The TRANSSEXUAL PHENOMENON

Harry Benjamin, M.D.


Toward a solution [1]
by Betty

Editor's Note: Betty is a male transsexual, now operated upon and living a normal life as an attractive young woman. In this selection from Betty's autobiography are described attempted adjustments as a female impersonator and as a member of the armed forces. These experiments proving unsatisfactory, Betty, in his mid-twenties, had the "sex conversion" operation, also described in the following excerpt.

The first time I had ever seen female impersonators was when I watched the Jewel Box Revue as it played in a club in my home town. The lavishly gowned boys thrilled me with their graceful movements and lovely makeup. But even as I watched these professional entertainers perform, I felt that I could do equally as well, if not better, if I only had the chance. One of my close friends joined the Revue as a chorus boy. I remember wishing at the time that I had the nerve to leave home and join the Revue, too - except that I certainly did not want to become a chorus boy.

The _____ Club, one of my city's more famous evening spots, holds a masquerade party each Halloween. We queens would look forward to that party all year long, since it always gave us an opportunity to dress in our finest clothes and show ourselves off. As a seventeen-year-old "girl," I suppose that I appeared more like a woman - in every respect - than ever before in my lifetime. My sequinned evening gown was cut daringly low, revealing just enough of my "uplifted" breasts to give the impression that a real girl was beneath that dress. Long white gloves, a rhinestone bracelet, and white four-inch heels aided my transformation into a beautiful girl, and the fox stole I had bought for the occasion completed the picture of a lovely woman, out on the town. I easily walked off with the first prize at the masquerade.

During this period of my life I would often dress up at home in my finest women's clothes, makeup, and go out with other queens. My mother treated the entire affair as she would a lark. She even took pictures of me in my girls' clothes. One day I sent some of the pictures taken by mother, as well as the picture of myself winning first prize in the masquerade ball, to my chorus boyfriend in the Jewel Box Revue. When he showed the picture to the manager of a club hiring female impersonators, the manager must have been impressed, since he at once sent me a wire requesting that I join the show as an impersonator. My dream of a lifetime - an opportunity to wear the clothes I loved so well - had come true.

As soon as possible, I quit my job, packed, and left for the city where the club was located. The next few months were the most exciting of my life. Although I had thought I knew how to dress and act like a woman, I soon learned that I really knew very little.

The other dancers at the club taught me how to walk, talk, think, and act like a woman in every way. How properly to wear and care for a wig was a part of my training. The use of makeup, particularly theatrical makeup, was an important part of learning to go on the stage as a woman.

From the time I went to work at that club, I was determined that I would live as much like a woman as possible. I let my hair grow long, and soon it had reached shoulder length. A natural brownette, I dyed my hair black and wore it pinned up under a cap during the daytime and when out on the street. When the show went on tour, this made for problems, as I was often asked to remove my cap in restaurants and other places where men and boys normally go hatless. I made a real effort to avoid any incidents, and usually managed to cover my long hair in such a way that few people ever noticed its length.

Learning to put up my own hair and care for it as a woman should was not an easy task. Although I had watched girls put up their hair, and could easily roll the hair on the front of my head into curlers, at first I had a very difficult time managing the back of my head. But L, a famous impersonator who had traveled for years with long hair, was a real help in teaching me the tricks of managing shoulder-length curls. I always felt that the other impersonators were jealous of me, as they watched me comb and tease my long tresses each evening before our performances. At those times, I felt that the trouble I had to go through during the day to conceal my hair was well worth it.

As a chorus girl in the show, I was required to sing and dance. Luckily, I had always had excellent coordination and, after working out the soreness in my muscles, I soon became adept at my dance steps. Singing, too, was not difficult for me to do, for I had been singing all my life - although not on a stage.

Perhaps the most rewarding part of those first weeks of training was the physical presence of so many boys with the same temperament and feelings that I had. Never before had I experienced such total acceptance. Never before had I been with so many people who understood how it felt to want to be a woman and be saddled with the body of a man. Never before could I openly dress and act the way I had felt secretly for years - as a woman. After my first two or three days among the other impersonators, I think I knew that never again would I feel so very much alive and a part of the world around me.

I'll never forget our opening night. Although I had often been seen dressed as a woman - and, I hoped, admired - by many people, I had never performed in public as a singer and dancer. I just knew that something would go wrong - a missed step, a run in my hose, a fall - but luckily, after the first number and a bit of initial nervousness, the show went perfectly. The admiring glances from our audience, as well as the thrill of appearing before them as a woman for the first time, is a feeling that I always will treasure.

