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INDEX

[Upfront] The Month
[Viewpoint] On Community
[Life Lived] From Diane Frank's diary
[A CD Eye for the Arts] Androgynous
[The New Yorker] High-Heel Neil - part I
[From the Archive] The Woman You Want To Be - Dec 1991
[Last Laugh] Gender Quest

[Upfront]
THE MONTH

Up first, Chairman Gloria Fenton reflects on a recent controversy and re-communicates Alpha Omega's not-so-secret mission.

Diane Frank is next defending self-expression, promoting Helen Boyd's "terrifyingly revealing" new book, and dancing with bohemian/anarchist Emma Goldman.

To break the winter doldrums we bring you a story of high flying, high society and high heels.

Sixteen years ago LFS excerpted silent film writer, director, producer and über star, Margery Wilson's epic exploration into how to be "The Woman You Want To Be."

There's humor, art and more!

Elaine

[Viewpoint]
ON COMMUNITY

By Gloria Fenton

In the last few weeks there has been at least some discussion about Alpha Omega Society and the new Girls Night Out program in the Akron area. I have only been privy to minor amounts of the discussions through a few emails, and one talk each that I have had with Diane Frank and Chloe Prince.

I do know that each has strong opinions. A couple emails I have seen by other people made comments about Alpha Omega as a group. I have been surprised about these emails because, as far as I know, Alpha Omega as a group is not a part of any discussion or controversy in regard to the Girls Night Out program. I do personally question why Alpha Omega is being spoken against when, as far as I know, the comments were triggered by opposition to only one member’s personal opinions.

I have no problem whatsoever with anyone expressing their free speech to oppose another individual’s opinions, as long as it is noted that the person in question has a right to their free speech to have and express their opinions. People are human and do not always agree. That is real life.

I did not know until the night of our Alpha Omega January meeting that the second Saturday of each month had been chosen to be the monthly Girl’s Night Out in the Akron area. My only comment to Chloe about that was that I was upset that I, as the leader of AO, had not been notified about it, just as a matter of courtesy, as that is also the AO meeting time. It isn’t that it would have made any difference in the situation, but I would have appreciated the courtesy to Alpha Omega.

If a Girl’s Night Out is more appealing to someone than an AO meeting, then so be it. For Alpha Omega to survive, it is not about the number of people that attend a meeting.

Alpha Omega is about people learning to deal with crossdressing as a part of their lives whether they are a crossdresser themselves or not. Alpha Omega is about a crossdresser having the chance to mentally and emotionally discover the human being they are that goes far beyond the social environment. Alpha Omega is about finding ways to educate and bring awareness of dealing with crossdressing to people who need that help. Alpha Omega is about becoming part of a family.

I hope personal differences can be seen as agreeing to disagree, so everybody can move on. I am open to any constructive dialog, and will print articles that express opinions in our newsletter. If there is claim to being a community, then it is time to prove it.

Sincerely, Gloria Fenton
Leader of Alpha Omega Society

[Life Lived]
FROM THE DIARY

By Diane Frank

Freedom to Self-Express
This starts with Esther. Or, I should say playing Esther in one of the three Purim Spiels put on at my temple. Purim Spiels are plays that retell the Purim story of how Esther, the stealth Jewish wife of the Persian King saves her people from extermination by coming out to him at the last minute. How’s that for a nutshell summary? It’s a story that has resonance for lots of people besides Jews who may have had to hide their being Jewish. As I noted in a long ago article “Covering” applies to just about everyone. It has special resonance in the GLBT community. [read the original Covering article here]

Purim, the holiday, has a lot to do with other ancient holidays of misrule. One of my friends recounts seeing an orthodox rabbi, with full beard in a red sequined dress one Purim. By comparison, what I wore was tame, starting with my best impression of a contemporary assimilated, secular Israeli woman in her Tel Aviv apartment, and ending using one of my favorite saris to emulate the robes of a Persian queen.

My high point was singing “I am a Jew” to the tune of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” I told someone about this and he wryly remarked that this was getting to be a little too “drag queen” for me. Now I have my launch point for this month’s column. My reaction was why should I refrain from doing something worthwhile and fun because of trying to live up to labels or ideology? Or, as Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance at the revolution I don’t want it.”^[1] What kind of woman do I want to be? What kind am I? Heaven’s, I also wore a silly hat to a birthday party. Talk about undercutting the dignity of the “trans” cause!

