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Title: The female-impersonators : A sequel to the autobiography of an androgyne and an account of some of the author's experiences during his six years' career as instinctive female-impersonator in new york's underworld; together with the life stories of androgyne associates and an outline of his subsequently acquired knowledge of kindred phenomena of human character and psychology
Author: Werther, Ralph
Language: English
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FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS ***
[Illustration:
The Author—a Modern Living Replica of the Ancient Greek Statue,
“Hermaphroditos”
(Photo by Dr. A. W. Herzog)
]
The
Female-Impersonators
A sequel to the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE and an account of some of
the author’s experiences during his six years’ career as instinctive
female-impersonator in New York’s Underworld; together with the life
stories of androgyne associates and an outline of his subsequently
acquired knowledge of kindred phenomena of human character and
psychology.
BY
RALPH WERTHER—JENNIE JUNE
(“EARL LIND”)
Author also of
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD
EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION
BY
ALFRED W. HERZOG, Ph.B., A.M., M.D.
Member of the New York and the New Jersey Bar
Editor of the _Medico-Legal Journal_
NEW YORK
THE MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL
1922
Copyright, 1922
By ALFRED W. HERZOG
First edition, 1,000 copies. Sold only to physicians, lawyers,
clergymen, teachers, writers, psychologists, sociologists, and
legislators; by Medico-Legal Journal, 123 West 83d Street, New York
City.
This is copy Number ................. and is sold
to ..............................................
Inscribed to NATURE’S STEP-CHILDREN—the sexually abnormal by birth—in
the hope that their lives may be rendered more tolerable through the
author’s efforts to enlighten thinking men on these step-children’s
psychology and life experience.
“But this is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them snared in
holes, and they are hid in prison houses; they are for a prey, and none
delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore.
“Who among you will give ear to this? Who will hearken and hear for the
time to come?”—Isaiah XLII, v. 22, 23.
CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION, by Dr. Alfred W. Herzog vii
PART ONE: THE THIRD SEX
I. How This Book Came to Be Written 1
II. The Place of the Androgyne in the Male Sex Scale 7
III. Androgynes of Mythology and History 25
IV. Man Is a Passional, Rather Than a Rational, Being 39
PART TWO: HOW THE AUTHOR CAME TO BE A FEMALE-IMPERSONATOR
I. Reveries Suggested by My Infancy 53
II. School Days 63
III. An Androgyne’s Youth 70
IV. I Grow into THE FAIRIE BOY 82
V. The Boy Who Never Grew to Be a Man 89
PART THREE: THE FAIRIE BOY
I. Female-Impersonation 97
II. A Typical Female-Impersonation Spree 103
III. The Gambler 114
IV. A Stuyvesant Square Pick-up 130
V. Evenings at Paresis Hall 146
VI. Thoughts Suggested by the “Hermaphroditoi” in General 164
PART FOUR: FRANK—EUNICE
I. Debut as Adult Female-Impersonator 170
II. The Pug Heaven 175
III. A University Friendship 178
IV. The Masked Ball 182
V. Frank—Eunice’s Indiscretion 191
PART FIVE: ANGELO—PHYLLIS
I. Angelo Angevine’s Debut as Public Female-Impersonator 198
II. Jailed for Wearing Petticoats 209
III. George Greenwood 214
PART SIX: NEWSPAPER ACCOUNTS OF MURDERS OF ANDROGYNES
I. Two Murder Mysteries Which, Strangely Alike in Many Ways,
Baffled All Efforts to Solve 223
II. Z Mystery Baffles Inquiry at Every Angle 237
III. College Student’s Death Is Unexplained 259
PART SEVEN: MEDICAL WRITERS ON ANDROGYNISM
I. What a New York Official Physician Has to Say about Fairies 262
II. What One of America’s Foremost Medical Writers Has to Say
about Fairies 266
PART EIGHT: ANDROGYNE VERSE
I. Emotion 271
II. Recollection 275
III. Memories 278
IV. French Doll-Baby 280
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Announcement of THE RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD 283
Index 286
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
I. The Author—A Modern Living Replica of the Ancient
Greek Statue, “Hermaphroditos” (Photo by Dr. A. W.
Herzog) Frontispiece
II. Ancient Greek Statue of an Androgyne, Called
“Hermaphroditos,” Now in the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence, Italy 25
III. Alexander the Great—An Androgyne of the Mild Type 31
IV. Julius Cæsar—An Androgyne of the Mild Type 31
V. Raphael—the Most Gifted Ultra-Androgyne the World
Has Known 33
VI. The “Fairie Boy” Ready to Set Out on Life’s Journey 53
VII. My Garden of Gethsemane 78
VIII. Front View of Author at Thirty-three (Photo by Dr.
R. W. Shufeldt) 82
IX. Rear view of Author at Thirty-three (Photo by Dr. R.
W. Shufeldt) 89
X. Fourteenth Street Rialto, Stamping-Ground of the
Hermaphroditoi 105
XI. Stuyvesant Square, One of Jennie June’s Stamping
Grounds 105
XII. Neighborhood Where Harvey Green Thought He
“Finished” Jennie June 140
XIII. The Author at Thirty-four (Amateur photo) 164
XIV. Bowery, in the Nineteenth Century America’s Main
Red-Light Street, and Stamping-Ground of
Frank—Eunice, Angelo—Phyllis and Ralph
Werther—Jennie June 169
XV. Michelangelo’s Adam 216
XVI. Whitestone Railroad Station (“Holy Ground”) 271, 272,
273
XVII. “The Boy of the Piave” (America’s gift to Italy in
1921) 277
Introduction
When, in 1918, I agreed to publish the author’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN
ANDROGYNE, I did so because persuaded that androgynism was not
sufficiently understood and that therefore androgynes were unjustly made
to suffer.
Owing to the subject matter, or rather on account of the way in which it
was presented by the author, I was obliged to restrict the sale of the
book to physicians, lawyers, legislators, psychologists, and
sociologists.
The sale of the book, while not as large as it ought to have been,
showed however that the interest of the professional man could be
awakened, and he be made to realize that the androgyne is no more to be
punished for his harmless sexual transgressions than a congenital
physical cripple for the latter’s unæsthetic physique.
Hardly had the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE been published, when the
author (who, it must be understood, belongs to that despised class of
sexual cripples) started, to use his own words, “to peddle the script”
of THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS around to general book publishers, and
continued to do so for two years, until ten publishers had returned it
to him as unsuited for general circulation.
It must be understood that the author wrote THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS for
the general reader as he felt that, although propaganda among scientists
was necessary, and would undoubtedly do some good, really to help the
suffering androgyne quickly, it was necessary to reach the general
public.
In this idea the author was not wrong. During the last few years several
suicides and murders of androgynes have come to my personal notice, and
although a change of laws, which would do away with the punishment of
androgynes for their harmless sexual lapses, would do a great deal to
ameliorate the conditions surrounding their lives (particularly prevent
much blackmail, from which they continually suffer) yet the suicides of
androgynes are almost always due, not to fear of punishment by the law,
but to fear of exposure, which would cause the loss of their positions
and insure their being shunned by “decent” society.
As to the frequent murders of androgynes, these surely have not been
committed by members of the medical, legal or other learned professions,
but by men belonging to “the general public”—men more or less
“civilized,” but altogether brutal.
It can not be doubted that a repeal of those laws which prescribe
punishment for sexual lapses of these “pseudo-men” would do good, as it
would not only save them from prison terms, but also enable the braver
of them to prosecute and stop blackmailers, who make a regular business
of draining the resources of androgynes.
It is however impossible to achieve all that is desirable until the
general public has been thoroughly impregnated with the fact that
androgynism (as well as its correlative, gynandrism) is a _psychopathia
sexualis_, a mental twist, as harmless to society as anything can be,
because it is neither infectious nor contagious, and can not be induced
in anybody through either association with androgynes or through
quasi-philosophical (that is, sophistical) teachings or cults.
It must be understood that a normal man can not develop sexual feelings
or desires for another man, although it must be admitted that
homosexuality is occasionally practiced under conditions where access to
the opposite sex is impossible (or next to impossible), as, for example,
among soldiers on campaigns, among sailors during long voyages on
sailing vessels, in boarding-schools for adolescents, etc. This species
of homosexuality is indulged in only from “necessity”—so to say—and is
not considered by those indulging as much different from
self-manustupration. It is gladly abandoned as soon as access to the
opposite sex has become possible.
An ultra-androgyne however, although he has the male primary physical
attributes, never feels himself to be a real male, but a female
incarnated in a male body (often with feminine earmarks), and would no
more be able to develop sexual feelings for a female than a normal man
for another male.
It is therefore a consummation devoutly to be wished that a book setting
forth the facts of androgynism could be distributed among the general
public. The author tried to write a compendium for such readers, and THE
FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS is the result.
That he has failed in his attempt is to me not only very apparent, but
also quite natural.
To the author nothing that he has written about the practices of
androgynes seems what we call immoral or revolting. Because their own
congenital sexual tendencies appear to androgynes as the full-fledged
man’s appear to the latter.
To the author of THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS it is as natural to fall in
love with another male (bearing in mind however that the androgyne is
only a “pseudo-male”) and write, what he calls poems, dedicated to his
“hero-boys” (who to me appear nothing but low ruffians, blackmailers,
and grafters) as it would be for a normal man to fall in love with some
good-looking female, and write “poetry” about her, perhaps in some of
his later “poems” to bewail the fact that she has proven herself
“faithless, truthless, and makes a sale of that which men call love, to
him who bids the highest.”
It is therefore but natural that, since the author sees human beings, as
it were, distorted through his own mental astigmatism, namely females as
belonging to his own sex and males to the opposite, his second book, THE
FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS, contains a great deal which to the average reader
would be “shocking”, and thus, instead of accomplishing the result which
he intended, would cause disgust, and make the treatment of the
androgyne even worse than at present.
After the author had submitted the manuscript of his book to numerous
publishers, trying in vain (as I had predicted to him) to induce one of
them to bring out the book for general circulation, I agreed to publish
it for restricted sale.
Not because I really felt that the book presents a great deal of new
material of scientific interest, but because, by describing the life
experience of various other androgynes, their viewpoints, their
sufferings, it continues the missionary work begun by the author in his
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE and thus helps in keeping up the good
work. For, to achieve results, it is not only necessary to awaken
interest in a subject, but also to keep that interest alive.
_Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi, sed saepe cadendo._ “A drop of water wears
a hole in a stone, not by force, but by frequently falling.”
That the author is really doing missionary work can not be doubted by
me, for I know that he does not derive any financial benefit from the
publication of his AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, nor do I expect he
will from the publication of the present sequel.
Every cent which I have turned over to him as royalties from the sale of
his AUTOBIOGRAPHY he has returned to me to be expended for
advertisements in various medical journals and, owing to the slight
interest in the subject which exists among physicians, I am sorry to say
that those advertisements have not been financially remunerative.
As the author however feels that he has a mission to fulfill; that he
has been created by Providence one of the despised androgynes for the
purpose of taking up their cause and ameliorating their state of almost
unparalleled sufferings, the missionary work will go on, as it has
begun.
As in the case of the first of the present trilogy, THE
FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS is published practically as its author wrote it.
For my impressions of the author’s personality, I refer to my
_Introduction_ in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE.
ALFRED W. HERZOG.
March, 1922
The Female-Impersonators
Part One:
The Third Sex
I. How This Book Came to Be Written.
My motive was humanitarian. My aim was to save thousands of innocent
step-children of Nature from an aggregate of tens of thousands of years
in prison, and bring about a repeal of the laws under which they are
incarcerated and which are still in the codes because civilized man has
not yet entirely emerged from the prejudice and superstition of the Dark
Ages. My second aim was to put a stop to the continuous string of
murders of these step-children, the assassins laboring under the
delusion that homosexuality is due to deepest moral depravity, and
feeling that they are mandatories of society in ridding the world of
these “monsters.” My third aim was to save hundreds of these
superlatively melancholy sexual intermediates from suicide as the result
of bitter persecution by those who pride themselves on the fact that in
their own case, sex has been thoroughly differentiated.
[Sidenote: _The Sexual The Worst Crippling._]
The problem of the bisexual girl-boy or androgyne has been presented for
the _learned professions_ in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE and THE
RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD. But to accomplish my three aims, it is
necessary that the _general reader_ have instilled into his mind that
sexual intermediates are not to blame for their cross-sex
idiosyncrasies. Such knowledge could not besmirch the soul of the
general reader, but only benefit him morally.
In the present work I have a message for the general reader such as, in
nearly every individual case, has never yet reached him. My God-given
mission is to be one of the first to cry: “Child of English culture,[1]
reflect a moment, and ask yourself whether you are at last, in this the
most enlightened century of man’s existence, willing to grant justice
and humane treatment to the androgyne and gynander? Do you still insist
that these sexual cripples continue to suffer physical and mental
torture for another century because your own pleasure bulks too large
for you to hear and bear the truth about the despairing cross-sexed?
Why should the Christian and the Jew have always regarded as the one
unpardonable sin the union in one human body of the distinctive physical
and psychic earmarks of the two recognized sexes? Why should they have
pitied and assisted the club-footed and the deaf-mute, but always
endeavored to grind sexual cripples to powder under their heels?
There is indeed no worse crippling than the sexual. This is because sex,
with all that it implies, is the principal physiological factor in life.
Any abnormality of sex is truly the greatest of tragedies.
[Sidenote: _Authors’ Trilogy._]
Reader, what would have been your own attitude on this question if God
had created you, or your son or daughter, a sexual intermediate, instead
of some stranger about whose banishment, suicide, or murder you have
read in the paper? Would you have driven the ill-starred son or daughter
from home, and henceforth treated them as dead? Or would you, when their
dead body was fished out of the river, be able to feel pity as did a
father I read about in a New York paper, who exclaimed at sight of it:
“Poor Jimmie! How you must have suffered!”[2]
* * * * *
My first three books on sexology form a trilogy. They together set forth
all phases of the life experience of a bisexual university “man.” To
only a trifling extent do they overlap. Thus the scientist wishing a
full account of my unique life experience must read the entire trilogy.
For I was predestined to an unusual role in the great drama we call
“life.” I was brought into the world as one of the rare humans who
possess a strong claim, on anatomic grounds as well as psychic, to
membership in both the recognized sexes. I was foreordained to live part
of my life as man and part as woman.
The first of the trilogy, the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, was
published in January, 1919. In the following June, I began a supplement,
THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS. Before September, I began to submit it to
publishers. But they refused to do anything [Sidenote: _Enemies of Truth
and Justice._] toward ameliorating the condition of the world’s most
oppressed class. It seemed to be their opinion that the world must have
its scapegoat—to punish, vicariously, for the world’s own sins. For
centuries, sexual intermediates had served the world in that capacity.
After I had peddled the script around for two years to a total of ten
regular book publishers, the MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL, publisher of my first
book, consented to make the work available for those interested. The
long delay in publication was utilized by myself in improving the form.
The third of the trilogy, THE RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD, has been
elaborated simultaneously with THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS. Into the
latter, I put the “milk for babes” (in St. Paul’s language); into the
former, the “meat for strong men.” I wrote the latter in a popular style
because addressed primarily to the general reader; the former more in
the style suitable for scientists.
In my AUTOBIOGRAPHY, I was almost exclusively occupied with a frank
exposition of what life meant to me personally. In the two supplements,
I have been chiefly occupied in depicting characters with whom I
associated in the Underworld. The Bible says: “Man is altogether born in
sin!” But in Christendom this is really true of only the one-tenth of
the race who people the Underworld. The other nine-tenths are
comparatively saints. But there exists no reason for the latter’s
prevalent Phariseeism. For the most part their moral superiority is
hereditary and environmental.
Because of my innate appetencies and avocation of female-impersonator, I
was fated to be a Nature-appointed [Sidenote: _Author Repository for
Underworld’s Secrets._] amateur detective. I enjoyed entrée to the
hearts of both male and female denizens of the Underworld, my
stamping-ground when I surrendered my bisexual body to the feminine side
of my dual psyche. They would whisper into my ears their innermost
secrets. Those who happened to be Roman Catholics (because some whom I
met in the Underworld were only chance and rare visitors, and ordinarily
able to live up to high ideals) have doubtless revealed the mysteries of
their inner life to their priest in the vaguest terms. But with me,
because as a rule ignorant of the confessor’s identity and not likely to
meet him in Overworld life, the confessions of Roman Catholic,
Protestant, Jew, and atheist were detailed and exhaustive. Surely my
having been thus favored by Providence ought to qualify me to depict
little known human types for those who have missed the opportunity of
meeting all kinds of people.
Of course, after the lapse of more than a score of years, I can not
recall verbatim the individual confessions and conversations. I remember
only their general drift. As outlined by me, they are merely
representative. But Nature has endowed me with a rare memory. The
earliest ascertainable date is the age of two years and three months,
when I recall having seen the coffin of a great-grandmother carried out
of the house. I still preserve earlier memories, such as being held on
my mother’s lap and contemplating her mountainous bare breast. I
remember hearing the moon whistle shrilly (the six P. M. factory
whistles as I gazed at the crescent moon).
No reader should conclude from my trilogy that New York has been
particularly immoral. Conditions [Sidenote: _Why an Underworld._] are
about the same in all great cities, except that those of the United
States are puritan towns compared with Europe. I have explored the
Underworld in many cities of both continents, being temperamentally
qualified. But in America’s smaller cities west of the meridian of
Kansas City, the sexual Underworld is more bold and wields more
political power than anywhere else in the United States or Europe.
An Underworld exists in all cities of any size because human nature is
what it is, and because of the social usages decreed by the blind
Overworld, which happens to include the vast majority of mankind. Man is
descended from the beasts, and still retains many of their
instincts—particularly true of the atypic or atavic who throng the
red-light districts.
As the MEDICAL WORLD said of my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, the
present work also “will be found a revelation of things undreamed of by
most people. It is a contribution to the almost unexplored field of
abnormal psychology.”
II. The Place of the Androgyne in the Male Sex Scale.
[Sidenote: _The Third Sex._]
Throughout the ages that mankind have trod the earth, a broad and
endless stream of masculinity has coursed along until swallowed in the
ocean of eternity. In all streams—whether of water, lava, or manhood—the
particles at the center flow most rapidly and the speed gradually
decreases toward the banks. At occasional points along the latter, the
particles are stationary, or there is even an eddy.
(1) The TREMENDOUSLY VIRILE cause the surging rapids at the center of
the masculine river. Their pre-eminent characteristic lies in excessive
venery and excessive promiscuity. Sex holds by far the chief place in
their thoughts. A large part of their waking hours is spent in the
torture of unsatisfied longing. Their conversation with business
intimates tends to sexual lines. They are the “black sheep” of families,
never letting an opportunity go by without improving it. They are the
seducers of girls under puberty. They are largely instrumental in
securing a continuous flow of recruits to the rapidly decimating
demimonde. Indeed the tremendously virile constitute the latter’s chief
_raison d’etre_.
Their ambition being to be “the husbands of all women,” the tremendously
virile, among Christian nations, often do not marry. If they do, a
separation or divorce follows within a few years.
As a rule, only these free lances—as long as under thirty—appeal to
androgynes as “heroes.” To them [Sidenote: _The Tremendously Virile._]
alone do these pseudo-men yearn to devote themselves as slaves.
As a rule, the tremendously virile are not _gentlemen_. For they possess
not even a vestige of mild or semi-feminine traits. They are
overbearing, quarrelsome, and pugnacious. They will not take a back seat
for any one. They constitute the raw material for the roughest, rudest,
and most death-defying occupations, as volunteer soldiers and sailors,
pugilists, highwaymen, and burglars. They abhor prosaic work.
As a rule, the tremendously virile are men of only three interests in
life: fighting (including the slaughter of dumb beasts, in their
inability to give the same treatment to their fellow man); sport in the
usual sense of that word; and the sexual instinct. But a mere handful,
whom Nature endowed with unusual brain power, have been leaders in war
and politics. In the United States, I dare instance only Mohammed, Henry
the Eighth, Louis the Fourteenth, and Bismarck. But leaders of the
American nation have belonged to this tremendously virile class. I dare
not name them because cultured society, with their present mediæval
ideas on sex, severely censure men of this class as “bestial.” But the
latter are fundamentally irresponsible.
In absolute monarchies and aristocracies almost throughout history, the
tremendously virile have been at the helm of the ship of state. Because
they have been, by birth, the greatest fighters. They thus forged to the
front and pre-empted for themselves and their posterity the best things
of life. Their constituting themselves the ruling class has rendered
history, for the most part, a record of wars. Tremendous virility,
[Sidenote: _The Ultra-Virile._] combined with unusual brain power, makes
the born leader of men, before whose will the masses bow unquestioningly
and they blindly turn themselves into “cannon fodder” at his beck and
call. Only since the dawn of the nineteenth century have the mildly
virile been coming into their own, and brain and science beginning to
get the upper hand over brute force. The recent World War was the final
resurgence of the tremendously virile as moulders of the destinies of
nations, as well as the death blow to their ambitions in this direction.
As the status of peoples descends from the enlightened to the savage,
the proportion that this class forms of the entire male sex gradually
increases. Among enlightened nations, I estimate it at five per cent on
the basis of my intimate mingling, in the role of a soubrette, with
several thousand young bachelors belonging exclusively to either the
tremendously or ultra-virile class, while nearly all my every-day
associates have belonged to the mildly virile.
On the basis of my reading in anthropology, I estimate the proportion
among savages at seventy-five per cent. Among the adult males, I have
read that women constitute almost the sole topic of conversation.
Fighting and sport fill up the rest of life. When an explorer has
visited a savage or barbarous tribe, the outstanding hospitality is the
provision of a bed-fellow belonging to the gentle sex.
(2) The ULTRA-VIRILE, on either side of the sexually fastest flowing
particles just described, take their less rapid course in the stream of
masculinity. Sex occupies their thoughts to a much less extent. But,
like the tremendously virile, they are naturally [Sidenote: _Natural
Polygamy._] polygamous. Only these two classes of males, together with
ultra-androgynes and a small proportion of the mildly androgynous, sow
wild oats, beginning in their later teens and ending usually in their
later twenties. Prior to settling down in marriage, the ultra-virile
secretly do not care a fig for the sexual mandates of Christian society.
But for the sake of appearances, they hypocritically chime in with the
regnant note and openly condemn in the harshest terms the least
infraction of the conventions by another than themselves. After
marriage, however, their infidelities are few and far between. Perhaps a
score in a life-time, as compared with a thousand upward for the
tremendously virile.
The ultra-virile make excellent husbands and divorce is rare. The wife,
however, while herself occupying first place in the husband’s
affections, has much cause for jealousy.
