With Reversed Roles

By Emi Wolters.

Last summer - 1935 - I had to settle a dispute between two close relatives in Hirschburg, which is about 2 hours away from my home. Every day at 7 a.m. there is a bus to Hirschburg, which connects this district town with Tannenberg, a much visited Bohemian summer resort, which is also about 2 hours away from my home, so that I am connected to both places daily, and both places have a railroad station.

Thirty years ago, Tannenberg was still a quiet, dreamy forest village with a large manorial pond, a lot of white sand and a forester's lodge. The people of Prague, however, recognized in Tannenberg the future summer resort and bought building plots at ridiculously low prices. Thus, a villa resort was gradually created, which today counts about 200 beautiful houses and is highly frequented. From there it is possible to take a bus to Hirschburg in about half an hour, where all express trains to and from Prague stop, so that from spring until late autumn there is always a lot of traffic on this concrete road between the above-mentioned places.

Although we transvestites - may we be even be so well dressed and so well and deceptively show the other sex, we always have “a certain something on us", which makes many "normies" more or less think, without exactly standing out, we get used to it in the course of time and do not pay attention to the possible "looks" of these fellow humans.

So I also got used to it and I don't care if people look at me a little more closely and maybe "feel" that there is something not quite “in order” about me. I run my errands as a woman, publicly and exclusively only as a woman, and have become accustomed to the fact that strangers sometimes look at me. The locals are all my good acquaintances and are at most surprised that I am wearing a new dress yet again. So last summer I got into the postbus early at 7 a.m., which was quite crowded, because on the same day there was a weekly market in Hirschburg.

The locals greeted me, the 6 or 8 strangers looked at me a bit. As I was talking to some acquaintances and speaking in my old voice, a lady who had been to Tannenberg and was going back to Prague also joined our conversation. There was "something" about her that made me feel like speaking out to her, as I wanted to test the accuracy of my instincts.

But she did not want to believe it, and asked her not to address me as a woman, but as a man. But she did not want to believe that I was actually a "he". She then learned who I was, from one of my acquaintances, when she got off the train, and only 8 days after this incident I received a letter with the following content:

Your Honour!

The lady asks in advance for apology, if she should be troublesome with a letter. However, the suspicion that the lady will not be rejected by a fellow conspecific, furthermore my excited state, into which I got at the sight of you, and which since then does not let me sleep any more, pushes the pen into my hand for an outpouring to you. For I am also a kindred spirit, a Transvestitin [feminised form of transvestite in German] and have the urge to walk in men's clothes.

I had this urge already as a school child, but because of the sociatal environment I could never start dressing as a boy. It was only after graduating from a business school and being employed by a Prague company that I was able to gradually acquire male clothes and put them on at home in my rented apartment in the evenings.

Since my parents and relatives lived in southern Moravia and were not particularly well off, I almost never had visitors to expect. After three years of practice, I was able to buy a closet from my salary, in which I hid my men's clothes and linen, and when I made a small inheritance a few years later after the death of my parents, I rented a kitchen and a room and lived as a gentleman in my spare time.

When I came home after business hours, I threw off my women's clothes with disgust and put on men's clothes with pleasant pleasure, went out in the evenings as a man, visited the coffee house, the cinema, the theatre and practiced my already somewhat deeper voice so well that I did not attract attention anywhere. I had no girlfriends, because I wanted to be alone, not tied to anyone. I looked for female friends, but found none, probably for the reason that I avoided certain pubs in Prague, for fear of somehow coming into contact with the police or blackmailers.

As my salary increased with time, I acquired all the works on sexual problems and have insight into this scientific branch. My most ardent wish is and remains, to be able to appear as a man and live with a man who lives dressed as a woman. And now I come with a request and a plea:

I am 46 years old, well employed and have made some savings, I am also pension insured. Do you know a man living as a woman, about my age, who would be inclined to live with me in common households. I have a certain idea, it was like an invisible fluid when I saw you sitting next to me in the bus, that you have some relations with similar people and could help me. Please destroy this letter if for some reason you do not wish to contact me, but in any case, it is not immodesty, but a consolation for my condition, give me a brief answer on the enclosed card.

I will give you my full address, since I have confidence in your esteemed person and would be infinitely pleased to receive an answer as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely, Wally Hauser

Since I have been corresponding with a transvestite for about 2 years, who would have liked to take a position as a maid or the like, I wrote to him. He agreed, since he was unemployed and at the age of 42. He sent me, in addition to the photographs I already had of him, 2 nice little pictures depicting him as a maid, dating from the time he had been in position as a maid in Hamburg for 2 years without anyone recognizing him, so that I could mediate between him and Fräulein Hauser. Both met then in N. and came to an agreement. This spring I was able to convince myself that both are very satisfied and are thinking of establishing a household together this year, with reversed roles.