She’s Not the Man I Married
The business about not being ruled by labels and ideologies is one of the core values of Helen Boyd’s latest opus She’s Not the Man I Married. Helen is the author of My Husband Betty. Far more personal and terrifyingly revealing, Helen describes her reaction to Betty’s shift from “just a crossdresser” to someone who has undergone laser hair removal treatments, is on androgen (testosterone) blockers and increasingly doesn’t pass as a man even when trying. Helen has her own issues with gender, working on the concept of female masculinity for straight women. But, Helen is sorrowfully upfront with her worry that Betty would transition completely as that would destroy the marriage - having to deal with being seen as a lesbian in public, unfamiliar sexual organs and Betty really not being the same person she married could overwhelm even her. Then there’s the question of what kind of woman Betty is or would become.

Helen describes Betty’s upset at not being able to go in to enjoy a shoe sale as a woman. Not an uncommon complaint and I confess to having had the feeling myself…in the past. Having attended a few shoe sales at MarLou's, the thrill turns out to have been exceeded by the anticipation. But, Helen isn’t the kind of woman who enjoys shoe sales, or even has (in general) women friends who do.

I'll take the liberty of quoting a full paragraph here. I've highlighted a poignant and complicated sentence.

Click on the cover below to learn more about and buy She's Not the Man I Married via Amazon

Collection: YSL Spring 2007 Prêt-à-Porter

[The New Yorker]
HIGH-HEEL NEIL

January 16, 1995

At some of the finer spots frequented by Southern society, one Republican businessman stands out for his love of adventure -- and a well-cut dress.

BY JOHN BERENDT

Part I

One evening in late March of 1990, Neil Cargile stepped into his single-engine Mooney airplane in West Palm Beach and took off for Nashville. About forty miles southeast of the Nashville airport, the plane started vibrating uncontrollably. Cargile wasn't sure what had happened, but he suspected that one of his propeller blades had broken off; it had been repaired several months before. He radioed Nashville to tell them he was having engine trouble. Because of the vibrations, he said, he couldn't read his instrument panel. He was losing altitude. His radio was being shaken apart, and he would soon lose voice contact. Nashville cleared him for an emergency landing at Murfreesboro Municipal Airport, three miles from his position, but just at that moment his plane started clipping the tops of trees. Suddenly, he saw Interstate 24 spread out before him. He angled the plane for a landing on a grassy embankment and set it down perfectly, but at such speed that the plane slid onto the highway, skidding toward traffic on its belly, its landing gear still up. As he struggled to swerve onto the median strip, three sets of headlights came at him. Two of the vehicles swung off to the side, but his right wing caught the third, a van, on its underside and dragged it onto the median, where they both came to a stop. The plane was a wreck, but the van was only slightly damaged. Miraculously, no one had been hurt.

Emergency vehicles converged on the scene within minutes, along with television crews, and soon thousands of Nashvilleans were watching coverage of the accident's aftermath on the ten o'clock news: firemen spraying foam on a huge puddle of spilled fuel, bystanders lining the side of the road, traffic backed up for miles. At the center of all this -- an island of calm amid the sirens and flashing lights -- stood Neil Cargile. At sixty-one. he was impressively handsome, with glinting blue eyes, a square jaw, and white hair that fell casually across his forehead. He was wearing a blue blazer, a dress shirt open at the collar, and gray slacks. Aviation officials inspecting the scene praised his skill in handling the plane. They said his cool demeanor and his more than forty years of flying experience, which included a stint as a Navy jet pilot, had probably averted a disaster. Cargile sipped a soft drink and calmly inspected the wreckage.

"You look as though you're going to a party," one of the reporters remarked.

"That's exactly what I was doing," he growled amiably.

"What was the cause of the crash?"

Cargile smiled. "I like being the center of attention."

