Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 472

was 26 when I had the surgery and that was 27 years ago she says at last been Christine longer than I was George And I can say been a very exciting 27 says her home is worth $200000 In her 1967 autobiography which was called "Christine Jorgensen" and Kubllshed by Paul Erikssen in ardcover and by Bantam in paperback she wrote of a slump in her performing career and of troubles with the Internal Revenue Service that left her financially depleted Though she declines to be specific about money she does say that her financial recovery Is complete She owns real estate including a condominium in Hawaii and she isn't worried "I could afford to just sit in this chair if I wanted" she says Though her life is friends know not to call before noon it is not completely idle Jorgensen is big on the lecture circuit right up there with Lee Bailey and Ralph Nader" she kiddingly boasts) getting fees of $1000 to $3000 to appear at colleges and women's clubs She is suing United Artists for $5 million claiming she is due money for the 1971 film version of her life which she says was badly botched and poorly marketed And she is coming back to the night-club circuit after an absence of 15 years "Well you know it's the turn of the wheel she says lighting up a cigarette and exhaling toward the sky "The '50s are big right now That was my era" In June she had a four-day break-in engagement in Portland Ore at a dub called Darcelle's and got a rave from the local critic "Better" says Jorgensen "than I deserved for the first night Naturally it takes time to get back into the swing By the eighth show I did feel I'd hit my stride" She is mulling other engage-' ments including a couple of offers from cruise ships for the fall "I'm not the greatest talent in the world" she shrugs "but I'm comfortable on a stage and the audience has fun" The act is not so very different' from the one she once took into the Latin Quarter in New York the Interlude in Los Angeles and to clubs in Havana and Caracas and through- out England and Australia Though quite innocent the act was once banned in Boston and she likes to tell of the time that she returned to Boston to promote her autobiography "You are going to ban the book aren't you?" she asked a city official "We don't do that kind of thing anymore" she was told "Where are different than sexual preference It doesn't have to do with bed partners it has to do with identity" Jorgensen says she knows of some male-to-female trans-genders who have settled into lesbian relationships She herself is heterosexual "I've never been married" she acknowledges "but I have been engaged twice and I've been deeply in love twice I was never engaged to the men I -was in love with and I was never in love with the men I was engaged to When i lecture at colleges students always get a charge out of that "I do have sexual interludes although I haven't been heavily romantically involved for some years" One wonders if she has been plagued by men who pursue her out of curiosity rather than genuine sexual interest Perhaps she allows but maybe "plague" is not the right word "Curiosity does not necessarily kill the cat" she says with mischief in her voice "If I were not me I'd be very curious about me too Oh but I'm getting to the point where unless it's someone I really care about I don't want to bother" She adds wearily: "The other day I read an interview Bette Davis gave to the American retired persons' magazine She said 'After all these years and all those husbands I've begun to think that sex is God's joke on man' You know" says Jorgensen rising to freshen drinks "to some degree I think she's right" Jorgensen embarked on her mission to Denmark after several years of independent research As a student at the Manhattan Medical and Dental Assistants' School she read all that she could find on the subjects of sexual hormones and glandular imbalances Through a physician she learned of sex change treatments and oper- ations that had been done in Scandinavia procedures not being done in the United States at the time She left for Copenhagen to stay with family friends and explore the possibilities in 1950 Her parents her older sister and brother-in-law knew nothing of the medical mission until it was nearly completed two years later She sent them a letter: "I have changed changed very much as my photos will show but I want you to know that I am an extremely happy person -and that the real me not the physical me has not changed But Nature made a invited her to appear at a benefit at Madison Square Carden for the widows and children of New York policemen and firemen killed in the line of duty Sherman Billingsley refused to let her in the Stork Club but Elsa Maxwell gave her luncheon at the Waldorf-Towers and invited Cole Porter and the editor of Vogue Christine Jorgensen turned 53 on May 30 For most people 53 is not a noteworthy birthday but for her It was special "I was 26 when I had the surgery" she says coolly pausing for a sip of her virgin mary "and that was 27 years ago Now at last I've been Christine longer than I was George And" she adds with a smile "I can say it's been a very exciting 27 years' A lot of those years were spent on Long Island While she was still in Denmark Jorgensen sold the rights to her life story to the Hearst Corp's American Weekly Magazine for $20000 Upon her return to America one of her first acts was to spend some of the money on a house in Massapequa for her parents both children of Danish immigrants and herself Her father a contractor built the house himself Although she traveled widely in the 1950s and '60s pursuing a career as a night-club performer and stage actress Jorgensen always returned to the house on Pennsylvania Avenue she shared with her parents After their deaths her father died in 1966 her mother in 1967 she sold the house and moved to California She lived for a time at the Chateau Marmont the historic old apartment-hotel on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles that has been home through the years to movie stars from Greta Garbo to Richard Gere Later she owned a house in Hollywood and eight years ago moved to a four-bedroom house in Laguna Niguel in the dark green hills that border the Pacific Coast 60 miles south of Los Angeles Christine Jorgensen in case anyone was wondering has no regrets "No I've never once regretted my decision" she says matter-of-factly obviously used to the question "I regretted at the beginning that the press got hold of it and made my life such an open book But the publicity too hasn't been altogether bad It's enabled me to make an awful lot of money" It does seem to be a comfortable existence Jorgensen keeps a white 1973 Eldorado in the garage and she you when I need you?" Jorgensen replied "I'll update some of the numbers" she muses "but I'll be wearing some of the same the nostalgia thing is big" Perhaps inevitably her act indudes "I Enjoy Being a Girl" "No funny lyrics" Jor- ensen volunteers wagging her in- ex finger "I sing it straight if it comes out funny" she adds with a wry smile "that's okay" She also does a kind of tongue-in-cheek autobiographical medley: "Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered" to represent her own pre-operation state of mind "Say It Isn't So" for the shocked reaction her new identity engendered and "They'll Never Believe Me" to recall her frustration at trying to deal with a cynical press some of whom insisted for years that she was just George Jorgensen with a new wardrobe If the act kids her extraordinary situation it should not be taken as evidence that she went light-heartedly into her drastic transformation In her autobiography Jorgensen writes of growing up a "frail towheaded introverted" little boy who "ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games" whose Christmas prayer at the age of 5 was for "a pretty doll with long gold hair" and who was disappointed to pet a bright-red model railroad train instead She describes the 19-year-old George Jorgensen who was drafted into the Army a few months after the end of World War II as a 98-pounder with underdeveloped male genitalia and virtually no beard or body hair As a young man Jorgensen experienced strong emotional attachments to two male friends but she says those feelings were never expressed She has also written of the revulsion-she felt on several occasions when men made homosexual advances Jorgensen admits now that she wasn't entirely candid in the book 'Ten years ago you didn't discuss some of the things you do today" she says She did nave "a couple" of homosexual experiences before she went off to Europe to seek a medical solution to her problem but her limited experience only reinforced the feeling that she wanted to relate to men as a woman not another man "If you understand transgenders" she says choosing the word she prefers to transsexuals "then you understand that gender is A.