While the ultra-virile do not regularly choose an occupation free from
prosaic toil and ministering to love of sport and adventure, they are
usually averse to intellectual pursuits, favoring the manual. If
possessing unusual brain power, the ultra-virile man heads some
engineering or construction enterprise. The ultra-virile build our
railroads, great bridges, leviathans, and sky-scrapers. A handful are
distinguished by a knack for political leadership and have contributed
the vast majority of such leaders.
Both the tremendously and the ultra-virile tend to excel in physique and
comeliness. Some athletes, however, are only mildly virile. “Virility”
refers only to sexual power. More than the ordinary erotic ardor,
however, usually goes hand in hand with [Sidenote: _The Mildly Virile._]
_brawn_, just as intellectual tastes and spirituality do with _brain_.
With the evolution of the race in culture, erotic ardor, together with
the animal side of man’s nature in general, is declining. The goal for
which the race is headed is the minimum of sexual consciousness, coitus
for procreation only, just enough offspring to keep the number of the
human race on earth stationary, lengthened life, and ever increasing
expansion of the intellectual in man at the expense of the physical.
With this evolution, the proportion of sterile bisexuals will also
increase.
The fighting forces of a nation are almost entirely made up of the two
more virile classes, although together constituting only about
twenty-five per cent of the total manhood of civilized nations. It is
dangerous for the world’s peace when these two classes get control of a
great nation’s government. Of the five classes of males being described,
these two alone love war and seek occasion for it.
(3) The MILDLY VIRILE constitute, among so-called “Christian” nations,
about seventy-five per cent of all males.[3] Only on rare occasions do
thoughts [Sidenote: _Natural Monogamy._] about sexual congress enter
their minds. That is, if married, they desire it only about once a
fortnight or so, and up to the date of marriage, the incentive is so
weak that they never gratify it. Thus up to the bridal night, this class
three have usually been as chaste as their better halves. They have
usually never indulged even in masturbation, while the generality of
classes one and two have indulged frequently from around the age of ten
to the period in which opportunities _cum femina_ or _cum androgyna_
become plentiful. In the mildly virile man’s ignorance of the force of
sex in classes one and two, however, he has been known to be obsessed
with the delusion that sex in himself is strongly developed. The mildly
virile always marry, although a few postpone it until much past thirty.
Subsequently they have at most only negligible desires to drink water at
a strange cistern. They are content to go to their graves having been
absolutely faithful to the lawful wife, or several successive ones, that
God gave them. Divorce is almost unknown, since its cause, in nearly
every case, is _de facto_ polygamy in the husband, or his excessive
demands on the frigid wife—two faults absent from the psyche of the
mildly virile.
The sexual life of the latter flows on gently and smoothly. It is called
humdrum by the tremendously virile, continuously wafted up and down in a
dizzy fashion in the rapids at the center of the masculine river. But
what the mildly virile miss of the “pep” of life is more than
compensated by the blissful peace that characterizes their earthly
journey.
Their abhorrence of androgynism is many times as intense as in the case
of the more virile. While not a single mildly virile man would ever
succumb to [Sidenote: _Anaphrodites._] androgyne allurements, I have
ascertained through many years’ association with thousands of
tremendously or ultra-virile that at least seventy-five per cent readily
suffer capture providing their sexual needs are not already abundantly
gratified. The chief reason for the bitter antagonism of the mildly
virile is that they know androgynism only by hearsay. They have not,
like the more virile—to whom alone androgynes gravitate—been
eye-witnesses of the entirely innocent, innocuous, and even pitiable
sexuality of these pseudo-men.
The mildly virile, constituting the vast majority of all males in
“Christian” countries, seek to impose the dictates of their own sexual
natures upon all men whatsoever. The sexual mandates of “Christian”
society and of the New Testament express the sex feelings in part of the
mildly virile, and in part of the anaphrodites. Whatever harmonizes with
these feelings is right; whatever fails to, is “bestial.”
The mildly virile are inclined toward the less strenuous occupations, as
agriculture, manufacturing, and trade. They also include ninety-five per
cent of intellectuals.
(4) The cold ANAPHRODITES are the particles that cling immovably to the
banks of the masculine river.[4] They neither progress nor regress. They
number about one-half of one per cent of all adult males. Like the
ultra-androgynes, they have a horror of women from the sex point of
view. But unlike the [Sidenote: _St. Paul’s Sex Teachings._] former,
their minds are devoid of hero-worship and they shudder violently at the
very thought of _any kind_ of association grounded on sex differences.
Their anaphroditism is either an after-effect of an illness in childhood
or congenital.
For the most part, anaphrodites are intellectuals. The exquisite joys
associated with courtship and marriage that they are predestined never
to know are more than compensated by Providence in the way of extra
allotment of intellectual enjoyment. Herbert Spencer is the shining
example of anaphroditism of the nineteenth century.[5]
Since anaphrodites are not suffused with adoration for any type of
human, the vast majority are the more inclined to lift their thoughts to
their Creator. Some great religious leaders have been anaphrodites. St.
Paul, in his epistles, shows little patience even with normal sex
phenomena. He advises that every man imitate his own absolute celibacy.
“But if they can not contain, let them marry. For it is better to marry
than to burn [to lust].”
It is impossible for the tremendously or the ultra-sexed to live up to
the sexual ideals of an anaphrodite. And yet St. Paul’s epistles bind
them upon Christians. It is infinitely easier for an anaphrodite to be a
saint than for the ultra-virile to be even decent. St. Paul’s sex
teachings constitute the greatest stumbling block of the church. They
have caused the human race a [Sidenote: _Androgynes._] world of woe.
Belief in St. Paul’s inerrancy makes it impossible to reconcile
Christian ethics with the incontrovertible teachings of Nature. While,
in respect to value to the human race, I give St. Paul’s epistles first
place among all published documents (the woe they have occasioned being,
a thousand times over, outweighed by the light they have given man on
the greatest questions that puzzle his brain) I must, particularly
because of their false sex doctrines, deny their inerrancy. If inerrant,
the human race ought to have ceased existence eighteen hundred years
ago.
Jesus made no such blunders in his sex teaching. He was the only
biblical teacher apparently to recognize the existence of androgynes
without thundering against them. As “eunuchs from their mother’s womb,”
he may of course have had in mind only anaphrodites. But apparently he
was aware of the existence of androgynes. St. John the Divine,
apparently his favorite disciple, having possessed the earmarks,
particularly “softness” of disposition.
* * * * *
(5) ANDROGYNES are the eddies along the banks of the masculine river.
Their movement is retrograde. They are instances of arrest of
development. In the early fœtus sex is not apparent. Only later does
differentiation begin. In more than ninety-nine out of a hundred humans,
it is completed at puberty. But the individual androgyne or gynander
remains, down to death, to a greater or less degree bisexual. Just as a
mule is part horse and part donkey, so an androgyne or gynander is part
man and part woman. To quote from Krafft-Ebing: “They [androgynes] are
neither man nor woman: a mixture of both; with secondary [Sidenote:
_Acquired or Congenital?_] psychic and physical characteristics of the
one as well as the other sex.”[6]
Androgynes tend to occupations having to do with [Sidenote: _Androgynes
Are Aesthetes._] art—in the widest sense of that word. They are extreme
æsthetes. I quote from Edward Carpenter’s _Love’s Coming-of-Age_
(published by Boni and Liveright) page 135, where he speaks of male
urnings, called by myself “androgynes”: “At the bottom lies the
artist-nature, with the artist’s sensibility and perception. Such a one
is often a dreamer, of brooding reserved habits, often a musician, or a
man of culture, ... almost always with a peculiar inborn refinement. De
Joux ... says...: ‘They are enthusiastic for poetry and music, are often
eminently skilful in the fine arts, and are overcome with emotion and
sympathy at the least sad occurrence.... The nerve system of many an
urning is the finest and the most complicated musical instrument in the
service of the interior personality that can be imagined.’” (R. W.’s
comment: An androgyne is usually a bundle of nerves.)
In my university course in æsthetics, the professor lamented that art
tends to make its devotees immoral. He probably had in mind the
notorious frequency of homosexuality among æsthetes. But he got the cart
before the horse. The æsthetes affected were born bisexual and their
devotion to art was a consequence.
Androgynes are clearly of two types, each of which, the author
estimates, constitutes in the United States about one out of every
three hundred humans possessing the male primary determinants:[7] (a)
The [Sidenote: _The Mildly Androgynous._] mildly androgynous, of whom
Oscar Wilde is the best known of contemporaries; and (b) the
ultra-androgynous, of whom the present writer is the most widely known
of his generation.
* * * * *
(a) The anatomy of the mildly androgynous is not conspicuously feminine.
Only a few feminine traits appear in the psyche. The mildly androgynous
always mingle with full-fledged males and seek to pass as such
themselves. As a cloak, they are prone to fabricate about excesses _cum
femina_. But while secretly preferring homosexual romance, they are
capable of espousing a woman and begetting children. [Sidenote: _The
Ultra-Androgynous._] Sexologists have therefore called them “psychic
hermaphrodites.”
(b) In ultra-androgynes alone, the physique is noticeably feminesque,
and the psyche predominantly feminine. As a rule, they alone have a
craze to decorate themselves in feminine finery and spread paint and
powder on their faces. They tend to avoid the society of full-fledged
males except to display to a tremendously virile coterie—to whom they
are generally incognito—their skill in female-impersonation.
Unless otherwise indicated I shall use the terms “androgyne” and
“pseudo-man” only in reference to the ultra-androgynous. All my
androgyne associates whom I shall portray in this book belong to
this class, because with a few exceptions they alone are
FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS. In my RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD I describe some
mild androgynes.
There exists vast diversity in the anatomy and psyche of androgynes—just
as, from the standpoint of size and shape of the genitalia and sexual
tastes, any two full-fledged males or any two full-fledged females
differ more or less. In one androgyne, the only conspicuous external
feminine stigma may be absence of beardal growth; in another, mammary
glands; in another, the complete skeleton or the complete muscular
system of the female. The one physical feminine stigma that is
indispensable to the possession of a decidedly feminine psyche and the
quasi-female method of sexual expression is the female variety of brain
protoplasm. For there have probably lived naturally beardless men, males
possessing milk glands or sissie voices, etc., who have nevertheless not
been at all homosexual. But such are exceptions to the rule.
[Sidenote: _A Medical Superstition._]
While an earmark of ultra-androgynism is sexual passivity, the mildly
androgynous may be active pederasts or mutual onanists. Only in the case
of ultra-androgynes are the individual’s genitalia entirely divorced—as
a rule—from the sexual life. For them, Nature has substituted other
organs.
Ultra-androgynes are, by birth, practically identical with males
castrated in early childhood, except that adult artificial eunuchs are
usually overlarge. Adult ultra-androgynes tend merely to plumpness as a
result of their dwarfed genitalia.
I have heard of ultra-androgynes, who, in their early twenties, on their
physician’s advice, married a _woman_, when Nature intended they should
marry a man. All high-minded “homosexualists,” soon after arrival at
puberty, consult a medical man for a cure. From time immemorial it has
been one of the profession’s superstitions that marriage would cure
homosexual tendencies. Some unsophisticated adolescent androgynes put
faith in their physician’s positive assurance that _marriage is a sure
cure_. If, as a matter of conscience alone, the androgyne promises the
physician to marry, he sometimes goes insane over the dread of it, or
else commits suicide, either on the eve of marriage, or a few days
afterward. But even if the marriage ceremony is performed, the
consummation never takes place in the case of ultra-androgynes, and the
wedded state proves very unhappy for both parties. At least in the case
of the ultra-androgynes, such marriage possesses no curative value.
Chronic and extreme homosexuality is congenital and incurable. It is
monstrous to advise even a mild androgyne to marry, and thus contribute
to propagating a line of [Sidenote: _Hermaphrodites._] unhappy and
unwelcome bisexuals down through the centuries.
The two classes of androgynes do not mix well. Just as the full-fledged
man is averse to attendance at a ladies’ sewing-circle. Particularly the
mildly androgynous fear suspicion of their secret if they associated
with ultra-androgynes. Coteries of ultra-androgynes naturally form.
Knowing their own nature, they readily recognize one another, although
down to 1921 at least, the sexually full-fledged have usually been blind
to the androgynism of daily associates, because they were never
permitted to learn of their existence.
(6) PSEUDO-HERMAPHRODITES are humans possessing in part both the male
and the female genitalia, or else organs so deformed that even
sexologists are unable to determine the sex until puberty. In half such
cases, the physician then pronounces the individual to belong to the sex
other than that with which he or she has identified him or herself. As a
rule, they subsequently live and clothe themselves per prescription. But
some, accustomed to the dress and usages of their first sex, choose to
identify themselves with it throughout life.
Pseudo-hermaphrodites are the limit toward which the ultra-androgynous
approach by slight gradations. Their frequency is not greater than one
in a million to ten million humans.
(7) FULL HUMAN HERMAPHRODITES—possessing both complete male and complete
female genitalia—have never been encountered. There exists in medical
annals, however, a pseudo-hermaphrodite who so nearly approached full
hermaphrodism that at one period he-she claimed to have lived as husband
and father, [Sidenote: _The Sex Scale._] and at a later, as wife and
mother. This reputed transposition is in accord with the observed
phenomenon[8] of an individual’s passing over from one sex class to
another at the climacteric corresponding to menopause in woman.
* * * * *
I have a theory that the sex class of an individual male depends on the
size, but particularly the vigor, of his physical reproductive
apparatus. I have ascertained such variety to be practically infinite,
and psychicly as well as physically.
There exist no sharp dividing lines among the six classes of males.
While the bulk of a particular class correspond closely to the
description, there are individuals on each side of such mode who
constitute slight gradations over to the next class. Thus each class
gradually and almost imperceptibly shades off into the next. There
exists indeed a sex scale along which all human beings can be
theoretically arranged. At one pole stands the tremendously virile
man—for example, the rough volunteer common soldier, as a rule intensely
polygamous; at the other the petite, cry-baby species of woman.
Androgynes and gynanders occupy exactly the middle section, looking
toward both the male and the female side.
It is quasi-instinctive with each sex class to scorn members of another
class just because they happen to be built on a different plan. It is
the same phenomenon prevalent in the religious domain in past centuries,
when the Roman Catholic yearned to murder the Protestant and _vice
versa_. Which intolerance the [Sidenote: _Sex Animosity._] gradual
conquest of human affairs by reason is pushing further and further into
the background. But still in the twentieth century, reason is a
nonentity in the domain of sex. There all is illogical instinct and
bigotry. Each sex class still revels in calling the others bad names.
The tremendously virile “fellow” bellows out at the mildly: “You
milk-sop!” The latter calls back: “You rake!” The ultra-virile hisses
through his teeth at the anaphrodite: “You dried tree!” The mildly
virile points his finger at the androgyne: “Unclean! Unclean! Child of
the devil! Monster!” And even if I do not say so here, the reader will
conclude after finishing this book: The androgyne calls back at the
mildly virile: “You hypocrite! You Pharisee!” For the outstanding
earmark of the mildly virile is Phariseeism. They think they themselves
are the only moral and God-fearing men in the world, and that all other
men are sexually vile.
Is it right to chastise a horse because he prefers to munch hay out of a
manger instead of walking into his owner’s dining-room; throwing himself
backwards into an enormous chair; squeezing with difficulty a spoon
between his two front hoofs; and with it carrying to his mouth ice-cream
and French pastry? The average man (who is of the mildly virile type)
says that the latter is, for every creature, the superior method of
taking nourishment, and insists on all others conforming to what is
right in his own eyes. If they do not, he ostracizes and even imprisons
and murders those who dare to offend his æsthetic sense.
In general, man is a free agent. But his sex class is imposed by
Providence. Just as he is not responsible for the face he has to carry
through life.
[Sidenote: _Poultry Bisexuality_.]
Why should not every human be at liberty to live out his life in the way
Nature ordains for _him_ so far as he does not thereby transgress
against any one else?[9]
[Illustration:
Ancient Greek Statue of an Androgyne, Called “Hermaphroditos,” Now in
the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
]
III. Androgynes of Mythology and History.
[Sidenote: _The Third Sex._]
APOLLO is the pre-eminent androgyne god. He was always represented with
a feminine face and coiffure, and therefore worshipped as the god of
beauty.
In conformity with his semi-femininity, he was the _life-giving_ and
_light-giving_ deity—both physical and figurative life and light. He was
the leader of the muses—the spirits presiding over all human inspiration
in the fine arts.
The artistic instinct—the poetic temperament, “sentimentality” in its
highest sense—goes hand in hand with a rounding-off of the sharp corners
of masculinity. Artistic or poetic decades have been conspicuous because
of a semi-slumbering of fundamental masculine traits, that is, the
instinctive relish for wrangling and war. The sterner sex has
temporarily laid aside its primal _fighting_ function ordained by Nature
and become to some degree effeminate.
As a rule, abstract beauty’s devotees—“æsthetes” in the highest sense,
that is: poets, novelists, painters, sculptors, and superior
musicians—have been characterized by more or less effeminacy. They have
been particularly prone to homosexuality. While among full-fledged
males, the proportion that has achieved proficiency in one of the fine
arts is something like one in a thousand, among androgynes (the two
varieties combined), it has been one in about twenty. I will later point
out that the pinnacle in poetry, sculpture, and painting has been
achieved by androgynes.
[Sidenote: _Apollo._]
But the feminesque Apollo was the god not only of beauty, but of
_adolescence_—the period of life during which human beauty is at its
culmination. He possessed eternal youth. He is even referred to as “the
boy god.” Adoration of him sprang out of man’s delight in the
semi-womansouled and quasi-womanbodied stripling just before arrival at
puberty.
And ultra-androgynes remain—to a large extent—in that pre-puberty period
down to thirty-five. Their development has been arrested. Full-fledged
male associates absolutely ignorant of the existence of androgynism have
described—in the author’s hearing—androgynes even close to fifty years
old as “still mere boys.”
But an adolescent androgyne or boy god was also worshipped by the Semite
nations (other than the Jews) under the name Ablu, and by the Celts
under the name Maponus.
Philologists will recognize that “Apollo,” “Ablu,” “Maponus,” and “boy”
are descended from the same vocable in the language used by the Asiatic
tribe from which most of the civilized nations of the ancient and modern
world derive. _B_ is only a strengthened _p_; the liquid _l_ has often
been transmuted into the kindred _n_; and the diphthong _oy_ indicates
the elision of a liquid. We have here etymological evidence that an
adolescent-androgyne deity was worshipped before the dawn of history.
To-day, among some primitive races, as the aborigines of America,
androgynes are the central feature of the most sacred rites.
[Sidenote: _Hermaphroditos and Ganymede._]
HERMAPHRODITOS stands second among androgyne gods. The myth is that
“he-she” was originally a full-fledged human adolescent and an entirely
separate nymph in the full flower of feminine charm. The nymph, falling
in love, besought Zeus that the adolescent and herself might be forever
amalgamated. Excepting the pudenda, the body remained that of the nymph.
The psyche became a compound of the masculine and the feminine. This
myth was a poetic recognition of the existence, at the very dawn of
history, of androgynes such as exist to-day.
A picture or statue of Hermaphroditos adorned nearly every Greek and
Roman home of the better class. This was because the ancients held the
androgyne in honor as the super-human—man and woman in one individual.
GANYMEDE ranks third.[10] Originally a human adolescent of extraordinary
feminesque beauty, Zeus snatched him up into the heavenly zone and
conferred immortality that the feminesque youth might be his cup-bearer.
The latter’s statues represent him with a mademoiselle’s chevelure,
hips, and legs, but with male breasts and pudenda. The fact that the
father-god of the classic world entered into this most intimate
[Sidenote: _Socrates._] union partly explains why the androgyne was held
in honor by the Greeks and Romans.
SOCRATES is the earliest historic character whom sexologists have
declared an androgyne. For centuries, a common designation of male
homosexuality has been “Socratic love.” In Plato’s “Dialogues,” Socrates
is the teacher. His remarks of extreme affection to his youthful
disciples are sickening even to me, though an androgyne myself.
Present-day scholars who close their eyes to the facts of androgynism,
who cling to mediæval sex ideas, and hence hold homosexuality to result
from deep-eyed moral depravity, have denounced Socrates as the greatest
moral leper that ever lived. But from Socrates’ own generation down
through the nineteenth century, he was universally recognized as the
greatest saint of the classic world.
That Socrates was a married man and father and wore a beard does not
disprove the sexologists’ claim. The mildly androgynous—psychic
hermaphrodites, like Oscar Wilde—occasionally marry and procreate;
chiefly for social reasons, not from the sexual incentive. Secondly, the
razor was practically unknown in Socrates’ generation. Even to-day, some
of the less extreme androgynes wear a full beard because of horror of a
razor.
One of the three charges on which Socrates was condemned to death was
that he was “a corruptor of youth;” the identic charge that landed Oscar
Wilde in prison. But neither of these geniuses ever corrupted any youth.
The prevalent idea that the association of an older androgyne with a
sexually full-fledged younger man corrupts the latter is absolutely
groundless. The androgyne only benefits, in several ways, the adolescent
[Sidenote: _Plato._] whom he loves far more than a father loves an only
son. Socrates’ two most brilliant disciples, Plato and Xenophon, wrote
books, still extant, one of the purposes of which was defence of
Socrates from the charge mentioned.
PLATO, the St. Paul of the pagan classic world—as was its Jesus
(Socrates)—was an androgyne. His voluminous “Dialogues”—one of the
world’s two score of literary masterpieces—are permeated with
homosexuality. In the _Symposium_, Plato confesses himself a
homosexualist. In his day, homosexuality was not regarded a disgrace any
more than heterosexuality. The charge against Socrates was largely a
pretext, the politicians having to give some plausible reason for
ridding themselves of him.
Plato’s falsetto voice—a common characteristic of androgynes—is
commented on in writings of his day still extant. He never married nor
procreated.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT has been adjudged by sexologists an androgyne of the
mild type. He was the first prominent Greek to dispense with hirsute
decorations. The probability is that he was naturally beardless. But in
imitation of the genius and leader of their generation, all the men who
wished to be somebody started to shave clean. Knowledge of the razor
first became common in Greece because Alexander the Great happened to be
congenitally beardless!
As a monarch, Alexander was compelled to espouse a woman. But he spent
nearly all his married life absent from his legal spouse, and was
incapable of procreation. All the evidence is that his real soul-mate
was a young warrior of his entourage. The two were inseparable. His
strange affection for other [Sidenote: _Alexander the Great._] young men
of his entourage is remarked by contemporaries. He bewailed the death of
favorites in battle as only a wife can mourn a husband.
Androgynes, because they possess the feminine psyche in greater or less
degree, are generally very much opposed to war. But it is possible for a
less extreme androgyne—of the psychic hermaphrodite type—to be a great
general when the leadership of armies is _thrust_ upon him. Genius
occurs far oftener in connection with androgynism than with full-fledged
masculinity. The rare keenness of mind of an androgyne like Alexander
would enable him to plan successful campaigns. But his feminine
cowardice would always keep him far from the battle-front, where there
was no danger of a hair of his head ever being touched. And that is what
happened with Alexander. Above all things else, he was a sybarite.
