Confessions of

a Genderfucker

A while ago somewhere

I don't know when,

I was watchin' a movie with a friend

I fell in love with

the actres,

She was playin' a part that I could understand.

Once upon a time, sone years before I came out, I was home on leave from the Navy, and I stopped to chat with a neighbor, a man named Yorris who had watched me grow up from a baby.

I was, at the time of which I'm writine, the pride of the neighborhood. I had fulfilled everybody's fantasy of what was wonderful in this world--I ha! earned a

more of a flamer than I ever remember. But it was not long before, under the threats of my father, who went into unspeakable rage at the sight of me in called clothing of the opposite sex, and the long-sufforing looks of my mother (they said, "hen will you grow out of that?") I became a closet transvestite.

The tutus, gypsy skirts, cancan dresses, antebellum ball gowns that 1 whipped up out of anything imaginable were exhibited only before my bedroom mirror--and behind a locked door.

Then, suddenly, somewhere around the age of 14, the desire to dress in anything other than what was sanction-

college degree, I had received for my sex, age, race, sc-

ed a commission in the Tavy, and I had married my childhood sweetheart. Morris was erinning at me with unabashed pride; you would've thought he were my own father. After the usual opening amenities, he said:

"Well, we're sure glad to see you grew up to be all

asked.

hat do you mean?" I

"You know what I mean, He said with a penetrating look.

Oh, my God, I thought, somewhat panicstricken, he knows I have I have homosexual tendencies.

I tried to bluff him. "Not really, I don't." "You mean you don't remenhow you used to dress up in your mother's clothes all the time when you was a kid?" "Oh, that!" I laughed nervously. "Dure, I remember that." But I still played dumb, feigning ignorince of any connection between that and my having grown up all right. So finally he told me:

"One time when you was all dressed up--you couldn't have been more than five-you came sashaying down past here. You really looked the part! You had on your nother's dress and what must have been all her jewelry, and you were carrying this big purse. I saw you coming

and I hollered out:

"Hello, there, David!' "And you stopped and you put your hand on your hip and reared back your head

and said:

cic-economic level, country of origin, and historical era left me. Not that, on occasion, I didn't daydream about reposing in Greek kirtle or flouncing down a flight of stairs in Scarlett O'Hara drag, but I never tried to make those fantasies materialize.

Af-

There follows a period of some 15 years, whose bleakness I don't want to attempt to describe. I was a closet queen of the first rank--and that is a peculiarly zombeyizing existence. I used to see the ocasional drag queen and I would deride him like anyone else. ter all, they were afflicted creatures, disgraceful in the fullest meaning of the word, among perverts the most perverted. Besides, they gave homosexuals a bad name: everybody thought we just wanted to be persons of the opposite sex anyway, and they reinforced that terrible stereotype with their outrageousness.

Then, in the fall of my 31st year, I joined the gay liberation group in my hometown. Only a little over a year before, I had returned home at the nadir of my existence, discharged from the Navy that I had once had high hopes of building a career upon, divorced, and with 78 cents in my pocket and all my worldly possessions in the pack on my back. Not long after, though, I had managed to get an administrative job with

the university in town. It was in the student newspaper

Lavender Starsh.p/Page 5/, 1973

I wandered through the dancing whirl, greeting the faces that I recognized from the meetings, but not making any conversation because I still felt a great sense of outsideness. nally, I walked out of the dance and stood by the entrance.

From out of nowhere, it ceomed, this man walks up to me and begans talking. His name is Eddie and he has long sleek hair and a seragely beard and moustache. The face behind the gold wire-rimmed glasses is interesting. He is wearing a very old dark velvet dress (later I would learn to refer to such things as "tacky") that clings to his lithsome torso and well-formed lers. He is barefoot.

I find myself responding to him in an unusual way. I enjoy his rap, his awareness, his perceptiveness, his bitter humor. I am also intrigued by the strange sen-

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presents--this

suality combination rale/female. 1 feel as though I am in the prosence of a transfigure-i being, as though I have firally communicated with that lot a ultimate--a persont ran, not a woman, but a

Gon

ber-

later, after much talking and dancing, he invites he home with him and the next day, I draw a picture of him sitting nude, with a fantastic balloon coming out of his mouth that begins with curlicues and squircles and progresses through arabesques and corinthian columns until it culminates in the istine Chapel ceiling,

1. another part of the picture I wrote, "ddie says. beautiful things," and put the date. Yes; if there was away I wanted to be, it was like him.

But it was many months bofore I ever did anything MURD ON PAC 19

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My name ain't David--it's that I first heard about the YE COVENTRY BOOKSTORE

Miss Treadwell!"

He burst out in a fit of laughter. Well, I never... I never in all my life... I was certain you was going to grow up funny."

So, I started genderfucking at a very early age, and by my neighbor's account was

gay activists.

It took me a lot of courage to go to that first meeting, but I had a very positive experience there. I went to more meetings, and ther. I got up the courage to go to my first gay dance.

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