After playing for two months in a city on the Coast, our small troupe journeyed to, of all places, my hometown. A two-week engagement at a club there ended the run, and I was stranded, right back where I had started.

Meanwhile, the attitude of my parents had changed - or been changed - toward me. When our show got to my hometown, I immediately invited my parents and my sisters to come see the performance. They refused, and when I asked to come home and see my family, my mother said: "Stay with your queer friends." Those words hurt me more than any before or since.

It was just a little while before I became an impersonator that the famous Christine Jorgensen case was first publicized. When I heard about the operation performed on Christine, I immediately decided that such an operation was exactly what I needed in order to become the woman I now wanted so very much to be. I approached my parents with the request that I be allowed to have my sex change, but my parents, whose permission I needed on account of my age, refused to yield to my pleas. I was a terribly unhappy boy, who felt that he belonged for any practical purpose to neither one sex nor the other.

At my parents' request I visited a psychiatrist. These visits were the first of many visits to psychiatrists all over the country, as I tried to find some understanding of myself and my problem. These first trips were very frustrating. The doctor and I both discovered what I had long known: that I was an avowed homosexual with a burning desire to become a woman and with hardly any desire at all to remain the man whose body I so unfortunately inhabited. The visits to psychiatrists, so far as I was concerned, were a total waste of time.

My future, I felt, was in female impersonation. I reasoned that I could remain as close as possible to the feminine things I had grown to love so well, that perhaps when I became old enough I would be able to have the desired operation. A male friend of mine wanted to stay in show business, so we formed a dance act, he as the man, I, of course, as the woman. We took a job dancing in a club in the Middle West, and were soon spotted by a talent agent who arranged a better booking for us in a club on the East Coast. There, my friend and I, along with another friend, an impersonator, played for two months.

During those months I continued to learn more about dancing. Our act was composed of a combination of dances: classical, ballet, toe-dancing, and modern interpretive dancing. We worked hard and long on new routines, and were just perfecting a new act when my partner decided to quit show business. Our act broke up, but I luckily found a new job as an impersonator almost immediately.

Our new troupe was composed of four impersonators. We played a number of nightclubs in the East, after which I went home for a visit with my parents. Since their attitude toward me had not changed, and they still would not give their consent to the operation, I became more and more miserable in the role I now realized I was playing, that of being a man.

I again joined a traveling impersonator show, this time going on a tour of the smaller towns throughout the Midwest. A few months later I joined a larger show, traveling for nine months across much of the United States and Canada.

It was while I was on this tour that I finally decided I could never go on being an impersonator for the rest of my life. Although I enjoyed living and dressing as a woman, I always knew that, when I took the clothes off, a man's body would be staring at me from my mirror. Although I was living as closely as possible to the life of the woman I so earnestly desired to be, I was living in a dream-world, a half-state which allowed for few of the things that women enjoyed, and none enjoyed by men.

It is difficult to describe my feelings at the time. That I was a homosexual, I never doubted. Yet, because it was physically immpossible for me to function as a real woman bed-partner for my lovers, I felt frustrated and depressed. During the first month of my twenty-first year, I became more and more despondent and dissatisfied with my life. Then, one day while standing on the shore of a lake and staring down into the water, I decided to give up the life of a female impersonator and return to the life of a man.

As with the rest of the actions over which I have had any measure of control in my life, when I decided to become a man I went as far to that extreme as possible. I felt that if I could be around as many men as possible, then perhaps I could learn to be like them. With this thought consciously in mind (and perhaps as a result of other, unconscious motives), I decided to join the U.S. Navy.

A quick trip back home (after a quicker haircut of my beautiful black tresses), and a visit to the Navy Recruiting Office, brought on more problems. The rape of which I had been a victim some years earlier resulted in my being turned down by the Navy. When I loudly protested my innocence in the affair, and a check by the authorities verified my story, I was finally accepted as a "boot."

My first six weeks of boot camp were the worst weeks of my life. Learning to adjust to Navy life was probably difficult even for the most masculine of men. For me, a person who had lived for so long as a woman, it was pure misery. Luckily, we were kept so busy that I had little time to dwell on my troubles.

A trip back home brought a welcome with open arms from my brother and my parents. They were overjoyed to see me as a man once again. I didn't have the heart to tell them I knew now I would never change. During my stay at home, I did my best to convey the image that their son was again a real son to them.