Androgynes, though never mixing in a fight themselves, are particularly
attracted toward the war-loving “hero.” Much more than half of my own
associates during my female-impersonation sprees belonged to a
profession whose object was to kill their fellow man. For almost twenty
years of my “youngmanhood,” I was an habitué of barracks, etc., and a
worshipper of swords and rifles, although I would have been horrified if
required to take them into my own hands. I have known other androgynes
whose female-impersonation sprees were staged before professional common
soldiers. A young androgyne acquaintance actually enlisted in the
hospital corps in the war with Germany because he wished to be
surrounded continually with warriors—the type of manhood which
androgynes in general most servilely worship. Walt Whitman is [Sidenote:
_Julius Cæsar._] celebrated for his work among the wounded in America’s
War of the Rebellion. I read in a medical journal that during the World
War, a problem with the Italian army heads was to debar androgynes, who
were said to demoralize the army because of their cowardice and
seductive influence on their sexually full-fledged comrades. I heard of
an androgyne who received a dishonorable discharge from the American
conscript army because wrongly judged to be the incarnation of deepdyed
moral depravity.
Perhaps the reason why Alexander and the next mild androgyne to be
described were two out of the three greatest generals and conquerors of
history was their craze to pass practically all their adult lives
surrounded by warriors!
[Illustration:
Alexander the Great
(Ancient Coin)
]
[Illustration:
Julius Cæsar
(Bust in Louvre)
]
JULIUS CÆSAR has been adjudged by sexologists an androgyne of the mild
type. He married, as social custom demanded of aristocratic Romans, but
spent nearly all his wedded life absent from his legal spouse. His
offspring is _said_ to have consisted only of a single daughter. History
_says_ he had a son by Cleopatra. But this is doubtful because that
queen was every man’s wife. But even if Cæsar had offspring, he would
merely be proved a psychic hermaphrodite.
Cæsar was always clean-shaven, if not naturally beardless. He even had
his body depilated—as is customary to-day with “fairies.” Like the
latter also, he was, in dress, notoriously fussy and feminine—in order
to prove attractive to his lieutenants. He was an instinctive
female-impersonator. His entourage were accustomed to refer to him as
“the queen.” Of all historic characters, Cæsar excels in respect to the
sensational stories of homosexual excesses found in contemporary authors
still extant.
Cæsar was a great conqueror merely because circumstances, largely beyond
his control, placed him at the head of an army. As in the case of
Alexander, Cæsar’s genius enabled him to plan successful campaigns.
Others, however, had to expose life and limb, while he kept himself safe
in the rear passing his days and nights as an extreme voluptuary.
[Sidenote: _Michelangelo._]
MICHELANGELO, with the renaissance of civilization after the Dark Ages,
heads the list of the mildly androgynous. He never married or was known
to have a mistress. He left behind many hitherto unpublished homosexual
sonnets of such merit that his nephew-executor gave them to the world
after radical expurgation. Angelo’s statues and paintings are
pre-eminent in their consummate, although sensual, outlines of the nude
adult male, the principal subject of his art. His statues of the nude
youthful Bacchus, Cupid, and David of his middle twenties point the
direction of his sexuality. Before thirty he also produced the picture,
“The Battle of Cascina,” 288 square feet crowded with [Sidenote:
_Raphael._] nude male figures. His favorite Greek sculpture was a statue
of Hercules.
RAPHAEL was an ultra-androgyne. He was always beardless (probably
natural) and boylike in appearance. Instead of choosing a Roman
mademoiselle to be mistress of his mansion in the then most aristocratic
residence district of the world, he took two young men to live with him
as “sons”,—a common practice with well-to-do twentieth century
androgynes.
[Illustration:
Raphael, the Most Gifted Ultra-Androgyne the World Has Known
]
The SHAKESPEARE-AUTHOR was an androgyne. The proof lies in the numerous
homosexual passages of his sonnets. The authorship of the Shakespeare
[Sidenote: _The Shakespeare-Author._] literature is still undetermined
after close to three hundred publications on this question. If
Providence grants me time, I will finally prove beyond the shadow of a
doubt, by the homosexual argument original with myself, that Francis
Bacon was the Shakespeare-author. I give below an outline of my proposed
thesis.
The young actor, Shakespeare, was a tremendously virile male, but
estranged from his wife and living apart during most of his married
life. Bacon was an androgyne several years older than Shakespeare. He
married only in middle life and solely for money. He was a great
statesman, but sorely in need of money to meet his extravagant tastes.
Apparently he was incapable of procreation. Both men lived in London,
and were at least acquaintances, during the dozen years which saw the
creation of the Shakespeare literature.
Bacon was the foremost scholar and one of the foremost statesmen of his
generation. He and the Shakespeare-author are recognized to-day as two
out of the three greatest intellects which have ever blossomed forth in
England—even by those who deny the identity of the two, and hand the
palm of Shakespeare-author to the obscure actor, Shakespeare.
Numerous literateurs believe that evidence exists that the incomparable
Bacon’s fad was writing plays, the theatre in his day being
comparatively a new craze (that is, for modern times)—as are the
“movies” in the first quarter of the twentieth century. It would then
have been regarded as incongruous for the dignified statesman, Bacon, to
write plays as for an expresident of the United States to-day to write
scenarios [Sidenote: _The Shakespeare Problem._] for the “movies.”
Through covering his authorship, Bacon was spared the jests of his
upper-crust entourage.
Whatever credit, too, the plays had, Bacon would wish his adored
soul-mate to reap—just as the present writer has sacrificed his own
interests fundamentally that his soul-mate might be benefited. But if
Bacon had thought the Shakespeare literature would survive his own
generation, he would doubtless, on his deathbed, have confessed himself
its author. But even for many years after his death, everybody
considered it would be forgotten by man as soon as the shredded leaves
of the first printing were thrown into the fire place.
Another reason why Bacon would never confess his authorship is that in
his age the law condemned to burial _alive_ any one guilty of such
homosexual sentiments as he was constrained, by passion, to express in
the “Shakespeare” sonnets.
Francis Bacon published extensively under his own name. He published
extensively—as a large body of literateurs believe—under the name of
“William Shakespeare.” Just as the present writer has quite a number of
publications under his legal name, and a number under the name “Ralph
Werther—Jennie June.” And no one suspects the identity of the two
present-day authors.
The actual Shakespeare—behind whose skirts Bacon hid—was, down to his
death, only an obscure actor, not known personally to any writer of his
own generation except (by supposition) Bacon. The actor Shakespeare has
achieved immortality through having been Bacon’s soul-mate.
[Sidenote: _Walt Whitman._]
WALT WHITMAN stands foremost among American androgynes. But he was of
the mild type. Many passages of _Leaves of Grass_ and _Drumtaps_ exist
as proof. He never married, although closely pursued by even wealthy
women desiring him as husband. In middle age he spent his hours for
recreation in the society of adolescents—as I was informed by Whitman’s
so-called “adopted son”. That is, he courted them, as a normal man
courts a woman. Chance made me intimate with the “adopted son” in his
seventies. All three of us happened to belong to New York City.
* * * * *
Surely we androgynes, who for two thousand years have been despised,
hunted down, and crushed under the heel of normal men because they have
misunderstood biblical condemnations of homosexuality, have no reason to
be ashamed of our heritage. America’s foremost poet; the world’s
greatest sculptor subsequently to Athens’ golden age; the two greatest
ethicists and two out of the three greatest intellects of ancient Greece
and Rome; two out of the three greatest conquerors of history; the
greatest painter of all ages; and—to cap the climax—the greatest
intellect that the English-speaking world ever produced and the greatest
literary genius of all time (these two distinctions united in Francis
Bacon)—ALL WERE ANDROGYNES.[11]
And to you full-fledged males I say: “What God hath cleansed [through
endowment with sublime talents] call not ye ‘Unclean!’”
IV. Man Is a Passional, Rather Than a Rational, Being.
[Sidenote: _The Third Sex._]
Twentieth-century psychologists are coming around to the view that even
the leaders of thought are governed by instinct and _mores_ rather than
reason. Even for intellectuals, truth is what is intuitive or what
satisfies their prejudices and instincts. Still in the twentieth
century, the leaders of thought bow down before intellectual idols,
although other than those overthrown by Francis Bacon. Still to-day—as
in the generation of Roger Bacon (13th century)—conservatives yearn to
imprison, or even burn at the stake, those in whom a purer reason than
their own operates.
My own is thus a Herculean task: To be an intellectual iconoclast. To
break down the last remnant of cultured man’s savage, criminal instincts
and _mores_. But, like Roger Bacon, I may comfort myself with the
thought that my views are centuries in advance of my time; but, like
him, I am therefore bitterly persecuted.[12]
[Sidenote: _Prudery Triumphant._]
“Away with any one who attempts to bring out the truth about sex!” cry
the conservatives. “Crucify him! Crucify him! Sex is a theme too
disgusting for discussion!”
In the university I took an extended course of lectures on physiology.
But not a word was said about sex. The professor would not have thus
befouled his mouth, nor corrupted the morals of his students. Martin’s
_Human Body_, the standard text-book of the time, had to be published in
two editions: (1) That which treated of human sexuality as viewed in the
Dark Ages, and (2) that which imagined the genus homo to be asexual.
* * * * *
One presumed male out of every three hundred belongs to the _third sex_,
strictly speaking. That is, the ultra-androgynes—the pseudo-men who
possess only undersized and non-functional male pudenda, whose body
otherwise tends toward feminesqueness, and whose psyche, predilections,
tastes, gestures, and postures remind one of a female.
The third sex is a commonplace topic in the Underworld, which comprises
about one-tenth the population of “Christian” lands. The Underworlders,
however, generally fail to understand the cause of the effeminacy. The
nine-tenths of the unlearned who have never entered a more immoral place
than a “movie” theatre are almost entirely ignorant of the third sex.
What hazy ideas they have are criminally incorrect. And except for a
handful of sexologists, [Sidenote: _Benighted Leaders of Thought._] the
learned still cling to views handed down from the Dark Ages.
In the seventeenth century, when a cyclone demolished a hamlet or an
epidemic broke out, a council of physicians, lawyers, and clergymen was
called to determine which semi-bearded old hag had _wished_ the
catastrophe upon the community. After prayer for divine guidance and an
exhortation by a parson that the Bible taught that witches ought to be
ferreted out, the high-brows would seek to determine who of the several
bags of bone known to all of them presented the most loathsome
appearance, and who should therefore be burned at the stake as the
_witch_ responsible for the catastrophe—as the necessary human sacrifice
to appease the anger of the Unseen Powers. For even down to the
twentieth century there survives in Christendom the pagan superstition
of the necessity of a human sacrifice now and then.
But in the twentieth century, leaders of thought have evolved from the
belief in witchcraft. They must look elsewhere than to semi-bearded hags
for their sacrificial victims on whom to load the sins of mankind, and
the blame for the decline and fall of nations. Since, next to hags, they
consider sexual cripples as the most loathsome of humans, they make the
latter the scape-goats of present-day society. While they no longer burn
them at the stake or bury them alive (as provided in old European law)
they are permitted by twentieth century statutes to imprison inoffensive
androgynes for twenty years. And these archaic statutes are still
frequently enforced. Only a few months ago I read of a Boston clergyman
who was sentenced to prison on the testimony of a young ex-soldier.
[Sidenote: _Banishment of Androgynes._] But to-day these statutes serve
chiefly as ground for extensive blackmail of Nature’s step-children,
hardly one of whom, if belonging to the middle or upper class, but has
had to pay out considerable sums, occasionally running into the
thousands.
Instead of imprisonment, public opinion has generally substituted
banishment of the disclosed androgyne forever from all he loves.
During the few months of composing this book, the New York papers have
told of the abrupt flight to parts unknown of three intellectual leaders
in their communities, two just over the city line and the third within a
hundred miles. They had to flee, not because they had done the least
real harm (all three were pastors of churches) but because of the
mediæval ignorance and bitter hatred that their communities immediately
manifested toward a “man” (reputedly) all of a sudden disclosed to be a
“monster” (though in reality a harmless and pitiable sexual cripple).
The populace, ignorant that he had probably practiced a thousand times
more self-denial than any one of themselves, but had at last been able
to withstand Nature’s demands no longer, chased him out of his community
for good and all with the feeling that he was the lowest scoundrel that
ever contaminated it.
I admit that these unfortunates did show bad judgment in remaining in
the ministry when they knew they were afflicted with a powerful instinct
abhorred by the sexually full-fledged, and they showed the worst kind of
judgment in having recourse to boys under puberty. But they were in a
tight place, and besides felt that they were doing no one any harm. For
the androgyne generally comes at last to the view that [Sidenote: _Most
Androgynes Ultra-Religious._] what Nature demands can be no sin and, if
properly fulfilled, no transgression against any human.
The newspaper devotee runs across a similar item every once in a while,
and nearly always the “monster” is a clergyman or a teacher. But the
abhorred penchant (fellatio) is, of course, not peculiar to these
professions. Simply their high ethical standing, and the common fancy
that they should therefore be proof against what is incorrectly regarded
as the worst of vices, attract greater attention, and give news value to
the occasional disclosures.
But it is probable that among the occupations, those two, together with
all having to do with art of any kind, have the largest proportions of
androgynes. As a rule, male bisexuals are goody-goody boys who develop
into ultra-religious adolescents. They are enthusiastic to better the
race morally and spiritually. The robes commonly worn by clergymen are
also a powerful drawing card, since androgynes yearn for apparel that
conceals that they are bipeds. Thus quite a number who were born
intellectual and whose sexual ardor, during adolescence, is
comparatively weak, gravitate into the two professions standing highest
ethically and religiously. When making his choice, the adolescent is
filled with religious fervor and possessed of a strong determination to
crucify his “homosexual” tendencies. The androgyne already yielding
would never put on “the cloth,” although he would go into pedagogy. But
the puritan-minded regards these tendencies as his “besetting sin” and
fights them for years in the strenuous manner described in my own
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE. Throughout his teens, and perhaps even
his twenties, [Sidenote: _Abstinence Induces Melancholia._] he never
expects to be overmastered. But later in life many a one of these sexual
cripples who have put on “the cloth” disgrace it notwithstanding his
prior unparalleled mental struggles against Nature’s behests.
Or if coming out victor in the lifelong struggle, the pitiable woman-man
lives down to death under the obsession (due to misinterpreted biblical
texts) that the gratification of his unusual instinct is the most
heinous of sins, and spends all his days, in which God meant that he
should rejoice, in mourning over his sexual ardor (for which he does not
realize he is irresponsible), in crucifying his body continuously, with
its affections and lusts (as commanded by the anaphrodite, St. Paul),
and is thereby, throughout adult life, on the borderline of insanity. I
have heard sermons from such clergymen and was moved to pity as they
were shedding tears in the pulpit and rendering themselves unpopular,
both with their fellow preachers who are sexually full-fledged and with
the laity, because their aspect was always that of tragedy. I advise
that all such melancholiacs immediately ask that they be honorably
deposed from the ministry. As a result, their lives would be happy and
satisfying.
The vast majority of preachers are manly. I have a higher respect for
that profession than for any other. If it had not been for my
androgynism, I would have myself entered it. It would be well for the
Church authorities to question, as to their sexuality, all candidates
for beginning a theological course, and in the kindest manner advise
adolescents in the least bisexual to choose some other profession
because of the public’s misunderstanding of this phenomenon. [Sidenote:
_Why Androgynes Are Hated._] Sexual conduct is not primarily a voluntary
matter or an ethical question, but rooted in anatomy, physiology, and
psychology. The androgyne who yearns to preach the Gospel can do so
through the printed word. Because of St. Paul’s sex teaching (that of an
anaphrodite) the profession of “the cloth” is rightly open only to
anaphrodites and the mildly virile. The more virile are likewise
excluded because it is next to impossible for them to abstain from
adultery.
Why are androgynes so hated? Primarily because the leaders of thought
have always identified them with the men of ancient Sodom (mistakenly,
because the Sodomites were full-fledged males) and historians have
mistakenly (because they never met androgynes personally and were taught
in their boyhood to hate them with all their heart, soul, mind, and
strength) laid upon them all the blame for the decline and fall of
nations, and declared that therefore effeminacy or androgynism is a type
of moral depravity to be crushed mercilessly. Better that some thousands
of androgynes be deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
than that the general welfare of the nation be imperilled!
Androgynes—they argue—are unavoidably the scape-goats of the race.
I answer: In the first place, such imperilment is only a _figment of the
imagination_. This superstition can be disposed of by merely asking to
what extent the welfare of humanity was imperiled by the sex functioning
of the arch-androgynes listed in chapter III? In the second place,
androgynism is not moral depravity or degeneracy. I myself—an extreme
type of androgyne—spring from the most puritan stock. I was brought up
to consider that on Sunday, reading [Sidenote: _Androgynism Not
Degeneracy._] anything but Christian doctrine or walking a hundred feet
for mere pleasure were heinous sins. In addition to springing from the
most puritan stock, both my paternal and maternal stock are of unusually
strong build. A paternal and also a maternal uncle were professional
athletes. A brother was the champion athlete of my native village. My
stock and early environment are indeed the last that any one would pick
out as likely to bring into the world a homosexual or androgyne as a
result of moral degradation.[13] My androgynism has, however, made me
myself rather lilliputian. With one exception, I grew up to be the
smallest man of my paternal and maternal families.
It is not necessary to crush androgynes in order to guard against the
spread of effeminacy. Effeminacy, in the sense of androgynism, does not
spread by example. It is entirely congenital. Only a physical male born
with quasi-feminine predilections would adopt the role of a female after
becoming adult. An androgyne’s predilections and practices are regarded
with such repugnance by all full-fledged males that none would stoop to
them unless constrained by instinct.
Why imprison and murder the androgyne any more than the deaf-mute? The
former is no more abnormal than the latter; no more degenerate; no more
depraved. It is unfortunate that the human [Sidenote: _Not Cause of
Decline of Nations._] race is handicapped with either of these defective
classes. But the androgyne deserves only pity, the same as the
deaf-mute.
_Effeminacy in an entirely different sense, and a kind that spreads
rapidly through example, is the actual cause of the decline and fall of
nations_; in the sense of the weakening of the moral fibre of the males
of the upper crust or ruling class through their having grown overfond
of ease and pleasure and lost their joy in industry and justifiable
fighting. A neighboring nation of superior moral fibre is quick to learn
of such effemination and subjugates the decadent one. But these
_effeminates’_ fondness for the gentle sex has in no way declined.
Generally it has greatly augmented. Witness the decline and fall of the
Greek, Roman, and Turkish empires.
Where has androgynism been more prevalent than formerly among the
American aborigines? Probably because the tribes were constantly
underfed. Whenever a male arrived at puberty, the weapons of the warrior
and the cooking vessels of the squaw were ceremoniously placed before
him that he might choose his future social status. A not inconsiderable
number of adolescents (because congenital androgynes) always chose the
culinary utensils and passed the rest of their lives as squaws, the hair
of the beard being plucked out as fast as it showed itself, and the
costume being that of the female sex. Surely savage tribes continuously
on the war-path can not be accused of degenerative effeminacy!
About one-third the soul-mates of androgynes who have come under my
observation have been voluntary common soldiers or blue-jackets. I am
far [Sidenote: _Androgynism Nationally Healthful._] from being the only
androgyne who has gravitated toward the “supreme men” whose voluntary
profession has as its aim the killing of their fellow man. Androgynism
appears to go hand in hand with militarism rather than _vice versa_.
Havelock Ellis says that homosexuality is particularly common among the
Sikhs, the most military of the Hindustan races.
It is more likely that the emergence of androgynism is a sign of
national health. The ultra-brilliant Age of Pericles surpassed all other
periods in the recognition and influence of androgynism, which promotes
art and general culture. The androgyne, being a combination of man and
woman in a single individual, has a wider view of life than the
full-fledged man or woman. He possesses, in a measure, the mental
qualities peculiar to each sex. That is why the Shakespeare-Author knew
both the masculine and the feminine mind better than any other writer.
Such duality is the reason artistic genius crops out far more frequently
among androgynes than among the sexually full-fledged. The amalgamated
man-woman nature gets nearest to sentiment and emotion—to the soul of
art.[14]
Why do cultured androgynes carefully conceal their quasi-feminine sexual
predilections? Why did Angelo not publish any of his homosexual sonnets?
Why did Raphael not proclaim on the housetops the happenings in his
house at night? Androgynes hide their sexual predilections and
practices, not because of consciousness of personal degeneracy, but
because [Sidenote: _Race Suicide._] grossly misunderstood by the
sexually full-fledged. By exception, Oscar Wilde was open and above
board, and was therefore shut up in prison.
Only bigoted pseudo-scientists have pronounced androgynes degenerates.
Only mediæval medicine, not modern medicine. Androgynism is merely an
instance of arrested development; or possibly of atavism—an attempt on
the part of Nature to return to the original hermaphrodism of man’s
early antecedents. The androgyne who follows the dictates of Nature is
not a whit more degenerate morally than the full-fledged man who
marries. It is only the fallible _mores_ which make the full-fledged
think that a person with apparently male pudenda who impersonates a
female is infinitely below themselves morally. Were Socrates, Plato,
Angelo, Raphael, and Francis Bacon monsters of depravity? Ought the
Shakespeare-Author to have been buried alive by his hare-brained fellow
citizens before he had a chance to pen a line?
The chief charge against androgynes is that they are guilty of “the
awful crime of race suicide.” But it is the fault of Nature alone that
the ultra-androgyne is incapable of doing his part in the perpetuation
of the race.
The cultured androgyne, knowing his irresistible instincts are harmless
to his soul-mate, is unable to discern in them any transgression against
ethics or against God.
But a very small proportion of adult androgynes have been guilty of a
lamentable transgression because finding themselves in a tight place:
that is, recourse to boys under puberty. The prudery of full-fledged men
has hitherto prohibited androgynes from [Sidenote: _Androgynes’ One
Offence._] scientific knowledge of themselves. Until thirty years ago,
American and British public opinion would not tolerate the publication
of the facts about androgynism even for circulation among the medical
profession. Havelock Ellis’s _Sexual Inversion_, the earliest published
book in the English language on androgynism, was promptly suppressed by
the British government thirty years ago. I myself had to bend the knee
for eighteen years to medical publishers before my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN
ANDROGYNE was fed into the printing-press in 1918.