There was more than a grain of truth in Cargile's jest, as many of those who were watching the drama at home on television were well aware. Neil Cargile was a celebrated son of Nashville, a dashing figure of privilege and status who was never very far from the spotlight. He had played football at Vanderbilt, driven race cars, sailed yachts, and played polo. He was a man of action and daring -- of that there was no question. And yet when his friends saw his dapper image on television that night they were all seized by the same incongruous thought: Thank God he wasn't wearing a dress.

It is common knowledge in Nashville, especially among the social set of Belle Meade, the lush residential preserve of old Nashville, that Neil Cargile -- twice married, the father of three, and decidedly heterosexual -- likes to "dress up." The first time he ever wore women's clothes in public was at a Halloween party at the Palm Bay Club, in Miami, in the mid-nineteen-seventies; four women had talked him into going to the party as Dolly Parton. They'd dressed him in a blond wig, a red dress, and a pair of Charles Jourdan shoes with four-inch chrome heels. Cargile won first prize that night, and a photograph of him in all his glory was posted on the club's bulletin board, where George and Em Crook, of Nashville, happened to see it some months later. "My God, that's Neil Cargile!" Mrs. Crook exclaimed.

The Crooks assumed that the episode was nothing more than a party prank, and they held to this view for the next couple of years, even when rumors of other cross-dressing episodes began to circulate in Nashville. The other occasions were costume parties, too, and they were always out of town.

But then Cargile began to dress up in Nashville. At first, he did it at private parties and with a degree of subtlety. He'd wear a blazer, a shirt and tie -- and a kilt. Instead of the traditional knee-length woolen socks, however, he'd put on black stockings and high heels; or he'd wear the kilt and the heels with a formal dinner jacket. Eventually, he held what he called a Vice-Versa party at his home: guests were required to come dressed as a member of the opposite sex. Cargile was between marriages at the time, and his date that night came as Sir Lancelot; she rode into the house on a pony.

The Vice-Versa party and other sightings of Neil Cargile in drag caused a great deal of talk around town, but it was not until the 1979 Cumberland Caper that Nashville got a good look at Neil Cargile as a cross-dresser. The Caper is an annual costume party that benefits the Cumberland Science Museum. It has a different theme every year, and in 1979 Nashville's moneyed elite were asked to come as their favorite character in history. They arrived that evening in an assortment of decorous disguises -- as George and Martha Washington, for example, and Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. Neil Cargile showed up in a blue dress and a long blond wig. Given the theme of the evening, his choice was strangely inappropriate.

"And what historic character have you come as?" someone asked.

"As Neil Cargile in a dress," he replied.

Not since Elvis Presley scandalized Nashville by wearing eye shadow at the Grand Ole Opry in the early nineteen-fifties had the town been confronted by anything like this. Chet Atkins had said of the youthful Presley's made-up eyes. "It's like seein' a couple of guys kissin' in Key West." Twenty-five years later, Neil Cargile's friends took him aside, one by one, and asked him tactfully (and sometimes not so tactfully) if perhaps he had lost his mind.

Cargile was the antithesis of what people expected in a cross-dresser. Nothing in his life had given any hint that he would become one. He had grown up at Jocelyn Hollow, a large estate in the rolling hills of Belle Meade. As a boy, he showed a talent for mechanical engineering, and for standing out from the crowd. At the age of twelve, he set up a machine shop in his father's garage and made motor scooters out of washing-machine engines. At sixteen, he rebuilt an airplane out of surplus parts from the Second World War and flew it solo from his back yard. Local newspapers doted on his exploits, calling him a "back-yard aviator" In the air, he was a superb pilot and a daredevil prankster. He flew loop-the-loops, and he once buzzed his father on the golf course of the Belle Meade Country Club, a stunt that got him grounded for two months. He survived so many emergency landings, in fact, that he earned the nickname Crash Cargile. As an adult, he had a helicopter landing pad on the front lawn of his Nashville mansion -- one of the few heliports at a private residence in Tennessee. He got involved in businesses that required grit and daring -- flying crop dusters, for example, and designing, building, and operating mammoth dredges that were used for deepening rivers and harbors and recovering diamonds and gold, often in remote parts of the globe. After his exploit at the Cumberland Caper, Cargile assured his worried friends that he had not turned gay. The only reason he dressed up, he said, was that it was fun.

