This book is the first to offer an in-depth look at the life of a crossdresser and focuses on the author’s quest for identity, self-acceptance and personal fulfillment. He opens his private notes and photograph albums to reveal two themes that become progressively integrated over thirty years. The first deals with sexual motivation and the second with gender identity. In search of sexual fulfillment, Alice Novic searches for novel and sometimes risky sexual experiences, some of which were very gratifying, but others resulted in self-recrimination, shame, and distress. Most of these harsh feelings are blamed on arbitrary middle-class sex negative values; through personal growth they are supplanted by a more hedonistic view. Shame is replaced by exceptional pleasure and a sense of well-being. This example of personal growth and conflict resolution is one of the major statements of this book.

The motivational foundations of the second theme, dealing with gender identity, are less explicit, because they deal with the evolution of Novic’s conviction, that despite his male anatomy, he desires nothing more than to become the most beautiful woman possible. This grows into a compelling and highly valued theme of his life. Learning to be a woman becomes a long but very rewarding process ranging from experiments with cosmetics to facial surgery. An important criterion for Alice’s public presentation is her ability to attract the attention of men. Here, success is somewhat uneven; while Alice finds plenty of dance partners in drag bars, the high quality relationships she seeks are few and far between. While struggling with the possibility that in the future Alice might want to live full-time as a woman, this is rejected in favor of an arrangement that permits him to incorporate three of his most valued life objectives: his responsibilities to his family, his professional work, and a once-a-week outing as Alice Novic including the joys of erotic encounters with a steady boy friend.

Through extensive psychotherapy and real life cross dressing experiences, Novic discovers that his intense desire to be a part-time beautiful woman is central to his personality, not simply a fantasy or an accompaniment to masturbation. He dedicates himself to learning how to appear to be a woman and practices this in the drag venues of Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. These fascinating haunts are his Genderland, but instead of encountering Humpty Dumpty, he meets many other crossdressers and transsexuals who teach him useful skills, serve as role models, and help him to gain greater self-acceptance. In Genderland,Alice’s adventures take her to a succession of Tri Ess and other support group meetings, but her best mentors and closest friends are usually other crossdressers or transsexuals. Alice progressively awards herself increasing latitude to experiment with the joys of being a beautiful woman. For her, attracting and dating men and the enjoyment of uninhibited sex becomes a fantasy-come-true. Ultimately, Novic negotiates with his wife for permission to enjoy four Saturday nights a month as Alice-on-the-town. All of this is in the service of expressing a deeply felt feminine gender identity characterized as feeling half-woman and half-man,combined with a bisexual propensity. . . .

This is an exceptionally thorough case history of a high functioning, insightful, and sensation-seeking cross dresser. It is not a research report or a theoretical treatise. Novic makes no claim that his pathway or his negotiations with his wife will necessarily provide a template for others. Written in a very engaging and lively style, the author opens the door of his crossdresser’s closet to reveal that a man can become a beautiful woman. How does he explain what compels Alice’s gender transformation? He doesn’t. There is the persistent assertion that somehow innate brain-based determinants are at work, a view very much in vogue. The so-called fetal hormone hypothesis is emphasized while the social construction model of gender role development is played down. He is atheoretical.. . .

In describing Alice’s thirty years of transgender experience, the author tells us what he did, how he felt, and of the compromises required to sustain his roles as a family leader, medical practitioner, and part-time beautiful woman. The author does not tease us with the riddles, conundrums, or the complex puzzles of Lewis Carroll; he is far more direct, uninhibited, and proud of his accomplishments. Very likely, however, his description of steamy sexual encounters with boy friends would terrify the wives of many crossdressers. His wife, we are told, has learned to accommodate to his transgender preferences . . . and is described as a loving and flexible person, yet it is suggested that if she could make all of this go away, perhaps she would. . . . Much emphasis is given to the process of “coming out.” While regarding this as especially therapeutic, he explains that for various reasons he has been selective in revealing his life as Alice to friends, patients, and other professionals. Novic is realistic about the punishments society may exact for behaviors perceived as over-the-top. We are all living, he notes, in a sex-negative culture.

While struggling to clarify her identity, Lewis Carroll’s Alice found her way out of Wonderland and was all the better for the experience. Richard Novic’s Alice has also found gratification through her adventures in Genderland including the expression of her feminine identity. But as Novic points out, who can say where all this may lead? . .