Thus, because full-fledged men have interdicted to cultured androgynes
the means of understanding themselves and knowledge of how they ought to
pass their lives, some—particularly those who have achieved places of
honor, because androgynes of lower rank do not need to be so crafty in
hiding their terrible secret from the heartless world—have ultimately
been revealed guilty of recourse to the immature (because they could not
screw up their courage to disclose their abnormality to an older and
wiser male). But on account of the tyranny of the full-fledged, these
erring androgynes merit mercy. Their offences have probably not been at
all harmful to the immature. They are merely asserted to be so by men
unable to accept any scientific results except those inculcated by
mediæval savants. But this one offence of androgynes will be a thing of
the past when they are permitted recourse to books which explain the
riddle of their lives, and when full-fledged men read such books in
order that they may do justice to Nature’s step-children.
As already stated, ultra-androgynes, having a [Sidenote: _Androgynes Are
Goody-Goodies._] woman’s psyche, are goody-goodies. Indeed
goody-goodiness may be regarded as their most marked characteristic. For
this reason, in France, they are called “little Jesuses” (_petits
jesus_) notwithstanding that the more extreme are public
female-impersonators in resorts of ill repute. Ultra-androgynes are
incapable of doing any real harm. If all the human race were as
harmless, this world would be a far better place in which to live.
The cultured androgyne is a desirable citizen and a desirable member of
any circle. While ultra-androgynism makes its victims physically
weak—like a woman—it has no deteriorating effect morally or mentally.
The usual charge of gross immorality is merely a relic of mediæval
bigotry.
It matters not, however, that androgynes are absolutely innocuous
practically and ethically. Do they not offend the _æsthetic_ sense of
the majority of mankind? What better cause for grinding them under one’s
heel?
And this bitter persecution that has been the lot of some androgynes has
rendered them misanthropes. Not their androgynism _per se_. A mildly
androgynous acquaintance—an intellectual giant of the highest moral
character except for his irresponsible and innocuous passive
pederasty—is, as a result of society’s shutting him up in prison for the
five years of his intellectual prime, a chronic and bitter reviler of
the Church. Because zealous churchmen were responsible for the wrecking
of his life through their misunderstanding of the biblical teaching on
homosexuality.
But in general we androgynes, possessing the long-suffering feminine
psyche, are resigned to being [Sidenote: _God Will Avenge Androgynes._]
ground to powder by the hypocritical world. It is better to suffer than
to inflict suffering. Though the world despise and ostracise us, the
All-Knowing is still our refuge, and another life awaits us where
conditions will be more just. The bigoted and pharisaical judges and
juries who have haled hundreds of innocent androgynes off to prison
should remember the Old Testament doctrine: “‘Vengeance is mine!’ saith
Jehovah.” Those who incarcerate the innocent in this world will in the
next have to serve time in the darkest dungeons of a just God.
* * * * *
Note to Illustration Facing Page 53.
My father was a reversionary pure Alpine, but his brothers were
decidedly Nordic. My mother is a reversionary pure Nordic, while most
of her brothers and sisters were predominantly Alpine. Evidences of
Mediterranean blood in my paternal or maternal stock are doubtful. I
myself am predominantly Alpine, particularly evident in my short
stature and generally brunette features. But the Nordic cross has
given me a rather ruddy complexion and “browned” my chevelure. My
beard hair is jet black, but always clean-shaven, if not eradicated. I
am of English, Scotch, Dutch, German, and French descent. During
adulthood, I have always considered the highest human beauty to reside
in adolescent Irish-Americans or Italian-Americans of approximately
pure Mediterranean stock.
[Illustration:
The “Fairie Boy” Ready to Set Out on Life’s Journey
(See note on page 52.)
]
Part Two:
How the Author Came to Be a Female-Impersonator
(PART TWO summarizes my pre-nineteen life and my physical and mental
traits for those not reading my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE.
Particularly for details of purely medical interest, the scientist is
referred to that work, since the present volume is designed primarily
for the general reader. PART TWO, however, presents many facts not in
mind when I wrote the earlier work over twenty years ago.)
I. Reveries Suggested by My Infancy.
Connecticut, famous for its wooden nutmegs and other freak products,
gave to the world, in 1874, one of its half-dozen most widely known
girl-boys.
My mother has said that I was the greatest cry-baby of her eleven
children. I have really never outgrown this characteristic. Still in my
late forties, I occasionally weep bitterly for a whole hour.
Up to my eighth birthday, timidity made me reluctant to leave my
mother’s side to play with other children. Sticking very close to
“mother” as a child, and extraordinary devotion to her when adult are
common earmarks of androgynism. I have known of no other reputed male so
devoted to his mother, even down to his late forties, as I. My mother is
still, by [Sidenote: _My Life-Long Soul-mate (in Dreamland)._] a kind
Providence, spared to me. I frequently weep bitterly at the thought of
her dying and can not imagine living when she is in the grave. I knew an
androgyne who, in his sixties, died from grief a few days after the
death of his mother around ninety.
In my early childhood, only one other person attracted me in a
comparable fashion—a neighbor’s burly boy, F’ank, five years older than
myself. All my life I have seen him at least several times a year, since
he has remained a close friend down to the time when we both count about
half-a-century of life. His influence is still strong, although sexual
relations ceased when I was seven. He was one of the most amorous of
boys. From my third to seventh year, he sought me several times a week.
Perhaps he also embraced every chance for heterosexual relations—common
among the children under twelve in the “best set” of the village, among
whom I was privileged to be brought up. And yet all these contaminated
youngsters—excepting myself—turned out fairly virtuous adults. The
ultra-amorous and active pederast F’ank became, when adult, exclusively
heterosexual and quite promiscuous, being of the tremendously virile
type. But around thirty, he settled down into absolute monogamy. He,
however, never had a child. At past fifty, he stands at perfection in
health, strength, and morality.
I say they “turned out”! That is, so far as I ever heard. But they would
all have said of me that I passed through my adult life a cold
anaphrodite! One can never know! Some might secretly have been addicted
to venery as much as I. But they betrayed no external sign. Neither have
I.
[Sidenote: _Most Sheltered Two “Went to the Bad.”_]
But while all those who indulged in “nastiness” before reaching their
teens grew up, so far as I was able to observe, into men and women above
reproach, two of “my set”—those who were “kids” at the same time within
a radius of five hundred feet of my own paternal roof, the several
homosexualist schoolmates elsewhere described having lived outside that
radius—the two that had been most carefully brought up and shielded by
their mother from corruption by other children, almost the only two that
were sexually unblemished as children, “went to the bad” immediately on
arrival at puberty. They were brother and sister—the only children of a
wealthy, pious couple. The brother became a chronic dypsomaniac and
roué. The sister, a beautiful and brilliant girl who had enjoyed a
college education, died before thirty as a result of excesses in her
chosen profession of _fille de joie_ in New York City. The mother died
of a broken heart in her early forties. The father, previously active in
church work, became despondent on seeing both his children “go to the
bad,” took to drink, and died a sot.
Debauchery was born in these two children, for they had never missed
Bible school up to their middle teens. They were unusually innocent
prior to puberty. But religious teaching failed to convince them. They
thought the “goody-goodies” were trying to rob them of the pleasures of
life through false representations. I believe both could have been saved
from shipwreck of life if, at puberty, a book, scientific, not
goody-goody, could have been put into their hands, demonstrating that
alcoholic and venereal excesses bring on ruin and often early death.
Children inclined to dissipation on arrival at puberty are far more
likely to heed the pronouncements [Sidenote: _Inherited Lechery._] of a
physician than of a Bible school teacher.
* * * * *
In that same immediate puritan circle in my childhood’s village, I have
lately observed a similar case in the _next_ generation. I have known
well a certain gentleman of my own age since we were boys together. He
is of the tremendously virile type and sowed his wild oats as hardly
another young blood in the village. But in his middle twenties he was
“soundly converted” in a puritan church (to which I myself belonged) and
married one of its purest daughters. In his subsequent life, he attained
rare success financially and socially. He has had only two children—both
girls around twenty years of age at the date of writing. I know the
family intimately. I have direct information that both girls are “fast
going to the bad” (notwithstanding they have always been under only
puritan influences) and that the father has “backslidden,” evidently
being no longer able to restrain his _de facto_ polygamous instincts.
The purest of wives is heart-broken and on the borderline of insanity.
_Every one says_ the girls and their father are wilfully depraved and
their puritan community has already begun to treat them as outcasts. _I
say_ the girls inherited their craze for venery from their father, in
whom likewise it was inborn. He is a noble man in every other respect.
All three are largely irresponsible. They are, by birth, not fitted for
the puritan society in which they were brought up. Under present social
ideas and usages, the only outlet for the girls is prostitution and the
consequent early loss of health soon terminating in death. But their
only fault is [Sidenote: _Present Social Rules Inadequate._]
nymphomania. If society had some way by which it could bring about the
satisfaction of these needs of these cultured girls, the latter could be
saved from the shipwreck of life and be useful members of their
community. In my own life I have proved that Christian conversion and
absorption in the teachings of the Bible can not save one from innate
nymphomania. I could suggest a means of salvation for these girls, but
dare not. If only the leaders of thought did not prescribe an identic
sex life for every daughter of Eve, although Nature has created them
with such diversity along these lines! If only the leaders of thought
permitted _real_ sexual problems (as well as namby-pamby) to be
investigated, as all other phenomena are searched out to the very
bottom! If only the leaders of thought permitted the truth to be told
about sex instead of continuing to propagate the hypocrisies and
fabrications regnant down from the Dark Ages!
* * * * *
I have read statements of puritans of the dreadful results that will
follow the common sex relations of children under twelve in city
tenements. I have spent a large part of my life in rural districts as
well as in great cities. My observations are that conditions are the
same among children of both types of environment. Numerous youngsters
receive their sex initiation before twelve. But, unless carried to
excess, it does not seem to have any bad influence, particularly after
they become adults. The probability is that the same practice has ruled
among small children for thousands of years. It is Nature.
And the context moves me to remark: It turned [Sidenote: _Providence’s
Favoritism Toward Author._] out that of my several hundred schoolmates
(prior to the university) I achieved in adult life the highest success.
Not as a business man or money-maker, in which line I did not excel. Not
in art or politics. But in the following fields, both individually and
combined: Intellectual and general cultural development; enjoyment of
(but not adeptness in) all species of art; breadth and depth of life and
knowledge of human nature; enjoyment of the society of my fellow humans,
particularly sexual opposites; and, last but not least, fame, or, as
some would prefer to have me say, notoriety. For I feel that I, as an
extreme type of the bisexual, am doomed to live in the minds of savants
for scores of years after every one of my hundreds of schoolmates, and
my other hundreds of university associates, are eternally forgotten.
[=Note Added in Galley=: I omitted to mention that I have also far
excelled in suffering inflicted by man and in sorrow—which two items
together have about counterbalanced the advantages enumerated.]
But I have achieved this last element (terrestrial immortality) of the
highest success in life denied to all my wide circles of childhood and
adolescence through my “going to the bad”—as the saying is. But though
that was the fate marked out for me by the Architect of the Universe, I
was actually able to restrain my “evil” propensities so as not to make
shipwreck of life. My girl-boy intimate described in the early part of
the second chapter following did make, decidedly, shipwreck of his life,
as have many other girl-boys. My salvation lay in practicing
_relatively_[15] [Sidenote: _Temperance the Only Salvation._] extreme
temperance in the indulgence of the sexual propensities except during my
Bowery period described in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE and RIDDLE
OF THE UNDERWORLD. Extreme temperance in indulgence of any fleshly
appetite is, for all humanity, the sole means of salvation from the
shipwreck of earthly life. Overindulgence of any appetite defeats its
own end.
Thus while nearly all other girl-boys are doomed to be forgotten by
mankind a few years after their bodies return “dust to dust,” I myself
am—I feel—destined to live in the memory of savants primarily because of
my extensive self-restraint, and secondarily because of my excelling the
other girl-boys in innate brain power.
It was F’ank who initiated me, at two, in the mysteries which gullible
parents think children do not learn before puberty. But down to twelve,
I considered all species of sex relations as the monopoly of naughty
children. All adults had of course outgrown such depths of nastiness.
Down to my present age of close to half-a-century, F’ank has been the
hero in half my many sexual dreams. After I reached seven, we ceased to
be confidential. I therefore never confessed to him that his influence
prior to my seventh year almost wrecked my adult life—probably
consigning me to an irresponsible, intensive fairie career—and a
thousand times made me wish, because a slave to fellatio, that I were
dead. For I firmly believe that girl-boys, if not repeatedly [Sidenote:
_Keep Tots Sexually Clean._] seduced before puberty, will, as adults,
have only weak and controllable desires for the sexual functioning
ordained by Nature for their type. While they are commonly fellators or
else pathics _congenitally_, only oft repeated seduction in early
childhood makes them, after puberty, irresponsible psychic nymphomaniacs
who recruit the ranks of fairies. But for those repeatedly seduced in
early childhood, the penchant is truly irresistible in adulthood and
would be followed regardless of all legal penalties. Just as most men
would steal a loaf of bread if their only means of salvation from death
through hunger.
Not too often repeated homosexual acts on the part of a small child,
however, are not likely to make him an adult pervert. An _innate_
tendency is practically indispensable. Early experiences along innate
lines merely strengthen a congenital bias, just as the author became an
intensive adult fairie as a result—I am inclined to believe—of my
intense fairieship from three to six.
While I believe sexual relations of children under twelve when not often
repeated will not render them particularly lustful as adults, an
_intensive_ sex life of a small child—as in my own case—is likely to
render him or her extremely intemperate sexually after puberty. Mothers
should therefore keep a watchful eye over the whereabouts and associates
of the “angel child,” and not allow it in secluded cosy nooks with older
children. A careful watch should be kept over nurse-girls. Children
under twelve, and even under six, need chaperons almost as much as those
just past puberty.
Parents should take pains that the “angel child” [Sidenote: _Criminal
Prudery._] regards them as confidants, sharers of its every secret. If
this had happened in my own case, I might have been spared a world of
woe after puberty. To preserve the frankness of the “angel child,” not
even a mild rebuke should ever be administered for its sexual lapses;
but kind persuasion alone, and care that the child does not again come
into exciting surroundings.
My own parents and teachers never vouchsafed the least sex knowledge. I
once asked where babies came from. Doctors found them in the street
gutters and brought them to people’s houses. Instinct and older boys
were my only instructors. Parents, teachers, but preferably the school
physician, should begin with children of six a clean initiation into
these mysteries—absorbing even to youngsters of that tender age—to
replace the hitherto regnant nasty one wrought by child lore handed
down, from mouth to mouth, through the centuries, and characterized by
unprintable words, in uttering, seeing, and hearing which numerous
children seem to take delight.
Or is the subject of sex irreformable and hopeless? Is it really the
crying shame of the human race?
From my third to seventh year, F’ank and I were drawn toward one
another. I yearned to recline in his arms. “F’ank,” I once said, “I’m
not af’aid on your lap. But I’m af’aid nearly always. I’m af’aid, when I
get as big as papa, hair’ll grow on my cheeks, like on his. How could I
ever use a horrible wazor, like him! I hope I’ll die before I get big!”
I was destined to be a sort of pet with others of the more stalwart
boys. It was because I retained my babyishness—like an idiot—at least
down to the age [Sidenote: _A Wee Girl-Boy’s Outlook on Life._] of
seven, and was, besides, girlish. I commonly felt myself a little girl
and told playmates to call me Jennie. They have remarked that I was
“more girl than boy.” Adults, however, were blind to my bisexuality.
They ridiculed me for carrying a doll in my arms when I took a walk;
etc. Because I was the only child of my set thus violently crossed, I
was the most unhappy. Taunts sometimes drove me to throw myself on the
floor, bang my head, and exclaim: “I wish I were dead!”
But, on the whole, my early childhood was happy. With F’ank I would play
“papa and mamma.” He would “go to business,” while I took care of the
dolls; etc. I made and laundered their wardrobes. One day a sudden
shower surprised me. Gazing at the ill-fated wash on the line, I sobbed:
“Oh it yains! It yains! And my c’ose’ll get wet!”
The day of thoroughgoing disillusionment came early in my seventh year.
It was the style for boys to wear skirts up to that age. How I loved
them! And I never expected to clothe myself otherwise. Even down to my
middle forties, I have always felt more at home in skirts.
Then I wasn’t to be allowed to go through life as a girl and a woman? I
was up against the choice of spending the rest of life in my bedroom, or
drawing on a pair of the utterly loathed breeches. At first it was the
same as if I had to go on the street in my underclothes. I would dodge
behind a tree when an acquaintance hove in sight. How poignantly I
missed petticoats as a screen for my shameful nether limbs! Not to
mention the deprivation of the pleasure of feeling them dangling about
my knees.
[Sidenote: _How I Came to Be a Female-Impersonator._]
II. School Days.
_First year_: How terrible the aspect of the big brick academy! How
awe-inspiring the smell of the newly varnished floor on the first day of
my school life! How my heart jumped to my throat whenever I caught the
cold, stern eye of the school-marm piercing through my own little self!
How bold and bad and rough all the boys were! Why must I sit with them
and enter by their door when I so longed to be with the gentle and
soft-voiced girls?
And could I ever bring myself to see what was on the other side of the
sign: “For boys only”? What right had _I_ there? For I already
recognized I was really not a boy! At that age I gloated over being a
_girl-boy_.
There was thus provision for the comfort of the boys. There was
provision for the comfort of the girls. But architects have never
thought to make provision for the _girl-boys_!
The first week I suffered terribly rather than invade the retreat barred
to all but boys. Then an unprintable experience right at my desk
afforded the room a good laugh and sent me home for dry clothing. I now
preferred the horror of the retreat to being laughed at and sent home.
But I made a virtue of haste and watched for a moment when no other boy
was out.
_Second year_: I sat on a rear seat with a boy whom I stared at and
touched because of the softness and radiance of his hair, the rich red
of his cheeks, [Sidenote: _Sexual Precocity._] and his sturdy build. Now
and then we kissed when no one was looking. But once a loud smack
reverberated just after the near-sighted school-marm had requested such
stillness that one could hear a pin drop. As she had never been kissed
by a person of the opposite sex, she considered a smack the unpardonable
sin. My hero-boy took his whipping with a cynical smile. But I wept for
a half-hour.
_Third year_: I was caught in an immeasurably worse impropriety[16]
under a desk. The teacher thought my parents ought to know. Violently
angry, my father hammered my body with the heel of a boot. In a dozen
years, not one of my numerous brothers and sisters (although I was the
only goody-goody one) suffered such a thrashing. All the rest of my home
life, father treated me the worst of all, notwithstanding I far excelled
in school-work. What a trial to have a _girl-boy_ son? Why had I ever
been born? Subsequently there existed a lifelong coolness between father
and me.
_Fourth year_: [A typical spring afternoon.] After school, the west
playground was thronged with boys. I alone hastened directly to the
street, embarrassed as a little girl alone with two hundred boys. One
calls out: “Ralph, hurry to the girls’ yard where you belong!” Another:
“Ralph, your legs are as shapely as a girl’s. You would make a
good-looking girl!” A third throws his arms around me and exclaims:
“Kissing you is as good as kissing a girl!”
My embarrassment prevented my relishing these attentions at the moment.
But I always gloated over them after I got to bed.
[Sidenote: _Nature Indicated Rearing as a Girl._]
I had not quite reached the gate when a ball rolled to my feet and the
players shouted for it. With beet-red face on account of what I knew
would be said, I gave the ball an awkward toss. “Hah hah hah! You throw
just like a girl! Miss Nancy!”
Often I went around Robin Hood’s barn to avoid this particular
embarrassment.
Arrived in the girls’ yard, I felt as if freed from captivity and in my
proper element. Shyness and fright gave way to gleefulness. Moreover, I
cared only for the less strenuous games of the gentle sex.
Several boys mounted the high fence in order to tease me. “Ralph, I
promise you my sister’s doll carriage to push to school!”... “Heigh,
Miss Werther, have you finished the mitten I saw you knitting?”... “Say,
Ralph, give me a kiss, will you?”
While with girls, I liked nothing better than such bantering. I
out-girled them in our reaction to the boys’ teasing. We finally
succeeded in provoking the boys to chase us—my wish all along. To be
chased by boys was the highest of childhood’s pleasures.
I was always the ringleader of my girl clique, never reflecting on its
unnaturalness. They never regarded me as a normal boy—only a “girl-boy.”
We would even discuss our boy favorites.
_Fifth year_: My parents thought that if I were shut up closely with
boys and away from even the sight of girls, I would be cured of my
effeminacy. Thus my fifth to eleventh years of school life were staged
at a boys’ “prep” several miles from my home village and numbering about
a hundred students. But I was only a day-pupil except during my senior
year.
[Sidenote: _Childhood Female-Impersonation._]
The first week, it was an ordeal on a par with being forced into
breeches. I was in a state of chronic fright. When addressed, my reply
was inaudible six feet away. But after becoming well acquainted with
class-mates, I have seated myself on their laps right in the schoolroom.
For they appeared demigods.
They would run a hand up my arm. “Your skin is softer than velvet. And
your pencils look as if you had chewed them off with your teeth. And
what makes you scream when a fellow merely touches you? Ralph, you
certainly ought to have been born a girl! You will never make a man!”
On holidays I would run off to the house of a girl friend. With several
of the gentle sex, I would play hide-and-seek in remote nooks, as
hay-mows. Later I would exchange clothing with one, and we would seek
boy acquaintances that I might display my skill in female-impersonation.
Adult intimates would point the finger of scorn in vain. To pass life as
far as possible like a girl was the very essence of existence, for which
I was willing to sacrifice everything else.
The instinctive manner of coasting is a criterion of psychic sex. Every
boy of my set, excepting myself, rode bellyflops—too strenuous for the
soft-muscled and timid girls. As I possessed their physical and psychic
softness, I also coasted upright.
In ascending the hill, I kept with the girls. I enjoyed talking about
only their interests. As the boys passed, they would call out:
“Girl-boy! Mollie Coddle!”
One afternoon, two snow forts were built fifty feet apart. All the boys,
excepting myself, took their stand [Sidenote: _Outlook on Life at
Eleven._] bravely behind the breastworks and rained snowballs on the
defenders of the opposite fort. The girls were almost prostrate in the
deep snow behind—out of danger of being hit in the face—packing
snowballs for the throwers. And I, GIRL-BOYWISE, did as they, the
eternal impropriety never dawning on me.
But one of the girls cried out: “Why are you not throwing snowballs with
the boys? Afraid of getting hit, are you? Why don’t you put on
petticoats?”
After I retired that night, I had not yet recovered from my speechless
chagrin. “Why was it that I was not taking a boy’s place in life? Why
did I sit upright when coasting? Why did I feel more at home in girls’
attire? Why did the boys tease me just as they did the girls? Could it
be that I was _a girl imprisoned in the body of a boy_?
“How could I face manhood? Are men under compulsion to go and vote? But
how could I push my way into the crowd of rough men always hanging [at
that period] around the polling places?
“How terrible to be a boy! Couldn’t I take papa’s razor and in a minute
rid myself of the excrescence? A razor ought to be sharp enough to do
the job! O God, change my body this moment by a miracle! Turn me into a
girl!” I sobbed.