My career in the Navy began in earnest when I graduated from a school for personnelmen and entered the fleet on a destroyer tender. My work was simple - merely keeping records and doing personnel work - and at times I almost liked it. But a visit to Newport resulted in a brief affair with an Air Force sergeant. At no time during my career in the Navy was I far from finding the masculine lovers I avidly desired.

Eventually, my career in the Navy took me to Japan. Wherever we went, I would soon find the local gay bars, and in Kobe I found what would best be described as a "male geisha house." This bar was run by female impersonators who served as "hostesses" or "B-girls," allowing the male customers to buy them drinks, and catering to the needs or whims of the male patrons in every way.

After meeting the owner of the establishment and telling him about my experiences as a female impersonator in the states, I obtained permission from him to appear at the club as one of the "hostesses." I quickly purchased a kimono, a pair of lovely high heels, and enough make-up to enable me to do a passable job. Borrowing a wig from one of the Japanese impersonators was no problem, and I soon found myself once again clad as the woman I longed to be.

The next two weeks were the most heavenly weeks of my Naval career. During the day, of course, I would do my normal work as a Third Class Personnelman; but as soon as possible in the evening, I would request permission to leave the ship, take a taxi to the nightclub, don my lovely kimono, and appear as the first American hostess ever to work in the Kobe "male geisha house." Although I could speak only a little Japanese, I seemed to be a hit with the Japanese customers, who apparently felt that it was a real novelty buying a drink for and being served by an American hostess. Imagine my thrill when several of the members of my ship´s company came into the bar and were served by me, without any of them even beginning to recognize who was beneath the wig and kimono.

Back to the states, a leave in Oklahoma City, a torrid love affair with a boy there, and a bout with the whisky bottle were the rapidfire successive events in my life following our return from the Far East. Now in my twenties, I began to realize more and more that my attempt to escape from myself and my obvious fate of living with the spirit of a woman in a man's body was only a weak effort to delay the inevitable. I realized that I truly missed the life of an impersonator, which was the nearest thing to the life of a woman I had been able to achieve. When I came to this conclusion, my final months in the Navy were all the more painful. Yet, because I now recognized clearly that my destiny was to be in skirts, I was able to bear my last days as a boy - and as a sailor - with apparent detachment. Then, the day after I received my discharge from the Navy, I was back on the stage dressed as a woman, dancing at a club for impersonators.

Back again in skirts and makeup, I was happier than I had been in years. When our show went on the road, once again I was working with the friends I had made in my earlier years as an impersonator. Being able to live and dress as a woman once more was a partial fulfillment of my desires. All in all, I once again began to feel as if I were a living human being.

The show played for a few weeks in Baltimore and then moved on to New York City. We played a few short engagements, then settled down to a nine months' run at a well-known club. It was while appearing at this club that I met two girls who had originally been boys. From the moment I met these successful transsexuals, I knew that there could be no other way of life for me than to join them in their change from male into female.

These two successful sex changes had originally been impersonators, just as I now was. Perhaps immodestly, but I feel actually, I was certain that I would make a much more beautiful, feminine woman than they. When they showed me the results of their operation, and the enlarged breasts they had achieved by means of treatment with female hormones, my first thought was probably the same as would have been the thought of any other person in my situation. I was jealous. I vowed and determined that I, too, would soon have a body to equal, if not surpass, those now-feminine bodies before me. One thing I promised myself, however, was that I would never sink so low as these two sex changes, resorting to prostitution after the hoped-for successful operation. I felt that these two girls were trying to prove something - perhaps that they could be complete women in every way.

By this time, I no longer had any fears of ever being detected as a man in female clothes. During my years as an impersonator in New York City, I often went out on the streets in my finest dresses, shopping, sight-seeing, or even dating. Many nightclub operators would probably not believe it if told now that that cute blonde who came into their club with a different man on so many occasions was really a man herself, at the time. My long blonde hair, of course, made it unnecessary for me to wear a wig, and my mannerisms by this time were probably more feminine than those of most of the "real" girls. In all my years of dressing as a woman, I was never once apprehended.

It was around this time that I made my first trip to a doctor who had been recommended to me by the two sex changes. I'll never forget the look on his face when I told him that I wanted to begin female hormone treatments. It seemed he just couldn't believe that I wasn't a real woman until he had made a thorough physical examination. At the conclusion of that examination, and after a number of succeeding visits to him which convinced him that I was a true transsexual, this doctor (a psychiatrist) began to give me prescriptions for female hormones. I have continued with the hormone treatments up to the present time.

