Plot: Forty-seven-year-old Jim Alter pursued manly roles so successfully for so long -- playing football, starting a family, running auto-shop and construction businesses, hanging with the guys -- that the shock was total when he announced he would now cross-dress (and, eventually, undergo sex-change surgery) as a woman. Reactions range from his mother's earnest bewilderment to the scandalized fury of in-laws
Josh Aronson