One day, being a goody-goody, I had felt it my duty to tell the teacher
on a mischievous boy. As I left the school for my train, I was seized
violently. “If you were a big, strong fellow like us, we would give you
a good thrashing! We’ll only see if we can lift you off the ground by
your hair. The more you cry, the better we like it. Keep your hands
down! [Sidenote: _Girl-Boys’ Reasons for Suicide._] Slap! Slap! Slap!
And stop carrying your books on your arm like a girl!”
When they let go their grip, I started off on a run, only one boy
pursuing and shouting out threats. I shall now reveal the girl-boy’s
patented secret for getting out of a predicament. I sprinted to the
porch of the first house, gave the door-bell several violent jerks, and
shrieked for help.
_Sixth year_: I was absorbed in fashioning a doll’s dress. An older
sister angrily exclaimed: “Why don’t you get out on the ball-field like
all other boys? I hate effeminate boys! Mother, I’m afraid Ralph is not
normal!”
At the moment I felt ashamed ever to look my disgusted sister in the
face again. So ashamed that I wanted to kill myself. (One of my girl-boy
playmates, because bitterly persecuted on account of his effeminacy,
actually committed suicide at twelve by swallowing rat poison.) “I not
normal? What did my sister mean? Could she have had in mind my queer
habit of sitting on the boys’ laps? I was the only boy that acted so
queerly. I had not realized it could be described as ‘abnormal.’”
On another occasion, I was, with two brothers, skirting a creek on the
way to the swimming-hole. We came to a row of stepping-stones. My
brothers trotted across several times. But I lacked the courage even to
set foot on the first.
We found several “shavers” in the swimming-hole. My two brothers joined
them. But I liked only to recline on the bank and feast my eyes. I would
as soon have stripped before boys as would a little girl. [Sidenote: “_I
Want to Die!_”] I only got a sight of the swimming-hole because I had
brothers.
For the first time it occurred to a “shaver” to strip and duck me. My
brothers were ashamed of my being a girl-boy and thought it would
contribute toward making a man of me.
“Stop your screeching, Ralph! You’ve got to be stripped so we can see if
you are a real boy! Stop your scratching, or we’ll give you a black
eye!... Now let’s dip him under to stop his yelling!... You can’t come
around the swimming-hole any more unless you get into the water with the
rest of us!... Cry-baby! Cry-baby! You’re a hopeless case!... Clear out
of here!”
I half-way dressed and ran off in terror. Their driving home the fact
that I was a hopeless sexual cripple brought on such melancholia as I
had never before experienced. I repeatedly blubbered out as I ran: “I
want to die! I want to die!”
[Sidenote: _How I Came to Be a Female-Impersonator._]
III. An Androgyne’s Youth.
It was not until my sixteenth year that I came to a full realization
that I am a male in name only. I had always recognized my girl-likeness
and wished Nature had created me a female. At the same time I had,
during my early teens, sometimes reflected that I would outgrow all my
feminine predilections and be a normal man. But at fifteen my bust
development made me think that perhaps God at last was answering my
fervent prayers, around the age of nine, to be changed into a physical
girl. For I was already one psychicly.
In my middle teens, my desire changed radically, due chiefly to my
having just become a God-intoxicated youth, with the work of a
missionary in China as my goal. I now prayed far more intensely for
full-fledged manhood than I ever had for physical femininity.
Superficially and according to man-made law, ultra-androgynes are men.
According to the unabridged dictionary, they are neither men nor women.
That is, they are capable neither of begetting nor conceiving. But in
respect to mind and feelings, in respect to their protoplasm—and thus
essentially—they are women.
Being neither male nor female, with whom do androgynes associate? Up to
the dawning of puberty, pronounced specimens—like myself—gravitate
toward the gentle sex. As soon as the sexual life is fully developed,
the vast majority (not happening to be [Sidenote: _A Village Fairie._]
overconscientious and ultra-puritan) give that sex the widest berth and
lean on the bosoms of the ultra or tremendously virile of their
acquaintance. But they never join in the sports of the sturdy sex. For
in athletics, they are as awkward as girls, and besides lack the
necessary physique.
But Nature happened to make _me_ overconscientious, and my training was
ultra-puritan. While, after I entered my teens, I was ashamed longer to
make myself one with girl acquaintances, and besides was violently
repelled by our both approaching the full flower of our sexuality, my
now looking upon my attraction towards youths as the most heinous of
sins, together with my aversion from masculine interests, forbade
association with boys outside the schoolroom. Thus from the age of
thirteen to eighteen, I endured an almost companionless existence
outside the home, the schoolroom, and the church edifice. I did
occasionally take a walk with an androgyne of my own age,
goody-goodiness, education, and social standing. He, however, was not
religious or of puritan parentage, and was even then extensively
promiscuous with the economically better class of the village’s youthful
“sports.”
I myself turned away in deep shame from the propositions of tremendously
virile youths, although secretly I would rather have yielded than do
anything else at all. At middle life, I have had doubts as to whether I
did the right thing in resisting. I believe my health and happiness were
tremendously impaired by my ultra-puritan views which made me obstinate
before Nature’s behests. On the other hand, through yielding I would
have lost my reputation and probably [Sidenote: _Mine the Most
Melancholy of Youthhoods._] been barred from “prep” and university. I
was expelled from the latter as soon as the faculty learned that I lived
according to Nature’s behests. The university training is, of course,
worth erotic pleasures ten thousand times over. But during the first two
years of my college course, my health and happiness (as recounted in my
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE) were sorely wrecked by abstinence. Does
the wrong not after all lie in the groundless intolerance of “prep” and
university for androgynes who obey Nature’s demands, and fill, in an
unobtrusive manner, the niche in the universe for which the Great
Architect predestined them?
Thus being excluded from the pastimes of both the recognized sexes and
from their joint social intercourse—on account of my belonging to a
third and outcast sex—I found my only recreation from an ultra-studious
college-preparatory life in long walks on country roads, during which I
often brooded because Providence had consigned me to membership in the
third sex. From the age of thirteen to eighteen, I endured the most
melancholy existence I have ever heard or read of.[17]
[Sidenote: _Reasons for Melancholia._]
Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a _youth_ than to make the
startling discovery that he, though extremely conscientious and
offenceless, is a type of sexual cripple that has always been regarded
by the sexually full-fledged—because of their ignorance and
Phariseeism—as the lowest of the low, a monster of wickedness, and an
outcast from society?
Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a _girl_—and a very
high-strung one—than for Nature to disguise her as a boy, and foreordain
that _she_ should be brought up as a boy and be, at school, office,
etc., always shut up with the sterner sex?
Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a _girl_ than to be doomed
to pass through life incarnated in a male body? How grief-provoking for
a mademoiselle to be cursed with a slight growth of hair on lip
[Sidenote: _Early Consciousness of Deformity._] or cheeks! Only a
trifling male stigma! How much more heart-rending for a mademoiselle to
possess the male physique to such an extent that even all physicians
(except a handful of sexologists) with their present lack of
knowledge—or rather their closing their eyes to all evidence—would
declare her a male, and prescribe that _she_ should in life fill the
latter role.
Such was my chronic burden almost throughout my teens. (Subsequently,
with the exception of brief spells of melancholia, I became reconciled
to my fate.) And such is the burden imposed by Nature on one youth out
of every three hundred in every social set of every country in the
world. But because of my intellectuality, high-class environment, and
extreme androgynism, my grief was exceptionally intense. I do not
believe the mildly androgynous are melancholy during their teens. They
have not yet become conscious that they are abnormal.
My chronic lamentation during my seventeenth to nineteenth years was:
“Miserable wretch! Miserable wretch! Miserable wretch! That’s all I am!
I was born with a deformed nature, despicable in the eyes of all people!
I am a soft effeminate youth who is wanted nowhere! I am ashamed to look
any one in the face! I feel like putting an end to my life, or else
losing myself, to all who know who I am, in a distant city where I could
live according to my queer nature. I have nothing to live for! I may be
disgraced, disgrace my family, be compelled to flee, be disowned by my
parents, be cursed and be despised throughout the land!”
An older sister frequently vented her spite on me because of her disgust
at my effeminacy. The Sunday [Sidenote: _Horror of Fire-arms._] school
picnic in my seventeenth year led up to one of the greatest sorrows of
my youth. “You little coward!” my sister the next day began. “Even
eight-year-old George has more pluck! I was so mortified to see you the
only boy to refuse to pick up the rifle in the shooting contest! The
others could hardly wait their turn. And to-day you do look like a freak
in that pink ruffled shirt! And with your hair banged! Trying to doll
yourself up as much like a girl as you can, are you?”
“I am, too, so ashamed of your bangs, Ralph!” my mother chimed in. “They
make you look as if you didn’t know anything!”
“Mother, make him go to C’s party next Wednesday. He stays away from all
gatherings of young people. He will grow up a boor.”
“I would rather be thrashed than go to any party! I do not like to pay
gallantries to women!”
“You will never make a man unless you do, son. I insist that you go to
C’s party.”
Wednesday evening arrived, and with two score youngsters, I was lounging
in C’s parlors. My older sister had managed to have me escort a girl.
Unfortunate female, to be attended by one of her own sex whom Nature had
disguised as a man!
It was extreme torture to have to go into society and put myself forward
as a gallant. Accordingly I grasped the first opportunity to escape to
the garden. I could look into the brilliantly lighted drawing-rooms
filled with the youthful merry-makers. The spectacle moved me to tears.
“To think that Providence permits to all young people excepting myself
the joys of love and courtship! [Sidenote: _I Become a Religious
Prodigy._] Because if I followed my inclinations along these lines,
people would call me a monster and I would be a pariah![18]
“I wish I might get away from the world and live as a hermit! Then I
would in a way be unsexed, and would be so regarded by the world.
“People see that I am an effeminate youth! An effeminate youth! And my
sister has often expressed her disgust for that type! Who can like them?
“I feel that there is nothing which can henceforth give me interest in
life! I feel so mortified that I am a girl-boy! Oh it looks as if there
were no God!”
* * * * *
At fifteen I developed into a religious prodigy. Until my debut as a
quasi-public female-impersonator at nineteen, I, though the most
melancholy person of my community, was active in church work. During
these four years, I attended seven religious services a week (exclusive
of college chapel every morning during two of these years) and from
fifteen to seventeen, spent two hours a day in private devotions in
addition. As early as fifteen, I was the leader of prayer meetings. I
preached from the pulpit a dozen times at nineteen—a few months before I
relinquished all Church work because instinct drove me to
female-impersonation. All the ultra-pious of my ultra-puritan entourage
predicted for me a great career as a herald [Sidenote: _My Life’s
Motto._] of Christianity—to which vocation I had already at fifteen
dedicated my life.
Thus as early as fifteen, I was frequently called upon to lead the
congregation in extemporaneous prayer. Usually my keynote (for my
private prayers as well) was my life’s motto, which I adopted at
fifteen:
“My times are in Thy hand,
Whatever they may be;
Pleasing or painful,
Dark or bright,
As best may seem to Thee!”
Tears would course down my cheeks and my voice tremble with emotion. I
never failed to remember that I had the greatest need of all for the
rest for which I pleaded and which Jesus has promised to give “the
oppressed and heavy laden.”
After service, all other youths escorted a girl home and lingered over
the gate for blissful conversation. But I had the habit of making my
solitary way to a desolate abandoned graveyard whose latest headstone
was set up in the twenties of the nineteenth century.
Behold my Garden of Gethsemane, where not merely once, but once each
week, I would throw myself on a grass-covered grave, writhe in an agony
of moans, and even shriek. All my muscles seemed to be rigid, and my
fists were clinched. I would dig my fingernails into my palms, and throw
my arms about wildly.
“Change my nature, O God,” I would cry. “This very moment. By a miracle.
Give me the mind and powers of a man.
[Sidenote: _My Temptations Hardly Equalled._]
“Am I being ‘tried by fire’ as the Bible predicts for God’s children?
Are others so tried by fire as I have been nearly all my life?”
[After half-a-century of rare opportunities to learn human nature, I
have ascertained that I was tried worse than any one else I have heard
of—that is, by torture of sexual desire that must _not_ be gratified,
and practically was not from seven to eighteen, inclusive. I was tried
by fire a hundred times as hot as the average person ever knows.
Probably so hot because of my intense fairie-ism from two to six. I
believe I have, for years together, resisted lust many times as intense
as the average person ever knows.]
[Illustration:
My Garden of Gethsemane
]
[Sidenote: _In My Garden of Gethsemane._]
“I am experiencing the enslaving power of sin. I now know how to
sympathize with poor drunkards and harlots. I will flog and starve
myself in order to conquer my flesh. [I actually fasted and flagellated
myself to ascertain the effect in deadening my amorousness but found
these religious exercises useless.]
“I feel to-night that I can never become a preacher of the Gospel. I
feel that I must give up all plans for a noble career, and that maybe I
shall come to a disgraceful end!
“Oh that all instinct would die in me! It makes my life miserable. How
gladly would I be free from all desire so that I could make a name for
myself in the world! An extreme girl-boy can hardly become a scholar and
a preacher.
“Is it my divinely appointed task to learn the lesson of resignation in
affliction? To feel myself crushed to earth by the Almighty Hand? Like
Isaac, to be tried in order to see whether I am willing to be slain in
my youth—in my own case morally?”[19]
[Sidenote: _Man’s Prudery Almost Fatal._]
After an hour of bitter tears and heart-broken pleadings to the
Architect of the universe, I would be in a state of mental and physical
collapse for twenty-four hours. Can the reader wonder that, weighed down
by such a burden, I repeatedly meditated suicide during these four
terrible years? And I realize now—at middle age—that I had to suffer
these four years of melancholia only because of cultured man’s
misunderstanding of androgynism, prohibition of any one’s inquiring into
the facts, and bitter persecution of androgynes.[20]
Events have proved that it was the policy of the All-Wise and All-Good
not to answer my prayers, notwithstanding their almost unexampled
earnestness and repetition. The Eternal foresaw that it was to the best
interests both of the human race and of myself that I should leave to
others the coveted work of preaching the Gospel to the heathen and spend
my physical prime in New York’s Underworld as an avocational
female-impersonator. That was the cross that God willed that I should
bear. The role of female-impersonator is the niche in the universe that
its Architect had created me to fill.
In middle life I have often thought that Providence mercifully spared me
from suicide—the fate of so many youthful androgynes as a result of the
world’s persecution—and foreordained my career of female[Sidenote:
_Innocent Androgynes Now in Prison._] impersonator that I might, through
publishing the present trilogy, remove the veil of ignorance and
prejudice as regards androgynism that now blinds the cultured, and
occasions terrible persecution to Nature’s inoffensive step-children,
who number one out of every two hundred inmates of our state prisons,
having been incarcerated merely on the ground of homosexuality.
[Sidenote: _How I Came to Be a Female-Impersonator._]
IV. I Grow into THE FAIRIE BOY.
At sixteen, I entered a college in New York City. I alone was
responsible for the scene of my university training. I had frequently
visited New York and wished to reside there. But I had then no intention
of ever yielding to my detested instincts for female-impersonation. I
had not realized that residence in a great city would make temptation
far stronger than in a village. My being fated to make my home in New
York almost throughout my adulthood has had a tremendous influence on my
life, particularly from nineteen to thirty-one.
My father gave me every educational advantage because in the fairly
large “prep” that I attended from my tenth to sixteenth years, I
attained the highest scholarship in the history of the school. In an
address to the students, the principal named me as the youthful scholar
to be patterned after by the other boys (!!!).
I know I shall be accused of exaggerated ego for the way I talk about
myself in this and the next chapter. But seven articles have been
published about myself in medical journals, exclusive of numerous
reviews of my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE. How many people can go into
a library, call for magazines, and gaze at pictures of themselves within
their covers? How many people have had a three-volume autobiography
published? With such a record, I suspect that I am either insane or else
one of the half-dozen most [Sidenote: _The Author’s Brain._] remarkable
sexual curiosities of my generation. On the latter chance, I am moved to
leave on record a full account of both my inner and outer rare life
experience.
[Illustration:
Front View of Author at Thirty-three
(Photo by Dr. R. W. Shufeldt)
]
As to bragging about my intellect, my experience of half-a-century is
that in general, Providence makes compensations in the lives of men so
that as they, one by one, pass on to the next world, all have fared
equally as concerns Heaven-sent boons and the opposite. As a
counterweight to having created me a bitterly persecuted sexual cripple
(for His inscrutable but surely wise ends) the Architect of the universe
endowed me with a brain of such capacity as found in only one out of
twenty-five university graduates. I wrote stories at eight. At thirteen
I was confident I would become an author and my name be chiselled on the
walls of fame.[21]
My college associates commented on my feminesqueness and infantilism. I
perceived that I was looked upon as a curiosity.
I am a curiosity in that while throughout life remaining a species of
moron,[22] certain cerebral lobes have nevertheless progressed to a high
development enabling me to graduate from a university almost at the head
of my class notwithstanding my general psychic infantilism and my
suffering from acute spermatorrhea [Sidenote: _The Author a Curiosity._]
and (during my freshman and sophomore years) acute melancholia. If my
physical health had been as good as that of the three men who
outstripped me, I might have led my university class.
I am a curiosity in that down to twenty-five, I was a fair specimen of
physical infantilism or lilliputianism. I was said to possess the skull
and facial lines of an infant. Down to twenty-five, I never weighed more
than 110 pounds on a height of five feet five. Nearly all my brothers
and uncles have been six-footers.
I am a curiosity in that I possess the light female osseous structure.
Even before I began to develop adipose tissue after twenty-five, I would
float on fresh water without moving a muscle, my observation being that
the slim normal boy must vibrate his hands.
I am a curiosity in that form of skeleton and contour of body are mostly
feminine, particularly the bust.
Not until the age of nineteen, when I went successively to two medical
college professors and implored them to make me a complete male, did I
learn that practically all the tissues of my body are of
characteristically feminine texture. My muscles, judged by their
weakness and my using them in general woman-fashion, are those of a
female. The beardal growth is normally male except that it could never
reach the length of an eighth of an inch and has no stiffness. If I had
not shaved or eradicated the beard, I would have been, after seventeen,
one of the dog-faced boys of the circus. Although the hair cells seem as
dense as on my scalp, I could never have exhibited virile whiskers.
[Sidenote: _Coddled in College._]
Another feminine resemblance is that at the age of half-a-century, I
show not the least tendency to baldness.
Several of my college associates coddled and babied me. They would throw
an arm around me and cry: “Child!” They would hold me on their laps.
With the three ultra-virile with whom I became most intimate and
confidential, I would often in private throw myself into their arms and
pillow my head on their bosoms, while they would exclaim: “Lovesick
boy!” They never betrayed my strange conduct to others or appeared less
friendly. Only one of the three made greater advances than I myself—the
only one belonging to the tremendously virile class. What chiefly kept
me from even hinting at extremes was fear of expulsion in case it should
become generally known. But I was also strongly influenced by the
dictates of society and the teaching of the Bible—as I then erroneously
understood the latter.[23]
“You still possess the real childlike naiveté,” students have remarked.
“And you possess childlike features to harmonize with your decidedly
childlike manner of going about things. You are certainly THE BOY WHO
NEVER GREW TO BE A MAN.”
[Sidenote: _Childlike and Womanlike._]
“I like to watch you because of your childlike grimaces. That is why the
fellows are continually teasing you; because it is just like teasing a
child or a girl. You react with a sort of pleased childlike pride at
being the object of attention.”
“Your voice, though hoarse, has a feminine timbre. It possesses the
penetrating and carrying power of a child’s voice. It often breaks and
changes, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. From being masculine, it
suddenly changes timbre and becomes decidedly feminine, passing over
from a bass to a treble. Your voice is sentimental, bland, caressing. It
is the kind of voice a dying woman would choose to hear.”
“I never saw the chevelure [as they shoved their fingers through it] so
fine and silklike in any one else who wore trousers. Your hands [as they
would hold them] are as soft and hairless as those of a girl. And you
have the arms of a woman [when my sleeves were rolled back]. And you
blush just like a woman. And you sob like her. I never saw tears run
down the cheeks of any other man as he sat in the class-room.”
I have jokingly replied with a smile at my classmate’s mystification:
“You do not know but what I am a woman!” But I shrank from any serious
disclosure of the secrets of my sex, such a mystery to many of my
every-day associates.
If I live to old age, I intend to call the present trilogy to the
attention of some of my associates of early years who have indicated
great curiosity to know the secrets of my sex life. I have permitted
only three friends (of course the closest) who know me under my legal
name to read my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, and one of the three
dropped me from his friendship. [Sidenote: _Feminine Figure
Recognized._] Men are so biased on the subject of sex that I can not let
my friends read the secrets of my life until I reach an independent old
age when they can not make me suffer much on account of my androgynism.
In college, I was compelled to exercise in the “gym.” I hid my form. It
was a terrible ordeal to have to strip before the physical director, who
remarked: “Your figure is feminine.” Apparently he did not suspect the
sexuality that was bound up with that figure. If military drill had been
required—as in 1917—I would have quit the university.[24]
Since nineteen my yearning for skirts has been in part met by habitually
wearing about my home an ornamental dressing-gown. Thus clad, I have
often gazed in a mirror, imagining myself a complete female. I have
taken pleasure in hearing the gown rustle, like a silk dress; in feeling
it strike against my legs; and in holding up the front in ascending the
stairs.
THE FAIRIE BOY was my nickname from nineteen to thirty-one outside my
every-day circle. And outside I was far more widely known. Inside I had
the reputation of being an insignificant, puritan, unpractical book-worm
and Mollie Coddle who knew nothing of life and human nature. Outside I
achieved wide notoriety as an amateur actor—or, properly speaking,
actress.
[Sidenote: _Man, Woman, and Infant in One Body._]
That the distinction, among the sons of Adam, of being THE FAIRIE BOY
came to me, is nothing for which I can take credit to myself. It was
merely because Providence had made me, as an adult, physically as well
as psychicly, one-third man, one-third woman, and one-third infant.
Providence endowed me with a “small-boy” aspect, the subject of comment
in my every-day circle down to my early forties; freshness of complexion
down to thirty; innocent expression of features and marvellous absence
of animality (in appearance only); cry-baby mentality; eternal
childlikeness even in my professional life; and slender, lithe, and
lilliputian figure down to twenty-five.
THE FAIRIE BOY! To be frank—I am proud of the pretty nickname. This
Providential distinction is part of my compensation for my almost
unparalleled sufferings from persecution at present inseparable from the
lot of an ultra-androgyne.
[Illustration:
Rear View of Author at Thirty-three
(Photo by Dr. R. W. Shufeldt)
]
V. The Boy Who Never Grew to Be a Man.
[Sidenote: _How I Came to Be a Female-Impersonator._]
For the most part, the present chapter covers my twenty-sixth to
thirty-second years, during which my most descriptive nickname was THE
SOLDIERS’ FRIEND. For I was foreordained to a sort of army life for many
years, detailed in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, but omitted in the
present volume. Here I limit myself to some related personal
description.
