The Man in the Red Velvet Dress

Book excerpt: J. J. Allen, a longtime cross-dresser and past president of Powder Puffs of California, one of the world's largest cross-dresser support groups, provides an insider's view of a world most of us have seen only on talk shows, yet is more widespread and complex than the public realizes. The author details the intricacies of transsexual surgery, and takes the reader on a tour of the underground sexual scene in Los Angeles, behind the closed doors of the secretive clubs and societies and into the psyche, sexuality, and social life of male cross-dressers. Readers will learn what cross-dressers talk about only among themselves. They will discover why a man who could be their neighbor owns 2,100 pairs of panties. They will find out what a marijuana-smoking man in a pair of pantyhose is doing in a hotel room with a she-male. And they will learn the nine most commonly cited reasons given by cross-dressers to explain their behavior.