clothes but tiptoe across the
hall look in the mirror and then there is Mother . . . what was I
doing in my sister's dress, my goodness, Larry, and I was crying
then and it was all right, she said, I was just curious, I mustn't cry.
I didn't cry. I don't think I
cried. I felt ashamed, humiliated. There were
jokes made, stories told for years afterward, about how little
Larry tried to put on one of his sister's dresses. And couldn't
get it buttoned in back! Found him in the bathroom, standing on a
stool, trying to look at himself in the mirror! Why, Larry,
what on earth are you doing? You're supposed to be taking a
nap, young man!
But she was amused. My mother found it
funny and expected others to find it so. And they did. They
certainly seemed to. Their laughter rang in my ears all
through my youth, every time I saw a pretty dress I'd have
loved to wear, when girls my age were getting their first
high heels and I wanted a pair so badly I'd have given my
baseball glove.
Desire has its own life, once aroused, and who is to say what
first brings it forth and in what form? I hoped sex would save me. My desire
to cross over into girlhood frightened me, though, almost as much as it
brought me moments of intense delight. Pursuing it passionately, in fierce
secrecy, I told myself I would grow out of the desire in due time--say,
by the age of fifteen. But at age fifteen, and sixteen, and seventeen, and so
on, I continued to cherish the times alone in my parents' house, when I could
steal myself away to my mother's dressing table, her closet with its pretty
dresses and rows of high heeled shoes, her stockings, her jewelry, her makeup.
When I first began to wear her bras--considerately, using only those placed in the dirty
clothes hamper--I wondered would my breasts begin to grow, would my body
be tricked into believing itself female and make my flat chest fill out to fit the
bra I strapped onto it, and would my poor penis shrink, dwindle to nothing?
What was to be done?
In my last years of high school, I practiced masturbating to the thought of my
steady girlfriend, thinking that this was what I was supposed to do. I enjoyed the times
we spent late at night after a movie, parked in my father's car on some dark side
street. We kissed, long kisses, and hugged each other tightly, kissed again, and I made
so bold as to let my hand fondle her breasts, or at least her bra cups, which were stiff
like my mother's. I liked the way she touched the back of my neck, pulling me closer
to her, her mouth fixed to mine, the lipstick slick and sweet. Could I ever insert my penis
inside her, though? What if I couldn't become hard enough? Had I ruined myself by all those times
when I dressed in my mother's clothes and imagined myself a girl?
When I read about Christine Jorgensen, the GI with the strange condition of being born
inwardly female and outwardly male, I clipped the article out of the newspaper and hid it in the back
of my underwear drawer. The picture showed her in a bathing suit and high heels, and,
smiling broadly, her large eyes shining, she looked as pretty as a movie star. Was I, too,
born with this freakish condition, and would my body someday have to be surgically changed the
way this soldier's was, in order to make me the girl I was meant to be?
The thought thrilled me in one moment and scared the daylights out of me in the next. Mainly, I
wanted to be like everybody else, a boy who looked and felt like a boy, a boy who would become
a man, a husband with a beloved and loving wife, a father who cherished and nurtured his
children. And so, systematically, ruthlessly, I set out to banish from my mind the thoughts I considered
womanly and therefore dangerous. The pangs of envy I felt when my sister brought home her
first high heels and began to wear lipstick I tried desperately to supplant with thoughts of my
good fortune in having a boy's freedom to ride my motor scooter all across the city, the hot wind
in my face, the sweet smell of hay in the broad fields, the endless blue sky.
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