PHYSIQUE AND PSYCHE: My career as avocational female-impersonator during
the second half-dozen years of my physical prime was even more
remarkable than during the first (outlined in PART THREE). My
quasi-public career as female-impersonator ended at thirty-one—at its
very zenith—because I deemed myself too old longer to play the part of
“French doll-baby,” and because the instinct thereto progressively
weakened from the age of thirty. My being able to play that part down to
thirty-one was possible only because Nature had endowed me with the
proper physique and psyche, already described. Less extreme androgynes
lack the qualifications, while practically all the extreme (commonly
known as “fairies”, “fags”, or “brownies”) lack the necessary good
sense, modesty, temperance, and high grade of general morality that were
mine because of my puritan childhood and youth and university education.
The proneness of the eternal feminine greatly to understate her age made
me in my twenty-sixth year, [Sidenote: _Infantilism, etc., a Bar in
Business._] when impersonating a doll-baby, pass as twenty-one, and in
my fortieth, as twenty-eight. An unmarried female, as long as she has
hopes of lassoing a husband, never gets beyond the lingering years of
twenty-eight or twenty-nine.
SIMULTANEOUS “MALE” PROFESSIONAL LIFE: In my twenties, thirties, and
forties, I have worked hard in three successive learned professions.
At nineteen I had already relinquished my amateur work of preacher of
the Gospel on being forced by Nature into the avocation of
female-impersonator. Simultaneously with my satisfying my frivolous
and coquettish instincts of French doll-baby, I also met the demands
of my male intellectual spirit by doing brain work of a high order. My
three successive professions have seemingly been adopted by chance,
although during “boyhood” I manifested special aptitude for all three,
besides that of preacher. I did not choose them. They were only
makeshifts after I was barred from my choice: preaching the Gospel. I
can not name them lest I disclose my identity.
I have achieved the average professional success. But my extreme
effeminacy and both facial and psychic infantilism have prevented
employers meting out the full advancement that past work merited. Men
less capable than myself have been promoted over me because my chiefs
had the impression that I was merely “a grown-up child”—that is,
moron-like, although as a matter of fact I possessed the intellectual
qualifications.
Office associates have now and then commented in my hearing on my
feminesqueness notwithstanding they have not usually entertained the
least idea [Sidenote: _Feminesqueness Recognized in Business._] that
from nineteen to thirty-one, I impersonated, an average of one evening a
week, a French doll-baby. Some remarks, however, even down to my middle
forties, indicated that some suspected the truth about my sexual life.
But I never betrayed that life to any of my business associates
excepting three or four confidants, who—I must explain—were mere
Platonic friends. I was too much ashamed to ape the woman before those
acquainted with my intellectual accomplishments. The following are
samples of remarks of office associates:
“Good morning, Baby!”
“Grinning kid!”
“You look like a frightened bunny!” (While being teased. I was always
the favorite subject for teasing by full-fledged males. In school,
university, and office (the latter down to my middle forties only) they
teased me as they would a girl. Moreover, my face expresses my emotions
in an uncommon manner.)
“Your breasts are certainly beauts! You must be half woman!”
“Look, Ralph, Ed is throwing kisses at you!”
“Ralph, I was just going to ask you for a kiss!”
“Ralph, you are nothing but a child half-a-century old!” (When impressed
by my childish grimaces and childlike way of going about everything.)
“Say, Ralph, won’t you favor me with the recipe for perennial youth? I
never saw such a contrast between apparent and actual age!” (During my
early forties.)
“Ralph, you are a tub of mush! You look like a fat _frau_ in the last
stage of pregnancy!” (The reader will pardon the vulgarity occasioned by
my wish to [Sidenote: _Simultaneous Life as Three Persons._] give the
exact words used by an office associate to describe my figure after the
age of forty-three.)
Nearly all my professional life has been under my legal name. It has
been completely apart from my avocation of female-impersonator. I have
sometimes thought I might be an instance of the dual personality
recognized by psychologists. Only, while living out either side of my
own duality, I have always had a complete memory of the other side and
recognized the oneness of my ego in my two widely opposed careers.
In my middle twenties, I lived under _three_ names and personalities. I
worked seven hours a day for a legal journal as “Earl Lind.” Because
under that name I had called on its editor to persuade him to publish my
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, representing myself as merely its
author’s agent. The editor was in his sixties, and happening just then
to need an assistant, immediately hired me, never questioning the
truthfulness of my representations as to who I was. He was at the time
also one of the leading criminal lawyers in New York City. He employed
me in all sorts of confidential capacities and let me into many of the
secrets of his clients. Of course I would never have proved false to his
trust, even though he never knew who I really was and where I lived. I
attended court with him as his clerk. I learned all the intricacies of
establishing a false alibi for a wealthy androgyne whom he represented
in a case originating in blackmail by an adolescent. I was his assistant
while he was defending a client from prosecution by Anthony Comstock,
when the latter gentleman was personally acquainted with me under the
name of “Earl Lind,” and knew I was trying to get the [Sidenote: _Court
Employee Was Ultra-Criminal._] AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE published,
which he had already interdicted.
Thus I was, in a sense, a court employee of New York City, while at the
same time one of its greatest criminals—according to a statute that is a
legacy from the Dark Ages.
Simultaneously with my career as lawyer’s clerk, I taught school five
evenings a week under my legal name, and every Saturday evening took up
my avocation of female-impersonator under the name of “Jennie June.”
Though I passed as three separate personalities within the same week,
they had—poor things—to share the identic body alternately.
NECESSITY OF ALIASES: I have used five: Raphael Werther, Ralph Werther,
Earl Lind, Jennie June, and Pussie. When I began my double life, I told
the Underworld my legal name was Raphael Werther. I named myself after
“the Prince of Painters,” because he was the greatest ultra-androgyne
who ever lived. He was my idol—my ideal. I wished him to pass through
the earthly life all over again in my body. I further named myself after
“the Prince of Amatory Melancholiacs” since I was myself such during my
teens. Werther was Gœthe himself, the most brilliant and most versatile
man, “the Prince of Men,” born subsequently to the Shakespeare-Author
(Francis Bacon).
As for the genesis of my first feminine name, I chose “Jennie” at four.
I have always considered it the most feminine of names. When I began my
double life, I appended “June.” I adopted that surname because of its
beautiful associations, as well as [Sidenote: _Choosing Aliases._]
because of the repetition of the _j_ and _n_. I have always considered
“Jennie June” as the most exquisite of names: the poetic name; the magic
name; the “divine” name (in the sense that we speak of the “divine” or
“godlike” human form). I later substituted the feminine “Pussie” because
so nicknamed, much to my delight, by the tremendously virile.
I later adopted “Earl” primarily because it rhymes with “girl”, the
creature of enchantment that I longed to be, and secondarily because it
arouses noble ideas. I adopted “Lind” after Jennie Lind, one of my
models.
Perhaps these fancies about names are proof of insanity. A medical
reviewer of my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, who devoted only five
minutes to the 70,000 words, declared me “clearly insane.”
When I transferred my female-impersonations from Mulberry Street to the
Fourteenth Street Rialto, incredulity occasioned my transliterating the
fancy “Raphael” to prosaic “Ralph.”
As a result of my 1905 court martial making the names “Ralph Werther”
and “Jennie June” known to some army heads, I found it advisable, when
in 1907 renewing my kind of army life for seven years, to choose new
masculine and feminine names. I feared it might become known to the army
heads that the fairie “Jennie June” had transferred “her” stage for
female-impersonations to a distant military post. Hence the
substitutions of “Earl Lind” and “Pussie.”
On a single day I have had to sign myself with four different names.
Always after writing my signature, I must review it painstakingly to
make sure I have put down the proper one. Only once I have made
[Sidenote: _Two Handwritings._] a mistake. In receipting for a
registered letter addressed “Earl Lind, General Delivery,” I signed my
legal name. To the clerk’s inquiry I replied that I had been authorized
by Lind. He sent word to Lind for written authorization, which was
promptly despatched.
I have had to acquire two entirely distinct handwritings—the second for
my numerous love letters.[25] None were ever written more mushy than
those of “Jennie June” and I guarded against their ever being traceable
to the intellectual and puritan “Ralph Werther” (by which name I refer
to my every-day self in my books). I have often, within an hour, written
letters in the two different hands.
CONFIDANTS: Throughout the three decades of my double life, I have,
outside several physicians, disclosed it only to nine confidants of my
every-day circle. One expressed his amazement that I should disclose it
at all, affirming that even my best friend would be likely to get me
thrown out of my economic and social position. All my lay confidants,
however, proved helpful and compassionate excepting one, who, while
never disclosing my secret, dropped me from his friendship, although we
had been the very closest of Platonic friends. One physician brought
about my expulsion from the university and made me a Bowery outcast and
fairie.
Because of the terrible persecutions inflicted by the criminally-minded
“saints” who happened to be born sexually full-fledged, hardly a single
cultured androgyne ever betrays his bisexuality to a single confidant
[Sidenote: _Author’s Contribution to Sociology._] of his every-day
circle excepting the tremendously virile bachelor whom he may have
chosen as soul-mate. I am an exception in outspokenness. Decades ago I
rose above the prudery and bias with which most leaders of thought are
to-day bound hand and foot. I desire that men interested in the
improvement of the human race, and in the question of justice to all
classes, have the opportunity of getting at the facts concerning the
atypic and atavic types with whom I have been intimately thrown through
having been foreordained to pass a large part of my life in the
Underworld.
Part Three:
The Fairie Boy
I. Female-Impersonation.
In PART THREE, I shall outline what kind of adult career is the natural
sequel of the childhood and adolescence described in PART TWO; what kind
of adult career is bound up with the physique and psyche with which I am
endowed. I shall disclose what Providence had in store for the youthful
religious prodigy of the Connecticut hills—the delicate, lilliputian,
chicken-hearted girl-boy—after he had been swallowed up in New York’s
millions.
Since ultra-androgynes are, in a sense, instances of dual personality—a
male soul and a female soul inhabiting the same brain and body—it is
natural for them to live a double life.
Moreover, as the “classy,” hypocritical, and bigoted Overworld considers
a bisexual as monster and outcast, I was _driven_ to a career in the
democratic, frank, and liberal-minded Underworld. While my male soul was
a leader in scholarship at the university uptown, my female soul, one
evening a week, flaunted itself as a French doll-baby in the shadowy
haunts of night life downtown.
Since my student and subsequent professional career were prosaic, I
leave them almost unmentioned [Sidenote: _The Fourth Sex._] throughout
PART THREE. I, however, always gave them first place in my life. But I
here confine myself to what I experienced and learned while
impersonating a French doll-baby because it constitutes something novel
to most readers.
Indeed PARTS THREE, FOUR, and FIVE portray the social life and
diversions of the most cultured New York coterie of THE THIRD SEX during
the last decade of the nineteenth century. For, while little has yet
been published about instinctive female-impersonators because of the
prudery of the sexually full-fledged, they form (necessarily _sub rosa_)
quite a large class of society—about one out of every three hundred
physical males. During the last decade of the nineteenth century, the
Fourteenth Street Rialto was their chief stamping-ground in the New York
metropolitan district. I became acquainted with them because during the
decade indicated, I was myself in my prime as a female-impersonator in
two out of the three principal bright-light quarters of the metropolitan
district.
[There exists also A FOURTH SEX, the gynanders. But experience has not
qualified me to describe them in detail. That task awaits some brave,
high-minded, and brilliant _physical_ female. See, however, chapter on
GYNANDERS in my RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD.]
The Overworld has enjoined complete silence about female-impersonators
because of their thoroughly false view that any adolescent adopting the
role must do so from moral depravity. They argue: “If I myself adopted
the role, it could only be through unspeakable depravity. Ergo, the same
is true for every male.” They overlook the fact that Nature did not
[Sidenote: _Female-Impersonation Instinctive._] make all anatomical
males of like passions. What would be moral depravity for one is not for
another.
Instinctive female-impersonators are sexual cripples from their mother’s
womb. They had no choice in the matter. Thus they merit pity rather than
scorn. Further, since their impersonations occasion no detriment to any
one, but are a source of much entertainment to their sexually
full-fledged associates, they are a positive ethical good. All
beneficent talents that the Creator has distributed among mankind must
have been meant for use—not for strangling.
As to the ethical question, I myself, who from the age of nineteen to
thirty-one had an intensive career as fairie—female-impersonator, can
truthfully state, on arrival in my late forties, that I was not once,
during that career, guilty of an irreligious or unethical act—excepting
alone that I seriously impaired my own health. But it is doubtful
whether the impairment was permanent. In my late forties, my physical
vigor is not at a lower level compared with males of my own age than it
was during my childhood. My health has always been delicate.
Numerous wives and mothers suffer in health from the sex passion as much
as I. If my having had my health wrecked by it proves it immoral for me
and to be legally repressed, then the yielding to it by wedded pairs is
equally immoral and to be interdicted. If it be objected that the human
race is perpetuated by the latter, I answer that this consideration
would only permit to married couples a sex-union when offspring was the
object—that is, for a cultured couple, from one to three times
throughout their married life.
[Sidenote: _Depilation._]
In the description of my own physique and psyche, I have indicated the
general characteristics of the extreme type of androgynes foreordained
to become quasi-public female-impersonators. But the outstanding
feminesque physical stigmata of each “fairie” (as they are commonly
called in the United States) tend to be _sui generis_. In one it is
natural beardlessness alone. In another, the possession of female
breasts alone. In a third, the female skeletal shape, particularly an
over-long spine, short legs, and broad pelvis. In a fourth, natural
soprano voice. Etc.
Whoever has beheld an instinctive female-impersonator when keyed up,
must confess that this type are _born_ actors—or “actresses,” as they
prefer to be called. Their histrionic skill is not primarily the result
of practice or instruction.
Their audiences have marvelled because the impersonators’ faces are
devoid of any sign of beardal hair. Usually the beard is eradicated. It
is allowed to grow for a full week in seclusion. By means of a mask of
depilatory wax, every hair is then pulled out by the roots, the outer
portion having become embedded, like hair in wall-plaster. For three
weeks, the face is as glabrous as a baby’s. Then the week’s seclusion
and the final excruciatingly painful yank of the wax mask all over
again. The process has no permanent effect, either good or bad.
All the impersonators adopt a fancy feminine name, as Pansy, Daisy, and
Lily. Often the names of living star actresses are adopted and “dragged
into the mud,” as people say. For while the career of a
female-impersonator is a purely physiological and [Sidenote: _Obedience
to Nature Gave Peace._] psychological phenomenon, it is incorrectly
regarded as deepdyed immorality.
All impersonators belonging to the middle and upper classes also choose
a masculine alias, represented in the Underworld to be their legal name.
They do not wish to risk disgrace to their family name. Moreover, on
their sprees in the bright-light districts, they are careful to wear
nothing containing their every-day initials.
Except for a few weeks, I myself was only an avocational
impersonator. I gave to it only three hours a week, as compared with
109 waking hours to my student (or later, professional) life. I did
not adopt the avocation until near the close of my sophomore year.
Almost throughout the preceding twenty-four months, however, I had
fought violently against almost irresistible tendencies to disappear
for an evening in the Underworld on a female-impersonation spree.
But my ultra-puritan education had injected into me such a moral
horror of female-impersonation that I was able to resist the
tendencies for two whole years after the date that Nature ordained
them to begin.
The “French doll-baby” spirit had dwelt in my brain since birth.
Throughout my life down to nineteen, it had manifested itself strongly,
although after fourteen I had struggled to crucify it. At nineteen, it
refused longer to be suppressed. I (the puritan, book-worm spirit in me)
had to arrange a compromise. I promised to yield my physical and mental
powers to it only one evening each week. And the doll-baby spirit was
satisfied. Previously I had been the most melancholy person in the
university. But dating from the [Sidenote: _My Dual Personality._]
compromise, my life flowed on peacefully and blissfully. Only
occasionally—moments while suffused with ambition to make a name for
myself in the intellectual and philanthropic world—would I turn against
the doll-baby spirit with abhorrence, and ask myself how I could ever
give place to it.
For the serious work of life, I realized that I must practically
strangle the feminine side of my duality outside the three hours a week
during which I conceded to it full possession of my personality. While
at my every-day tasks, I sought to forget the doll-baby spirit that
dwelt in my brain side by side with the scholar spirit.
[Sidenote: _The Fairie Boy._]
II. A Typical Female-Impersonation Spree.
The one evening a week on which I (the scholar spirit) surrendered, I
called “going on a female-impersonation spree.” The typical spree did
not occur until the December (1894) of my senior year. I had become
somewhat adept in the art of impersonation through a year’s
apprenticeship in the Mulberry Street Italian quarter. As that training
has been detailed in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE and THE RIDDLE OF
THE UNDERWORLD, I omit it here.
On the afternoon preceding a spree, I would be overwhelmed with dread
and melancholia. I dreaded disclosure, which I realized would mean
expulsion from the university because of the full-fledged man’s horror
of a sexual cripple. I dreaded possible disfigurement by blows—or even
murder—by one of the numerous prudes who detest extreme effeminacy in a
male (supposed). I was melancholy because about to embark on something
that my puritan training had impressed me as in the highest degree
disgraceful, and that I secretly wished I did not have to undertake. But
to be contented and even happy for the following week and to guarantee
that tranquillity necessary for the best scholarly success, the weekly
spree was unavoidable.
Only a handful of upper-class female-impersonators adopt feminine attire
for street wear. For myself (being a university student, and
subsequently an honored member of a learned profession) it was too
[Sidenote: _Fairies Are Extreme Dressers._] risky. I merely kept some
feminine finery locked up in my room for occasional decoration of my
person while I gazed in the mirror. But during the eighteen months that
my sprees were staged in the Fourteenth Street Rialto and the six years
on or near military reservations in New York’s suburbs, my attire was as
fancy and flashy as a youth dare adopt. Fairies are extreme dressers and
excessively vain. To strange adolescents whom I passed on the street I
proclaimed myself as a female-impersonator through always wearing white
kids and large red neck-bow with fringed ends hanging down over my
lapels.
I would set out from my lodgings with the feelings of a soldier entering
a terrific battle from which he realizes he may never return. As the car
carried me farther and farther from where I staged the puritan student
life and nearer and nearer to where I staged the “French doll-baby”
life, my overwhelming melancholia would gradually give way to a sense of
gladness that in a few minutes I would find myself again on “Jennie
June’s” stamping-ground. I had left at home all my masculinity (a very
poor variety). The innate feminine, strangled for a week in order that I
might climb, round by round, the ladder to an honored place in the
learned world, now held complete sway.
During the last decade of the 19th century, the Fourteenth Street Rialto
ranked second only to the “Tenderloin” as an amusement center in the
entire metropolitan district. While it still holds the same rank in
1921, its present night life is only a shadow of what it was. A quarter
of a century ago, New York was wide-open, whereas for more than a
decade, the lid has been down tight. Promenading the Rialto on
[Sidenote: _The Fourteenth Street Rialto._] an evening of 1921, the
pedestrian would conclude that no such phenomenon as sex attraction
existed. But during the period that I was an habitué, the Fourteenth
Street Rialto was as gay as European bright-light districts, which I was
fated to explore.
[Illustration:
Fourteenth Street Rialto, Stamping-Ground of the Hermaphroditoi
]
[Illustration:
Stuyvesant Square, One of Jennie June’s Stamping Grounds
(Usually the evening was spent on the bench where two girls are seated
in picture.)
]
The Rialto is confined principally between Third Avenue and Broadway.
While I was an habitué, theatres, museums for men only, drinking
palaces, gambling joints, and worse abounded.
On pleasant evenings, when the sidewalks were thronged with smartly
dressed adolescent pleasure seekers, I would promenade—up and down, up
and down—until I chanced to meet a coterie of young bloods who invited
me to join them. Our evenings would be spent in pool-rooms, gambling
joints, beer gardens of ill repute, or worse resorts. Nature made me
proof against the vices I there witnessed. My only weakness was the
craze for female-impersonation. My greatest joy was to flaunt myself as
a bisexual before those who did not know my identity. I realized that
every soul among my Rialto associates was turning his or her back on the
Creator. But I was always determined to give Him first place in my
affections. However, for fear of bringing reproach on religion if _I_
made myself its representative—_I_, a misunderstood female-impersonator,
whom even the Underworld in general regarded as one of the most impious
of humans—I never mentioned the theme except under extraordinary
circumstances.
If the weather were bad, I would immediately enter a beer-garden and
call for sarsaparilla. I would consume it in driblets while watching for
the opportunity [Sidenote: _Female-Impersonators Popular._] to join some
tremendously virile bachelors out for a lark.
On the typical evening I have chosen to describe of my many passed in
the Rialto, I happened to run across several youthful Lotharios waiting
in front of a theatre for something “to turn up”. Only one adolescent
“male” out of three thousand in New York City adopts the role of
quasi-public female-impersonator. A Rialto habitué therefore does not
often run up against one. Judging by my own experience, a
female-impersonator proves an attraction of the first order for young
bloods having time hanging heavy on their hands. Thus this coterie—as
many others have done—called out jubilantly on catching sight of me:
“Hello Jennie June!” ... “Hello sweetheart! That is what you want us to
call you, isn’t it?” ... “Let me introduce you to Mr. A and Mr. B. They
have never met a female-impersonator, and are dead anxious to see you
take off a girl.”
“And you are Jennie June, are you?” A and B exclaimed. “We have heard a
lot about you and longed to meet you.”
“Bon soir, messieurs,” I replied. I had a liking for addressing
chance-met beaux in a foreign tongue. I happened to be the foremost
linguist among the university students.
“Bon soir, Jennie, bon soir!”
“Meine sehr geliebten junge Herren, wie geht’s bei Ihnen?” I continued
with a twinkle in my eye.
“Ganz gut,” sounded the reply. New York is a Babel. On an hour’s
promenade in the Rialto, conversation in a score of languages would
impinge on one’s [Sidenote: _Female-Impersonators Gifted._] ear. Bright
young men brought up in a New York foreign colony acquire a score of the
commonest expressions in several languages.
“I miei amici, siete amati da me,” I next declared in a third language.
“Pee-an-gou, savez? We don’t understand Dago, Jennie. Tell us in
American how much you love us.”
I reply in Spanish: “Esto es lo mejor que podemos hacer. Hablemos
ingles.”
“Bert, Jennie seems to be a bright fellow—or girl—doesn’t she? All these
impersonators seem to be brainy. Jennie, I don’t know whether to call
you a fellow or a girl. Which is proper?”
“Girl, of course,” I replied with a smile.
“Well, fellows, Jennie June is part _he_ and part _she_. _He_ wears
trousers, but _she_ has breasts just like a woman and wants us fellows
to regard her as a girl.”