When the show of which I was a member once again went on tour, I decided to stay in New York and continue the hormone treatments I had come to regard as the "backbone" of the new life toward which I was heading. I easily found another job as an impersonator, this time at one of the city's major nightspots. I became a dancer there and soon came to think of this club as my permanent job.

In the late summer of 1961, as a result of my work, I met the man who has done more for me than any other person - the man who was to make my most intense desire, that of becoming a woman, a reality. He was an ambassador from a Latin American country, and for reasons soon to become obvious I cannot mention his name. But one evening, immediately after my dance number at the club, I was invited to come to the table of this ambassador and have a drink with him. After a number of drinks, and after answering some very personal questions, I was ready to go back to my dressing room and prepare for the final show. It was just then, from what seemed to me right out of a clear sky, that he asked: "How would you like to become a woman?" I assured him that nothing would please me more, that I had thought of little else for quite a number of years, and that I had dreamed of such an operation from the day that I had learned it was possible. The ambassador smiled, and then he said: "In that case, I will make it possible for you."

Nervously dressing for my last number, I asked the other impersonators if they knew the ambassador. When I told them what he had offered to do for me, they laughed, but then suggested that I take the ambassador seriously. By this time, I was so nervous that I hardly remember doing the last show. My head was spinning with the idea that here, at long last, was a way for me to complete my life. At the conclusion of the show, I hurriedly changed into my street clothing and rejoined the ambassador at his table.

Although thrilled that this man should have singled me out as the one he would help, I was nonetheless puzzled as to why he had chosen me from among all the other impersonators. He complimented me by explaining that it was because I was obviously already much more of a woman than the others.

The first step toward my transformation came when the ambassador took me to an internationally famous endocrinologist, whose prices I could never have afforded without the ambassador's help. I then embarked upon a regular program of hormone treatments, one of the effects of this being that my sex drive was soon nonexistent. In any case, I was by now much more interested in the changes being made in my body than in any sexual satisfaction. When I told the doctor that I was no longer experiencing erections, he explained to me that the female hormones were serving to, as he so aptly put it, "chemically castrate" me.

After some weeks of the hormone injections, my breasts began noticeably to enlarge, and for the first time I could really believe that I was making progress toward my goal. It is impossible to express the thrill that I felt when I was able to reach down and feel my very own breasts beginning to take shape. As my nipples began to enlarge to the size of those of other women, I was one of the happiest people in the world. By the end of six months of treatment, my breasts had developed to such an extent that even under men's clothing I had to wear a size "A" bra to conceal them.

The doctor explained to me that if the development of my body continued at the same pace, then by the end of another six months I should be ready for the operation of my dreams. At the same time I was taking the hormones, I began to have sessions with an electrolysist for removal of my beard. I had never had much hair on my body, and under the effect of the hormones I had even less (other than on my head, which was now covered with my own long golden-brown tresses). The series of electrolysis treatments removed the last vestige of hair from my face, and I have had no facial hair problems since that time. The money for the electrolysis also came from my friend and benefactor, the ambassador.

... Finally, the time came when I was ready for the long and anxiously awaited operation. The ambassador had made contact with a surgeon in Morocco who had performed numerous such operations and whose technique was reputed to be better than that of any other doctor. One day the ambassador simply asked if I was ready to make the trip and have the operation. My eyes filling with tears, I could say only: "What time does the plane leave?"

There can have been no more excited and thrilled person on the plane that left Idlewild for Europe on that beautiful Fall day. Dressed as a man, I had only women's clothes in my suitcases, and I wondered what anyone would say if my bags were inspected or if they should accidentally come open.

Our flight to Europe was uneventful, yet I was so nervous I couldn't relax. As the plane's wheels touched down at Orly Airport in Paris, I began to come to the complete realization that the whole thing was really more than just a dream. And when I was met by a beautiful girl, who I soon learned was a successful sex change, and by an impersonator who was to accompany me to Morocco for an operation identical to my own, I felt that all my dreams were coming true ... .

The clinic in Casablanca, Morocco, is a beautiful maternity hospital on the outskirts of town. In July of 1962 I entered that hospital as a male, destined to leave it a few weeks later as the woman I had so long desired to become. It is impossible for me to describe my happiness on that day, and perhaps it all seems a bit hazy because of the great tension I was under. I don't believe, though, that I have ever felt so much a part of the world as on that day in July.

