The madness never leaves. It festers under the surface like an infected sore.

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My first contact with the transgender community was with Virginia Prince. I reproduce here my letter to her, written in 1980, and her reply.

If asked by anyone, “Would you change anything about your life if you could?” my answer would have to be a firm no. Yes, there have been times when I wish I hadn’t had the choices I had, when to just live one life would have had to be enough, but then I think, “How boring!”

I buried the memory deep inside me and didn’t think about what happened until thirty-six years later, when I sat in a dimly lit room looking across a cluttered old desk at the flaccid face of my therapist and told him what had happened.