“Well, Jennie, if you are a girl, why do you wear breeches? And why
don’t you let your hair grow long?”
“Because I have the misfortune to be only part girl. I am only a girl
incarnated in a boy’s body. But besides my girl’s mind, my entire body
is shaped very much like a girl’s and I possess her bone and muscular
systems. Because I am part boy, the law prohibits to me my natural or
instinctive apparel. But you will be so kind as to overlook my not
appearing before you in gown and picture hat, won’t you? I will make up
for that lack by out-womaning woman in my actions. It is my nature to
give up all I have, and do all I can, for the entertainment of
_heroes_—as you manly fellows seem to be.”
[Sidenote: _The Hotel Comfort._]
“Jennie, let’s walk around to the ladies’ parlor of the Hotel
Comfort[26] and have a few drinks.”
We arrived in an artistically furnished room 25 feet by 75. At one side
was a bar from which waiters continuously carried drinks to the
fifty-odd couples seated around the small ornamental tables which
occupied most of the floor. Nearly all the patrons were under thirty,
and absolutely all, highfliers sexually. The vast bulk merely smoked,
drank, and “chinned.” Only a few were playing cards for money. All were
refined and orderly. I have never circulated among more delightful
people than I met frequently at the Hotel Comfort.
I had become well acquainted with the proprietor and all his employees.
For more than a year the “hotel” was substantially the home of my
feminine personality, “Jennie June.” But this refined and luxurious
“hotel” would have tolerated only a cultured and outwardly modest
female-impersonator. Most examples of that biological sport were far
below the standards of the Hotel Comfort, and would have been barred.
But I was looked upon as a personality likely to attract a pecuniarily
desirable class of patronage.
My five companions and I spent an hour sipping beverages.
[While during my twelve years as quasi-public female-impersonator, my
companions always drank intoxicants, I always called for non-alcoholics.
The latter’s price was double in order to discourage the consumption of
temperance drinks. I had been brought up to loathe alcoholics, and
during my twelve years intimacy with heavy drinkers, came to a more and
more rational loathing.
[Sidenote: _No Alcohol, No Venereal Disease._]
Alcoholics are by far the greatest curse of the Caucasian race. I have
had almost unequalled opportunities for studying venereal diseases. My
twelve years of having roues and _filles de joies_ for bosom friends
taught me that the presence of alcohol in the blood is the _sine qua
non_ of venereal disease. Perhaps my greatest contribution to the
betterment and happiness of humanity is the epigram original with
myself: NO ALCOHOL, NO VENEREAL DISEASE. But it is necessary to be a
TOTAL ABSTAINER. Mere moderation does not confer immunity. The total
abstainer may possibly contract venereal disease, but it is sure to be
benign, almost negligible, and inflicting no permanent injury. Dr.
Robert W. Shufeldt, who as army surgeon had extensive experience in the
treatment of venereal disease, wrote in the JOURNAL OF UROLOGY AND
SEXOLOGY, 1917, page 458: “In my opinion, alcohol bears the
responsibility more than any other single agent—indeed more than all the
others put together—for ensuring venereal infection.”]
“Jennie, why not take a cocktail instead of a lemonade? We want to warm
you up. Then you will give us some of your recitations and songs. Won’t
you drink a few cocktails for my sake?”
“I would not put the poison into my system for anybody! I do not need
that kind of stimulant. You know what kind I need to get warmed up to
declaiming and singing!
[Sidenote: _Female-Impersonate Intoxication._]
“‘I am a-thirst, but not for wine;
The stimulant I long for is divine;
Poured only from your eyes in mine!
I am a-cold, and lagging lame;
Life creeps along my chilled frame;
Your love will fan it into flame.
I am a-hungered, but the bread I want;
The food that e’er my thoughts doth haunt;
Is your sweet speech, for which I pant!’”[27]
“If that is all the stimulant you need, Jennie, it can easily be
supplied.”
We were the merriest party in the parlor. The attentions of my beaux
were having their usual effect. To achieve my best success at
female-impersonation, the stimulus of an appreciative and responsive
audience of youthful Lotharios was necessary. Our hilarity was more and
more attracting the eyes and ears of all other guests. Some recognized
me as a female-impersonator. Calls began to reach me: “O you Jennie
June, give us an impersonation of a prima donna!” The old-timers were
remarking to new patrons of the “hostelry”: “The little fellow with the
red bow is a fairie!”
Hypnotized by the adulation of those whom I looked upon as demigods, as
well as by the well-disposed attention of the other hundred-odd guests
attracted by my unique, yet fairly modest, behavior, I broke into the
“Old Oaken Bucket”—a song affording unusual opportunity to display my
masculine-feminine tones: below middle A, baritone; from A upward, alto;
with an occasional soprano and tenor modulation thrown in just to excite
wonder. I fancy my singing voice is unusual in its variety of possible
modulation [Sidenote: _Man and Woman in One Body._] as a result of my
body being both male and female. In my singing voice particularly, these
two elements are ever striving for the upper hand. One stanza each of
several songs then in vogue followed: “After the Ball Was Over”; “Sweet
Rosy O’Grady”; “Just Tell Them That You Saw Me”; etc.
Next I recited a dialogue, my naturally bland, sentimental, and
caressing voice now aping a cry-baby mademoiselle, and now a stern,
hoarse-voiced he-man. Now I burlesqued feminine airs and cadences; and
now strove after the most virile and dare-devil effects.
I was, while the focus for all eyes, conscious only of the joy of being
alive and in the midst of an admiring group. I experienced a feeling of
exultation that for a brief spell I was looked upon under my real
character—a bisexual. I was intoxicated with delight because
emancipated—though only for a few moments—from a hated dissimulation and
disguise, and enabled to be myself. Assuredly another personality than
that of my every-day book-worm self was in possession of my body and
faculties. I realized I was the same _I_ who was one of the leaders in
scholarship at the university. At the same time, I realized I was doing
things incongruous with that position.
At midnight, I bade my convives a reluctant adieu. Before boarding an
elevated train, I turned several corners abruptly and hid in the first
dark doorway to make sure of not being dogged. But no Rialto associate
ever did. After alighting from the train, I adopted the same strategy,
to make assurance doubly sure.[28]
[Sidenote: _Being “Dogged”._]
Arrived in my room, I first dropped to my knees to thank Providence for
restoration to my every-day world. I rejoiced that the ordeal of a
female-impersonation spree was over for a week. But the following days,
while resting my mind for a moment from hard study, I gloated over the
memory of my latest associations, as a member of the gentle sex, with
the tremendously virile type of adolescent.
=Note.—See “Memories” in Part VIII.=
[Sidenote: _The Fairie Boy._]
III. The Gambler.
“Where is my wandering boy to-night—
The boy of my tenderest care,
The boy that was once my joy and light,
The child of my love and prayer?”
In chapter III I shall portray one of the most remarkable of the
Adonises that I met during my 18-months Rialto career, to which the
present PART THREE is devoted, and in chapter IV, the most remarkable
youthful Hercules. Other Adonises of the Rialto are portrayed in my
RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD. The remainder of the present book, to the end
of Part V, will describe some of the most remarkable ultra-androgynes
(female-impersonators) that I met in the Rialto. For a description of my
most noteworthy “fallen angel” confidants, I refer to my RIDDLE, and to
my fourth book, now in preparation, SUSA, which gives the entire life of
the Queen of the Rialto of the middle of the last decade of the
nineteenth century. As I was fated to become the most widely known
female-impersonator of the Rialto, Susa was the most widely known
vampire. Two detested and cordially loathed types, but actually not a
hundredth as bad as they had the name of being!
Numerous Rialto pals were adolescent professional gamblers. Because of
that, I have chosen to devote an entire chapter to a characterization of
the type. More than that, the young blood forming the subject of the
present chapter was my “No. 1” friend among the couple of hundred
Lotharios with whom I [Sidenote: _New York’s Beau Brummel._] mingled in
the Rialto. He became my favorite because he was the most elegantly
dressed—and close to the handsomest—adolescent I ever met. Above all, he
possessed the most genial disposition.
Has the reader ever remarked that just that kind of disposition
generally goes hand in hand with deceit and hypocrisy? Later—to my
bitterest sorrow—the hero-boy now being described was discovered to be
the greatest hypocrite I ever met. In January, 1895, I made his
acquaintance. For half-a-year he manifested the greatest affection—all
feigned as I later found. When he had wrung me dry, he—entirely
unexpectedly—flourished a loaded revolver around my head, and cried: “If
you ever speak to me again, or even come into the same room, I will put
a bullet through your head!”[29]
This _quondam_ soul-mate had such a craze for acquiring money—generally
by foul means—as I have never witnessed in another. He made it a
condition of our spending a couple of hours together that I put into his
palm a five-dollar bill. But though I could get plenty of other company
of his type gratis, I was so fascinated with _him_ that I never gave a
second thought to the self-sacrifice that such gifts demanded during my
student days. While promenading the streets with _him_, I would, every
other minute, glance into his face, reflecting: “The handsomest and best
dressed young fellow of the Rialto is MINE.” While we were seated in a
theatre together, I would often gaze into _his_ face instead of at the
players, reflecting: “New York’s Beau Brummel is MY SOULMATE.” For no
soft hair, no rosebud cheeks in a [Sidenote: _Apostrophe to Lost
Soul-mate._] male, no arched eyebrows—ever surpassed those of the Adonis
now being described. _He_ was _perfection_ in face, head, and body. _He_
was _perfection_ in dress. _He_ was _perfection_ in disposition—ONLY HE
WAS ULTRA-DECEITFUL.
* * * * *
BUDDIE MCDONALD! Whom for over twenty-five years I have not seen or had
news of! I am here addressing you because it is the only possible way to
get through a message. If these lines should ever fall under your eyes,
and you should, in this chapter, recognize yourself—somewhat covered in
order to hide our identities—I wish to tell you that I have through the
years always granted you first place in my heart after my mother alone,
and if we could ever run across one another, I still stand ready to
enslave myself to you, notwithstanding you doubtless have lost (because
age deals no differently with you than with all other sons and daughters
of Adam) nearly all your litheness and charm. But I still love you for
what you were in your earlier twenties. Throughout a quarter of a
century I have been longing and waiting for a chance encounter with you.
Many times have I eyed every man passed in New York’s crowds hoping to
recognize your face. Nothing would I like better than to spend my
declining years knit to your genial personality and heroic, grand-aired
spirit. I freely pardon your past treachery—though it almost drove me
insane—if only you would condescend to let my soul be knit to yours
until death do us part!
* * * * *
BUDDIE MCDONALD! The most precious of all names! If it were my idol’s
legal name, I would not [Sidenote: _The Gambler’s Antecedents._]
disclose it. It was the alias he used in the Rialto and the only name I
knew him by.
Buddie told me that he was born and brought up on a farm near Lake
Ontario. His people were Methodists. He had always gone to Sunday school
and Epworth league, because his parents required it. For he was a black
sheep by birth—the only one in his little rural community. When
nineteen, the seventeen-year daughter of a neighbor appeared with her
parents before a justice of the peace. Buddie lived with his child-wife
only three days and then stole away for parts unknown. What pangs the
poor girl must have suffered thus to lose a genuine Adonis—in beauty one
man out of a thousand—to the arms of the demimonde! She had doubtless
been comforting herself and congratulating herself that she had won for
life as her helpmeet the most bewitching young blood of the community.
And after just three days to be forever left in the lurch!
“Buddie McDonald” immediately bobbed up in the Rialto under that alias.
In the Rialto! At that time one of the two chief amusement and gambling
centers of the Western Continent, the magnet for the black sheep of
pious families all over the United States. He immediately adopted the
profession of card sharper, being endowed with the peculiar mentality
necessary.
While we were pals, he was twenty-two—just a year older than myself.
From ten to midnight one evening each week, I dogged him in one of the
half-dozen gambling joints among which he divided his “working” hours.
[Sidenote: _Fairie a Bachelor of Arts._]
I was too much of a goody-goody ever to gamble myself. I would merely
sit for hours as spectator. It was intense pleasure merely to have under
my eyes the type of adolescent that sows wild oats.
Among my associates in the Rialto resorts were youthful actors playing
at the several theatres, racetrack book-makers, wealthy adolescents who
spent their evenings sipping gross pleasures, and highfliers of the
feminine persuasion—at that date as thick in the Rialto as flies in
summer around an open jug of molasses.
I was now in my third year of leading a double life. My every-day circle
was without suspicion. Outside my one evening per week in the Rialto, I
led a most industrious student life, even winning prizes. I had already
been awarded the bachelor’s degree _cum laude_ and was in my first year
of graduate study. Of course I had never revealed to any Rialto
associate that I was a university student. I was known there merely as
“Jennie June,” while the few who took the trouble to inquire my legal
name never questioned “Ralph Werther.” And my three most intimate
Lothario friends of the Rialto were too busy evenings—Martin and
Paul,[30] chasing chippies, and Buddie, victimizing youthful
greenhorns—to investigate where I spent my time while not in the Rialto.
They have each asked me where I lived. I gave a fictitious address,
hoping they would not investigate. And they never did. And my three most
intimate androgyne friends—Roland Reeves, Eunice, and Phyllis—were, like
myself, living a double life incognito, and thus [Sidenote: “_Things Are
Not What They Seem._”] were the more inclined to respect my
disinclination to refer to my every-day life.
To the university circle I thus continued the “innocent” from whose view
Heaven had mercifully shut off the seamy side of life, particularly the
Underworld. They declared they never saw any one with such weak
sexuality! But I actually knew a thousand times as much about passion
and crime as any one of them. Some complained because I “never
associated with men and learned human nature”! But I secretly knew human
nature far better than any of them. They thought that my feminine
predilections and lack of worldly wisdom (seeming) were due to my being
a recluse! And I was a recluse so far as concerned university social
affairs. For I elected to take my diversions as a mademoiselle—not as a
gallant.
BUT TO RETURN TO BUDDIE: I have picked out for description that one of
my numerous evenings spent in part with him which best illustrates his
character and our relations. Afternoons and evenings he hung around
fashionable hotel lobbies and exhibition halls to scrape acquaintance
with moderately wealthy and sportily inclined Reubs making their first
trip to New York. With his unmatched geniality and hypocrisy, he was
decidedly successful in getting a line aboard some “sport” from upstate,
and taking him in tow. For with Buddie, it was “Brother, this” and
“Brother, that”. A large proportion of the Reubs whom Buddie
condescended to buttonhole congratulated themselves doubtless on their
good luck in happening on such a friendly New Yorker—a gentleman of
leisure and a big roll of yellow backs (which Buddie always took pains
to wave before the eyes of Reubs, a manoeuvre [Sidenote: _Gambling a
Master Passion._] tending to hypnotise them) who condescended to show
them the sights of the metropolis, and, above all, take them where they
_could quadruple and quintuple their funds in a single evening_. The
passion for enrichment by a stroke of luck is, after woman and wine, the
chief pitfall for “he-men.” An appeal to this craze in Reubs ambitious
to be “sports” has good prospects of success for brainy metropolitan
prestidigitators.
On Buddie’s and my entering into a solemn contract—very similar to a
marriage bond—to be “best friends,” he agreed to reserve one entire
evening each week for me alone. But it was only the fourth that I had to
sit in a Fourteenth Street restaurant for two long hours waiting in
vain. I was wiping my tear-bedimmed eyes four times a minute. Other
diners probably thought I was experiencing some overwhelming
bereavement.
At ten I made the rounds of the gambling joints frequented by my
soul-mate. I finally caught sight of his wondrous blonde hair and
peachlike cheeks in the very last—as always happens—of his half-dozen
stamping grounds. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, it was
pre-eminently New York’s Monte Carlo (which name I give it in this
book). The walls were paneled in rosewood. Every six feet a heavy
gilt-framed plate-glass mirror reached half-way to the 15-foot ceiling.
The latter was painted with Cupids and Venuses, in all sorts of poses,
amid fleecy clouds floating in such a blue sky as is actually beheld
only in Italy. The myriads of crystal prisms pendent from the huge
chandeliers emitted all the colors of the spectrum. The floor was
mosaic—in such exquisite patterns that it seemed a sin to set foot on
it. The [Sidenote: _In New York’s Monte Carlo._] ebony furniture was
inlaid with mother-of-pearl in floral patterns.
I rushed to Buddie’s side noiselessly because, with three other smartly
dressed young bloods, he was absorbed in a game. I knelt beside my
hero-boy with head against his arm.
When the hand was played out, Buddie, throwing at me the sweetest of
smiles, addressed the only one of the four who was a stranger: “Mr.
Myers, let me introduce Jennie June, the female-impersonator. I am used
to her hanging around while we fellows are playing. Do not let her
presence distract you. Jennie and I call each other ‘Best Friend.’
Perhaps you never before ran up against a person who is one-third man,
one-third woman, and one-third infant. That explains why she nestles up
against me so affectionately.”
But Mr. Myers appeared to be unutterably shocked. Particularly since I
was in male attire. He appeared incredulous. He had never even dreamed
that a third sex exists.
After an hour Buddie said: “Jennie, take my keys, go to my room, and
wait for me there. Because I will not get home until long after
midnight.”
* * * * *
On arrival he exclaimed: “Jennie, what do you think of your new friend,
Mr. Abraham Myers, the Beau Brummel of Myersville upstate, who is
enjoying his first visit to our village?”
“I think, Buddie, that before to-night he had never been in any place
worse than a church social. His evening in the Monte Carlo must have
been an eyeopener. [Sidenote: _Crooks Are Boastful._] Whenever my gaze
fell on the poor innocent, the words of the Bible went through my head:
‘He is led as a lamb to the slaughter! And as a sheep before her
shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth!’ I am sorry my hero-boy
stoops to take advantage of an unsophisticated Reub!”
While we ate our midnight lunch, Buddie confided his evening’s
adventure. I was always inquisitive about the ways and habits of the
tremendously virile—how they looked upon the mystery we call “life”—and
habitually put to my numerous soul-mates a long list of questions in
case they did not spontaneously overflow. But it is an earmark of crooks
to be garrulous with their soul-mates. The former are proud of their
sharpwittedness and gloat in unburdening their minds to some one they
think they can trust. Their characteristic bragging to confidants is one
of the chief means by which many of them finally fall within the toils
of the law.
Secondly, Buddie was my soul-mate. At that date, we felt ourselves
husband and wife. For I am myself fundamentally a woman, though
possessing the male primary determinants. The relationship of knit
souls—amalgamation of two separate personalities of opposite sex into
ONE human being—I have discovered tends to mutual confidences. I had
already several times been in Buddie’s presence when he had an intended
victim (always a Reub) in tow, and saw through everything even if he had
not told me. If it be asked how I, pretending to be of high morals,
could associate with sharpers, I answer: LOVE IS BLIND. In my subsequent
Bowery period, described in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN [Sidenote: _Fairies
Best Stool Pigeons._] ANDROGYNE and THE RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD, I was
knit into one being with youthful burglars, who, to whet my admiration
for themselves, have entertained me with accounts of their burgling
houses and demonstrated their truthfulness by exhibiting terrible scars
from gunshot wounds suffered as they were fleeing from a burglary they
had “made a mess of.” I would never have thought of contributing in any
way to bring them to justice; first, because I slavishly adored them,
and secondly, because I knew I would be murdered if they should ever
entertain the least suspicion that I would “peach.”
Experience taught me, during my six years in New York’s Underworld, that
crooks are particularly prone to confess to a fairie intimate. For they
considered fairies (under the legal ban of ten years’ imprisonment in
New York) far worse criminals and far worse defiers of the law than
themselves. Fairies—they thought—would not dare “peach.”
Fairies would serve as the best stool pigeons for ferreting out thieves,
just as keen _filles de joie_ are employed as detectives.
Buddie McDonald had already received many proofs that I idolized him and
would never do anything to his detriment. True: five months later he did
“shake” me definitely and emphatically. But this was because he had
discovered he had wrung out of me all the money he could; he had become
financially independent beyond his wildest dreams; and I had come to be
a terrible bore through hanging around his room several times a week and
demonstrating myself insatiable.
[Sidenote: _The Abraham Myers Adventure._]
I summarize, as nearly as I can recollect, Buddie’s account of the
Abraham Myers adventure.
* * * * *
It was on account of my roping Abraham in, Jennie, that I had to cause
you that terrible crying spell at the restaurant. But you will sure
forgive me when you come to realize that it is not every afternoon that
a fellow comes across a hundred-dollar wad on the floor of Madison
Square Garden waiting for some bloke to pick her up.
While Abe and I were watching the poor devils spinning around the track,
I slyly pumped out that he is the only son and hope of Jonathan Myers,
owner of the knitting-mill that put Myersville on the map. Having once
been a hayseed myself, Jennie, I know what pulls strong with them. So,
to get a line aboard Abe, I first gave him an hour of soft soap. “Yes,
brother, I spent the summer of 1892 up in Squeedunk in your part of the
state. It sure is a garden of Eden.... How did this year’s potato crop
pan out?... And I myself know everything from A to Z about breaking in a
colt. I was raised on a farm up in New Hampshire.”
After Abe showed he thought I am the best fellow ever and I had found
him to be an easy mark, it was time to discuss money. “Money, brother!
You have a little and you love it. If only a fellow has money, he can go
everywhere and have everything. Wouldn’t you like me to show where you
can take your money, AND IN THE SHAKE OF A LAMB’S TAIL MAKE MORE MONEY
OUT OF IT?”
Abraham right away bit hard. So I dropped the subject for an hour. I
didn’t want him to smell a [Sidenote: _Blarney Triumphant._] rat. And my
silence would all the more make him hanker after the magic place where
one could see his dough swell five-fold at a sitting.
After the first hour of blarney, I asked Abe to let me show him some of
the sights of the Tenderloin, which all red-blooded Reubs hanker to see.
“I swan!” he exclaimed. “I never believed such charming and handsome
ladies existed!” I next took him to the Waldorf to dine. Of course I did
not let him pay out a cent. Only one red-blooded hayseed out of a
hundred will, at the last, balk at sitting down at the card table, where
I can get every penny back with interest at 10,000 per cent. We
sharpwitted fellows have to take those chances, Jennie.
As we swilled such grub as Abe had never even smelled of, he
rubbernecked at the wonderful frescoes and stared at the polished marble
columns which made the great dining-room like a forest. “This place is
like what I have dreamed heaven to be!” he broke out over and over
again. He was so soft! “You are awful good, Mr. McDonald, to bring me to
see all these heavenly things. I never believed there lived such an
awful good fellow!” ... Hah hah hah, Jennie! He was clean daft!
But, Jennie, I would never humbug a friend that way. Specially you,
because you and I are “best friends.” You see, Jennie, Abe Myers was a
stranger with a big wad. I was loading him with favors and pulling the
wool over his eyes because my plan was to wring him dry before I let him
get out of my hands. Such tricks are what we smarter straight men of
Fourteenth Street are for. We have to live off the greenhorns....