Cargile did appear to be having a rollicking good time when he was in drag. It was almost as if he regarded dressing up as a big joke, and on one level it was, since he made no attempt to pass as a woman. He did not alter his masculine voice or feminize his walks and it was clear that he got as much pleasure out of shocking people as he did out of wearing the clothes. He especially liked to drop in at the Bargain Boutique to shop for second-hand dresses and pop out of the fitting room to ask dumbstruck ladies what they thought of the dress he was trying on. He did not merely seek the spotlight, he coveted it. When another man won the costume prize at the Cumberland Caper one year by coming as Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie," Cargile was incensed. He swore he would never attend another Caper if people were going to horn in on his act. He had no discernible qualms about dressing up in public. He even took delight in the new nickname he'd been given: High-Heel Neil.

By the mid-nineteen-eighties, Nashville had become used to the sight of Neil Cargile in women's clothes. Out-of-towners were about the only people still taken aback by it. One evening, a woman who was visiting Nashville to see her grandparents suddenly leaned across the table at the 106 Club and told her grandfather, in an urgent but lowered voice, that a man had just come into the restaurant in a red dress. Her grandfather shrugged and went on eating. "That would be Neil Cargile," he said without bothering to turn around.

I first heard about Neil Cargile during a visit to Nashville last spring. His second marriage had ended in divorce, and he was living with a girlfriend in Palm Beach, where some of his dredging operations were located. Even at that distance, he remained the talk of Nashville -- most recently because he had won a trophy in the Easter-bonnet contest at the Palm Beach Polo and Country Club, which had infuriated dozens of Palm Beach matrons. They objected that they and their daughters and granddaughters had been exposed to (and defeated by) a grown man in a blazer, a miniskirt, and high heels -- not to mention a broad-brimmed, lace-festooned, flowered straw hat. An account of the affair which had been published in the Palm Beach Daily News was circulating in Nashville when I passed through in May. It had made Neil Cargile the center of attention once again.

"I suppose he does it, as he says, for the fun of it and for the shock value," Em Crook said. That's Neil."

Jimmy Armistead, an old Nashvillean, disagreed. Saying it's fun is O.K. for the first few parties," he declared, but after twenty years there has to be a better reason."

Frank Jarman, the former chairman of Genesco, thought back over Cargile's lifetime of daring exploits and concluded that cross-dressing was simply another of his adventures: I think he just got bored.' A number of people pointed darkly to a tragedy in Cargile's past -- the death of his fourteen-year-old son from a burst aneurysm that occurred in the swimming pool of the Belle Meade Country Club in 1970 -- as if it might have somehow triggered his compulsion to cross-dress.

The Easter-bonnet affair was not, in fact, the first time a Palm Beach paper had featured Cargile in drag. A year earlier, the paper had revealed that he had given his alter ego a name: SheNeil -- pronounced "chenille," as in the fabric.

-- to be continued

[From the Archive]
La Femme Silhouette - December 1991

Book Excerpt From: The Woman You Want To Be   © 1942

[Last Laugh]
GENDER QUEST

Alpha Omega is a non-profit social support group for heterosexual crossdressers and their wives or partners. Also, members from related organizations, helping professionals, and approved guests are welcome when cleared through Alpha Omega’s officers. We serve Cleveland and nearby Northeast Ohio communities.

Meetings are the second Saturday evening of each month unless a special event is scheduled that takes the place of the regularly scheduled meeting. The location of the meeting or event is only released to members or others with the approval of an officer. Members and visitors must be 18 years of age or older.

This newsletter is copyright 2007 by The Alpha Omega Society. All rights reserved. Articles and information contained in this newsletter may be reprinted by other non-profit crossdresser organizations with advance permission of the author(s) and provided a copy of the issue containing the reprinted material is sent to Alpha Omega within two months after the material is published and proper credit is given to author and source. The opinions or statements contained in this newsletter are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Alpha Omega.

Contributions of articles are welcomed, but may be altered in the editing process, with the author’s intent retained, or may be rejected, whether solicited or not. Absolutely no sexually explicit material will be accepted or printed.

We will exchange newsletters with any other similar group. Send all correspondence to: Newsletter Editor

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