Before admitting S (the other impersonator) and me as patients, the hospital administrators required each of us to pay $ 1250 in American money for the hospital care and operation. The room I was taken to was all white, including the drapes, and had, of all things, a bassinette. Our operations were not scheduled for the next day, so S and I had time to get together again and talk about our futures. A one-day postponement of the operations only caused us to become that much more nervous. But finally, the day came when S was operated on, and like a nervous and giddy girl, I went into the recovery room to see how she was progressing. That was a big mistake, since after any operation the average person looks as if he or she is half dead. S looked so pale and lifeless that I panicked and almost lost my nerve. However, I went back to my room, lay down to think things over, and the nurse came in just about at that time and gave me an injection to make me sleep better.

... The only thing I remember about my entire operation was being lifted from my bed onto the hospital cart, then from the cart onto the operating table. A sharp needle prick when I was on the operating table, and my next recollection was when I awoke, five hours later, a woman at last.

When I finally was awake and able to reason, I lifted the covers off and stared down between my legs. The entire lower part of my body was completely numb, and the bandages covered up whatever work had been done. I had no way of knowing whether the operation was a success. Oddly, my next thoughts were about food and drink. When the nurse came into the room and asked me what I wanted, I told her that I wanted something to eat and drink. After a hurried consultation with the doctor, the nurse came in with a cup of bouillon. She warned me that I wouldn't want much of it as I was not supposed to eat or drink in quantity for at least four days. I immediately drank the whole cup and asked for more. After that, the nurse never questioned how much to give me - she just gave me all I wanted to drink, and there were no noticeable bad effects.

My entire lower body remained numb for three days. When I say "numb," I mean just that. There was absolutely no feeling in my legs or lower abdomen. A catheter had been inserted into my urethra, so urination was no problem. Even on the fourth day, when the doctors came into the room to remove the bandages, there was absolutely no pain, although the feeling had returned in my lower legs and even as far up as my thighs.

My anxiety was so great I could hardly wait for the doctors to finish removing the bandages from what was to become my vagina. As the bandages came off, a feeling of removal of weight was all that I experienced. And when I looked at the finished result, even though it was still red and unhealed, I was satisfied that the doctors had done a wonderful job of removing my male organs and giving me the vagina of a woman.

... I might explain at this point that after removal of my male sex organs, a vagina had been created in my lower abdomen. This vagina, or vaginal pouch, had to be satisfactorily large and deep, in order for me later to function in every way as a female. Consequently, a large plug was inserted into the opening and remained there for the first four days after the operation, allowing the skin to heal around it. When the doctor removed the tube from me I was surprised - as a matter of fact, I almost got hysterical from laughing - to see that the tube was around two and one-half inches in diameter and about eight inches long.

Even at first glance, and with the stitches barely out, I could see that the doctors had done a masterful job in creating a vaginal area for me. The new lips of the vagina were almost perfect in their resemblance to the vaginal lips of a normal female, and the doctor assured me that when they were completely healed there would be little if any observable difference between my external genitals and those of any other girl.

I had been warned that the most painful time after the operation would be the first time it became necessary for me to urinate. After the vaginal plug and the catheter had been removed, I urinated for the first time and found, to my relief, that it was not painful after all ... .

My days in the hospital became more and more relaxing. On the sixth day after the operation, I developed an infection; but a few quick shots of penicillin from the alert doctor, and the infection vanished. S and I managed to get together each day and compare operations, and although she had apparently been in a bit more pain than I, she was now resting comfortably. Although we were both weak, we felt that our mission had been fulfilled. We were ready to leave the hospital and return to France, when the doctor explained that he had one more task to do before he would be finished with us: he had to dilate us.

Until the morning I was first dilated, I thought I knew what pain was. But when the doctor and nurse both held me, and the doctor forced my vagina into ever-increasing width and depth, I thiought that I would faint from the most excruciating pain I have ever felt. I bled more than ever before or since, and I shook so badly that it was all the doctor and nurse could do to hold me. I remember biting the nurse's arm and screaming at the top of my voice for them to stop. For two hours afterward I trembled violently, and I didn't stop hurting for weeks after that. I am sure the dilation was necessary, but at the time I vividly remember I wanted to die. I know that dying couldn't be more painful.

In addition to the excruciating pain caused by my dilation, the loss of blood weakened me more than I realized at the time. At 6 a.m. the following morning I was awakened, dressed in semimale attire, and rushed to the airport. Almost in a daze from the pain and loss of blood, I practically collapsed in my seat, anxious for the enjoyable rest I could anticipate receiving on the jet. No sooner had the plane taken off, however, than I began once again to experience a terrible pain in the area of my vagina. I later was told that the abrupt change of pressure resulting from the rapid takeoff of the jet caused an expansion and contraction of the area around my not-yet-completely-healed operation. I only knew that I was the most relieved person on that plane when Paris' Orly Airport was finally in sight.

Back in Paris, I headed straight for bed, hoping for nothing but enough rest to help me recover my strength. However, the bleeding from my vagina refused to stop no matter what I tried, and by the end of my first day in bed I knew that I must have some professional help quickly, or I would bleed to death. I dressed, went to an American hospital in Paris, and frankly explained to the doctor what my problem was and how it came to be. Concerned by the excess drainage, he told me that I would have to take a douche a few times each day until the drainage and bleeding stopped. Was I embarrassed! I had never had a douche before, and it was a humiliating experience to have to ask the doctor for instructions on this most womanly of tasks. Even he had to laugh when he explained the procedure to me.

Thank goodness for understanding doctors! Under his care my drainage and excess bleeding soon stopped, and after eight days or so of thrice-daily douches, I was able to stop that monotonous routine.

... When I left France, I was happy to be returning to America, yet sad in the knowledge that I was leaving the place where I was first accepted as the woman I now knew I always would be. I boarded the plane and was shown to a first-class accommodation. Because I had purchased tourist-class tickets only, I began to panic, feeling that I had been put on first class deliberately because there was to be publicity when I arrived in New York. I crossed the ocean with this thought in mind, and naturally was unable to enjoy the trip. The funny part about my discomfiture, however, was that I was more worried about how I would look if there was some publicity than about the effect the publicity might have. I knew I wasn't looking at all my best, and I certainly wanted to be the prettiest woman in the world when I arrived back in my own country.

Dressed in a pair of woman's black slacks, a powder blue woman's blouse, anklets, women's casual-type shoes, and with my long blonde hair stuck under my cap, I was sure that I resembled something in between what I was when I left the United States and what I had become. During the flight, it had become so hot that I had had to remove the blue jacket I was wearing and, as I did so, my hair fell down out of my cap. To say the very least, the woman sitting next to me was amazed. I know that she was at a loss as to what to think, and her puzzlement was not helped to any degree when the stewardesses all came up to me and began to examine me, then called the other stewardesses up from the tourist compartment to see me. We all (except perhaps for the woman next to me) had a good time, yet, I never explained to them who I was. How could I without jeopardizing my chances of getting through customs upon landing in the United States?

Customs was another real problem. Because there were no photographers waiting for us when we landed, no one seeking publicity about me, in fact, no one at all to meet me, I temporarily relaxed. But when I got to the customs inspector and he opened up my suitcase, I began again to realize that I was not yet "out of the woods." The very first suitcase he opened contained, of course, all women's clothing, on top of which, of all things, was my douche bag. His face, when the douche bag dropped out, was a study in perplexity. Shaking his head in bewilderment, he asked me why there were only women's clothes in my bags. I answered that I, as a professional female impersonator, had been traveling in Europe, and that all of my male clothes were coming back to the United States on a ship. With some humphs and a lot of haws, be passed me through customs, and I practically ran to a waiting taxi.

On the way to a friend's house, the cab driver took a good long look at me in his rear-view mirror, then began to make derisive remarks about "queens and queers," as he put it. When we were almost at our destination, I took off my cap, shook down my blonde tresses, and let him take another good long look at me. Any woman can understand my pleasure when he began to treat me, not as he had only a moment before as a perverted male, but as he would any woman with whom he wished to get friendly. I remember my particular pleasure on leaving his cab and practically undulating my way across the street and up the steps of the tenement building. As I turned when I got to the door and looked back, I saw a light in the cabbie's eyes that I had never noticed in any man's before.

I knew then that Betty, the real woman, was home for good.


Footnotes

[1] This fragment is part of a book-length autobiography in progress, written by Betty with the help of a professional writer. Publishers interested in seeing the entire manuscript may contact the authors of the present volume. Further material on Betty is contained in the case of K, beginning on page 264 [BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILES]. The material has been condensed by the editor.