[Sidenote: _How They Milk Cows on Fourteenth Street._]
Don’t, don’t begin to chew the rag, Jennie! My only sorrow is that I
haven’t enough dough. Abe Myers’ old man has barrels full. Abe will not
suffer more than a few hours on account of the eighty-odd bucks I wrung
out of him.
At nine we boarded a car for Fourteenth Street. We went into the
bar-room of the Monte Carlo and sent a few glasses of champagne chasing
after the many already swallowed. The poor innocent said his head swam!
Hah-hah! He acted bashful-like as if he had never before tasted a drop.
But he was too scart of being set down as a sissie to balk at another,
and still another, glass while I waited for Pedro and Tracy. For I had
phoned them to meet me at the Monte Carlo at nine to milk a cow. For
they are my regular partners, Jennie. They haven’t the brains to get a
line aboard a Reub, but know the ropes when I am at their elbow to give
them their cue. We have an understanding that I will later make good
their evening’s losses, or take my share of the winnings that I throw
into their hands. I guarantee that they will each be to the good by
one-tenth of the night’s clean-up; my share, for furnishing the brains
and taking all the risk, being eight-tenths.
Of course we made it look as if Pedro and Tracy dropped in by chance.
All three of us did our best to give Abraham the happiest hour of his
life. When the time was ripe, I said: “Fellows, what do you say to a
hand at cards?”
Pedro and Tracy seconded my motion. I watched Abe’s face to learn what I
could count on and how far I dared go. It looked awful sheepish, as you
said, Jennie. But I must say for Abraham that he is red-blooded
[Sidenote: _A “Reub” Seeing New York._] and would not back down in any
manly undertaking. Like ninety-nine out of every hundred Reubs wanting
to be sports, Abe Myers wouldn’t balk even though he felt in his bones
he was being led down to hell. But he barely lagged after us into the
card-room. But this was probably on account of his Methodist bringing
up, like my own. He could not possibly have thought we were plotting to
fleece him. As we swilled grub in the Waldorf, I had given his hand a
hearty shake when he told me he was a member of the Epworth League. I
said I also was, as really when I lived back home. Besides all three of
us had patted him on the back and lionized him. There were aristocrats
all about. And the Monte Carlo is such a high-class joint, decorated
like Vanderbilt’s palace. Abe probably thought—like he said about the
ceilings in the Waldorf: “Sure I ought not to mind the loss of a few
bucks. It is worth that to see all this heavenly art, so much beyond
anything I ever believed existed on earth. Besides Mr. McDonald has been
awfully good! Spent a mint of money on me! He sure couldn’t let any harm
befall me!”
For, Jennie, just that is the secret of getting the best of strangers.
Treat them just lovely until the moment comes to pluck out their
feathers.
We were soon buried in faro, as you saw while with us, Jennie. I played
the banker and the others staked their money against me upon the order
in which the cards would lie as dealt from the pack. The play ran on for
over two hours. We spoke hardly a word. First along we each staked a
dollar on each layout. But later five. For the first hour—while you were
watching, Jennie—I turned things Abe’s way a little.
[Sidenote: “_Death to the Traitor._”]
I wanted to get him awfully interested. When the time came to throw
things in the other direction, I had to send you home, Jennie, for fear
you would make some remark about my sleight-of-hand that would put
everything in bad. Of course if Abe had not been awful green at cards,
he would have got wise too.
And, Jennie, I remind you this once for all time. The saying is: “Death
to the traitor!” And I know that you love life better than death. See
how easy it would be for me to grab your throat and in a few minutes you
would be a goner without being able even to make a whisper. But I know
you could never do anything but help along your “hero-boy.”
After midnight, Jennie, there happened what I had been looking for. With
trembling hands, Abe opened up his wallet to let us see the three
one-dollar bills still lining it. He said awful plucky: “Fellows, I am
almost at the end of my tether. I need this bit until I can get some
dough from dad.” I felt sorry for the poor kid, patted him on the back,
and handed him ten dollars from my own wad. I said we would play till he
won back his losses. But at last he balked. So I said: “Let’s go to the
bar-room and have a drink.”
Pedro, Tracy, and myself spit out soft soap over our drinks for a few
minutes. For some time I had seen that Abraham was awful worried. He now
hardly opened his mouth except to answer a question. He looked as if he
were all the time saying to himself: “I’ll never get into another scrape
like this again!” But he did not dare even breathe a whisper about us
being sharpers. We were three against him alone, and even sweller
dressed. Besides, being a stranger in New York, he lacked sense.
[Sidenote: _A Sadder, but Wiser “Reub.”_]
I judged it time to escort him to his hotel, because he needed some one
to steady him. He looked a wreck. Because he was not used to champagne
and all. We shook hands with Pedro and Tracy, and boarded a car for the
Grand Union, where all the middle-class Reubs put up. Even when we were
alone in front of his hotel, he did not have the nerve to call me down.
I have fleeced Reubs who have given me a good punch in the mug when they
got me alone. Abe must have thought I am straight.
I shook his hand good-night, patted him on the back for the last time,
and said I would call this coming evening to give him a chance to win
back his money. Of course I never expected to keep the engagement. I
don’t suppose Abe did either. As soon as he got inside his hotel, I
sneaked away as fast as my legs would carry me. For a week, I shall have
to keep away from the Monte Carlo.
[Sidenote: _The Fairie Boy._]
IV. A Stuyvesant Square Pick-up.
It is August, 1895—several weeks after Buddie McDonald had left me in
the lurch, as he had his legal wife, and as he probably through life
went on deserting quon_dam_ soul-mates when having no more use for them.
Furthermore, during this single summer that I frequented the Rialto, I
found it a barren stamping-ground for myself. Nearly all my Lotharios
were of the moneyed class that go out of the city for the heated term,
or at least while away their evenings at a shore resort in the suburbs.
For I did not drift with solid business young men, but with those who
sought an easy life. The book-makers were at Saratoga, the vaudeville
artists at seaside theatres. Even professional gamblers preferred
Saratoga or Long Branch during the months that fools with money to burn
went to those places rather than to little old Fourteenth Street.
But in June I was fortunate in being introduced to some refined “young
fellows” living near Stuyvesant Square, five minutes walk from the
Rialto. Business or a slim pocketbook kept them in the city. I therefore
formed the habit of staging my impersonation sprees in the Square—a park
of about six acres. Within four weeks I had been introduced to several
score young bloods—so many because all belonged to a neighboring club
the talk of which I came to be on my advent because of my
ultra-androgynism and female-impersonation. The majority liked to flirt
with [Sidenote: _An Unrivaled Hercules._] me an hour in the park as if I
were a full-fledged mademoiselle. I was always clothed as a youth,
although exceptionally loud, as fairies are wont. But the present work
will pass over my relations with the Stuyvesant Square club-men because
described in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE.
In that August occurred one of the most eventful evenings of my twelve
years’ career as overt female-impersonator. I had promenaded every path
in the Square without running across any clubman—very unusual on a balmy
evening. Therefore just before dark I seated myself next to the most
attractive stranger in the park, where two thousand people were enjoying
the cool of a scorching day. He looked to be twenty, was rather shabbily
clad, but clean. It was not his features, but his powerful and well
proportioned figure, that attracted me. His hair was red—a favorite
color for neckties, but the very last I would choose for a beau’s
chevelure. His face, while well formed, was close to the very worst
among the more than one thousand young bachelors with whom I have
coquetted. His eyebrows and lashes were blonde and barely visible. His
complexion resembled a sheet of faded pink muslin—a solid color all
over, not rosebud or peachlike, as the lamented Buddie McDonald’s.
Particularly his cheeks were covered with pimples, common in redhaired
men, so that one wonders how they shave. But because of his unapproached
bone and muscular development visible even through his clothes, I did
not like him a whit the less on account of his pigmentary defects.
For several months after that night, I fell in love, at first sight,
with nearly every red-headed adolescent [Sidenote: _Influence of
Environment._] I ran across, particularly if his cheeks were covered
with pimples.
In order to ascertain the trustworthiness, goodheartedness, and
liberalmindedness of the Hercules, I first drew him out craftily by a
long series of questions. Even people in my every-day world have given
me the palm for inquisitiveness. I expected to put myself in the power
of Hercules and needed to find out all about him. I was always
ultra-wary about falling into a trap, as I already had several times in
the Underworld. Androgynes are murdered every few months in New York
merely because of intense hatred of effeminacy instilled by education in
the breasts of full-fledged males.
I learned Hercules’ entire history—providing what he narrated was true.
To my joy he told me he had been reared in a village in the Mohawk
valley. Through heart-to-heart talks with hundreds of strange young
bloods in New York’s Underworld I discovered that boyhood environment
makes a vast difference in adult honesty and altruism. The country-bred
adolescent manual-laborer is apt to be far less vile-mouthed and
pugnacious, and far less likely to assault and rob one of Nature’s
step-children than a young-blood product of city slums.
Only after I had been able to form a favorable judgment of Hercules’
disposition, I began to disclose, by my talk, that I was an androgyne.
From my dress and mannerisms, however, any city-bred youth would have
already judged my sexual status. Hercules later told me he had, but had
feared saying something offensive. He said he had been impatient for me
to declare myself.
[Sidenote: _Author’s Flirtations Mushy._]
The following conversation serves to illustrate and analyze the
hero-worship of the androgyne. It is admittedly mushy. The question is
whether the reader wants the mushy or the untrue. Ordinarily
conversation with a sexual counterpart made me silly. All my flirtations
were mushy. The following phraseology is very close to the actual except
that I have semi-translated Harvey’s dialect into ordinary English.
Further, the reader must educate himself to judge justly even that with
which, as he reads, he does not like to identify himself or make his own
sentiment. For example, two confidential, Platonic literary friends told
me that my original songs published in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE
were “sickening.” They could not sympathize with the androgyne
sentiments and therefore the songs were “shoddy.” Likewise the following
conversation must be judged objectively and the reader’s verdict be
based on absolute reason, not on personal bias—not on the basis of the
reader’s ability to put himself in the place of the Hercules or myself.
It is a conversation to be analyzed scientifically.
“Beau, see how much bigger your hands are than mine! And how horny the
palms! I bet you would give a good account of yourself in a fight!”
“I’ve had lessons in pugilism. Besides I come from a strong-built
family. Me father’s piano-mover and me only brother steeple-Jack.
Meself has worked as riveter on sky-scrapers.”
“So you have wielded a sledge-hammer!” I exclaimed enthusiastically
because of his more and more marvellous revelations.
[Sidenote: _Hero-worship._]
“All day long while steel-worker’s helper on the sky-scrapers.”
“O you are such a wonderful young fellow! Wonderful alone in your
being brave enough to mount the sky-scraper skeletons! And still more
wonderful in possessing the muscle necessary for wielding a
sledge-hammer all day! May I feel your biceps? I am anxious to have my
hands on the very muscle that slung the sledge-hammer!”
“Anything at all!”
“O what a biceps! Like a tremendous boil protruding out of your arm
except that it is hard as steel. Among the scores of Strong Hanses
whose biceps I have been privileged to pinch, you are the muscular
prodigy![31] You must be a terrible slugger! I pity your opponent!
Only a pyramid of jelly after you got through with him! Do you know,
Mr. Strong Hans, that I have fallen in love with your biceps?”
“That’s a funny thin’ ter fall in love with! But just feel me chest
muscles and leg muscles.”
“They are steel!” I cried in ecstacy. “Because of your being a
muscular prodigy, I am driven beside myself in hero-worship! Do you
know what the word ‘worship’ means? It means that I could prostrate
myself with lips to your dirty shoes, and cry out, over and over
again, forever, forever, your wonderful endowments! I could forever
call you Sledge-hammer Wielder! Personification of Strength!
Incarnation of Power! Man of Iron! Mighty Man of Valor! Mighty Man of
Renown! Heaven wills that I, a poor weakling, bow low in adoration of
a muscular prodigy!”
[Sidenote: _A Rare Find._]
“You said it! I’ve got the build of a pugilist. But it’s meself as
needs ter go ter the dentist ter git me teeth filled and haven’t the
price.”
“I’ll attend to that. Because you are a rare find, Mr. Strong Hans!
You are one young fellow out of ten thousand. I mustn’t lose track of
you. Let me tell you the plans that have been going through my head
since I met you. Nature has made it impossible for me ever to marry a
woman. For I am myself really a girl whom Nature has disguised as a
fellow. I only dress as a fellow because the law ignorantly requires
it. Nature meant that I should go through life with a husband—not a
wife, as ignorant society commands. For some years it has been my
dream to take to live under the same roof, as long as God leaves me in
this world, a young fellow who approaches my ideal. And you do as
hardly another I ever met. And I want you to live with me as my
husband. When you reach twenty-five, you may also marry a physical
woman, and she will keep house for us. I shall always regard your and
her children as my own. God has given me much above the average brain
power, and I can earn money enough to support all. You will never have
a care. You need never work unless you want to. For I will be your
slave. Because you possess in by far the highest degree the bodily and
mental endowment that are for me a magnet. You will be paying
[Sidenote: _Full-fledged’s Instincts Equally Unæsthetic._] for all I
do by merely allowing me to gaze at your marvellous build a few
minutes every day.
“You—like every one else—probably think I am a very bad sort of
person. But perhaps you will discover some counterbalancing good
qualities. In reality my bad side is no worse than that [sexuality] of
all other men. The virile call me ‘Child of the Devil!’ The pot has
always liked to call the kettle black. A person always considers right
and high-minded whatever he himself is inclined to, and wrong and
devilish whatever others are inclined to. Because people are thus in
love with themselves and their own tendencies, they will not forgive
my own bad side. Not because it is in any way harmful; merely because
it is so exceptional.
“I have the means to support you from this evening on.[32] I guarantee
you as good a start in life as young fellow ever had. Wouldn’t you
like to become a lawyer or physician? Then why not tell me your true
name and address, lest I lose you? Because until I know you
thoroughly, I can not reveal my own legal name and where I live.
Because people misunderstand so terribly women-men like myself.”
“Harvey Green, Eagle Hotel, Third Avenue.”
“I detest ‘Harvey’ because two acquaintances of that name were such
poor specimens of men. Since you are to be my own personal
sledge-hammer-slinger, I change your name to ‘Tom.’ That is the most
masculine of names, and because you are the most masculine of young
fellows—indeed the Supreme Man—you must [Sidenote: _Common Type of
Sexual Insanity._] be decorated with it. For you appear to be even
_more_ than man. A wonderful visitant from some other world. A
super-man!
“I am afraid, Tom, you may be only a dream. I am afraid you may be
only an apparition with me a brief hour, then to return, like
Lohengrin, to the heavenly realm where the hero is immeasurably beyond
anything we have on earth.
“So from to-night on, your legal first name is ‘Tom.’ And after I have
tried you out, you will take my own legal surname. But my pet name is
‘Prince Wonderful!’ Can you feel, Prince Wonderful, that you charm me
as a serpent a bird that it creeps upon in order to swallow? I know I
am doing something crazy in letting you swallow me; in turning my back
on all my own pleasures and prospects in order that you may get more
out of life. For I would rather be the instrument through which a
demigod like yourself enjoys some good before my eyes than myself to
enjoy it. It is crazy of me; but my instincts lead that way, and I
have the will to act that way. Muscular prodigy! Sky-scraper
dare-devil! Your prodigious strength and muscles cement me to you as
with hoops of steel!”
We soon took a stroll of half-a-mile to the East River, to a
neighborhood of gas-houses, closed factories, and store-yards. No one
ventured here after dark except homeless gutter-snipes in summer to
sleep. I myself would not have ventured at night anywhere near these
dingy and desolate blocks except under the protection of a Strong Hans.
On female-impersonation sprees in the Rialto and Stuyvesant Square, I
was always richly clad and wore jewelry. While during my year’s
female-impersonation [Sidenote: _The Ultra-Unexpected Happens._]
apprenticeship on Mulberry Street my pockets were rifled every night, I
had not now for nearly a year suffered the theft of even a copper. And
why should I entertain even the shadow of a suspicion of “Tom” whom I
wholeheartedly accepted as an unsophisticated youth recently from the
Mohawk valley and to whom I had pledged the usufruct of my fairly good
earning capacity to enable him to live like a nabob? For more than an
hour, on the park bench, he had demonstrated himself supergenial. He had
seemed so glad and so grateful over what I had promised: To lift him
from the slums to an honored professional career. The story of his life
did contain some inconsistencies but I realized it only too late.
As soon as we arrived in an unlighted stone-yard and there was not
another soul within hearing—at least we had seen no one for the last
five hundred feet—Harvey Green suddenly changed to _just the opposite_
of his supergenial and ultra-grateful mask. Only at the moment that he
had me completely at his mercy did he disclose himself as a
dyed-in-the-wool criminal—a fiend who would never give a second thought
to having just committed a murder.
Since I had expected to take him under my own roof and acquaint him with
my every-day professional personality, I had not gone to the extremes of
frivolous female-impersonation customary before young bloods who would
never meet me in every-day life. I had feared I would forfeit his
respect. Thus I had bidden _him_ call me “Ralph”—not “Jennie.”
“Ralph, what a ya think when I say I’ve served time in Elmira
Reformatory? I kin prove what kinder man I am! Reach your hand here and
feel this terrible [Sidenote: _A Seance with a Burglar._] scar. And then
reach it here and feel this other. Ralph, I got these scars from bein’
shot while runnin’ away after havin’ made a mess of burglin’ houses in
villages. For it’s better ter be shot than caught. And I didn’t dare go
ter any doctor. My pal dressed the wounds the best he could, and it hurt
awful—I tell you! And both times the buggers bled and bled till I close
ter croaked. But luck was with me; me guts escaped the pepperin’. And
after I recovered from loss of blood and after the wounds began ter
heal, I was as strong and husky as you see me to-night.
“But just to-night I happened ter be broke. I was just loafin’ in the
park waitin’ for a sissie like you, Ralph, ter walk inter me trap, so I
could git hold of some dough.”
“Harvey,” I could only stammer, being next to speechless because of
surprise and terror, “I am stunned at what you say. I never believed you
could so deceive me. Can I say nothing to bring you to your senses?
Don’t you realize you have ten thousand times more to gain by being my
friend?”
“Ralph, didn’t yez ever hear a bird in hand’s worth two in bush? Besides
I could never be friend ter feller of your nature, Ralph! My hand’s
agin’ you, Ralph! Because I’ve a criminal record, Ralph, every man’s
hand’s agin’ me. And my hand’s agin’ every man. I’m a man without any
heart. I’d as soon put a bullet through a bloke as look at him.
“No, Ralph, the burglar’s life I’ve chosen kin alone afford the
excitement I need. Up me sleeve, I didn’t take the least stock in all
your soft soap as we sat in the park. Your pet names and promises mean
nothin’ ter me at all! You sure must take me for a softy in [Sidenote:
_Method of Robbery._] me promisin’ ter live with a feller like yourself!
You’re now goin’ ter have a taste of what use I have for that kind of
feller! Hand out your money! Hand out your money!”
As he spoke, he clutched a shoulder with one hand and clenched the other
in my face. I handed over my wallet.
“Here! I’ll relieve yez of that watch and chain.... And off with that
ring!... Now take off every stitch so I kin see if you’ve any concealed
bills.”
[Illustration:
Neighborhood Where Harvey Green Thought He “Finished” Jennie June
]
“You’re welcome to all I have on me, Harvey, and I love you too much to
prosecute. Only please, _please_, let me depart unharmed! I forgive
everything! If only you will let me depart unharmed, I will immediately
[Sidenote: _Author Robbed Two Hundred Times._] take you around to my
room and put into your hand a hundred dollars I have locked in my desk.”
“I could n’t do that. It’d be too risky.”
While we argued, I undressed meekly and in unspeakable terror. I
realized I might be experiencing my last five minutes of life. I took as
much time as possible in the hope that a watchman might chance along.
But why a watchman in a store-yard of paving stones?
“I guess now I’ve got everythin’ of value, though not as much as
expected. You sneak, why didn’t yez have more bills onter your carcass?”
On female-impersonation sprees in Stuyvesant Square, I carried less than
ten dollars. But judging from my rich attire and not knowing I had set
out from home just for such a spree, Harvey must doubtless have thought
I had on me a big roll. The present is only one of the most remarkable
of about two hundred adventures I have had with robbers, the thievishly
inclined regularly preying on androgynes because knowing the latter are
themselves outlaws and thus unable to complain to the police.
Incensed over the disappointing size of his haul, Harvey continued: “And
now, you sneak, I’ve got yez at me mercy! There’s not a man within
hearin’! Shut your d— throat, or you’ll be worse off yet! Hold down your
hands from in front of your mug! Hold down your hands! You bastard! You
cannibal! Your nature’s so disgustin’ that every rightminded man would
agree your face oughter be used as a butcher’s choppin’ block! And it’s
me own great joy ter do the job!”
Only about so much of the fiend’s ranting was I able [Sidenote:
_Experiencing Death._] to catch. After I had received several
sledge-hammer blows in the face, fallen to the ground, been kicked and
stamped upon, I entirely lost consciousness. Even while I still heard
his ranting, I hardly noticed any pain. I merely thought I was dying. I
was fully reconciled, and prayed: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my
spirit!”
The next thing of which I was conscious was violent retching—due to
internal injuries. In his youthful verdancy, the fiend had probably
thought he had finished me. But Providence overruled, as in a number of
subsequent similar assaults when I was snatched from the very jaws of
death, whereas every few months I see in the papers that some less
fortunate androgyne has not lived to tell the tale.
I was at first puzzled as to whether I was waking up on the earthly
plane or in another world. Until I fully recovered my senses, I lay
inert. Then I slowly dressed and limped away, having to rest on the curb
every five hundred feet. I searched out a street fountain to bathe my
bloodstained face and try to counteract the swelling and discoloration.
For, most of all, I feared arousing the suspicions of my every-day
circle.
I then boarded a car for home, begging my fare. In its regular hiding
place in a stone wall of a neighboring park, I obtained the key to the
street door of my boarding house.[33] Fortunately without encountering
anybody, I mounted the several flights of stairs and secured my room-key
from its hiding place. On [Sidenote: _Struggling to Save Reason._]
arrival in my own snug harbor, the first thing I did—as always—was to
fall to my knees and bless Providence for permitting me to see home
again.
For several hours, I could not sleep. Every moment I felt as if I would
lapse into insane raving. Every moment I besought God to show mercy on a
persecuted outcast. I reflected on my lot: To go through life as a
cordially hated bisexual. That was my cross, and I repeated over and
over again—in my struggle to save myself from insanity—the identic
prayer that I had at fifteen repeated over and over again on the night I
had consecrated myself, and been consecrated by the brethren of the
puritan church to which I then belonged, to be a preacher of the Gospel:
“Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee;
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken,
Thou from hence my all shalt be:
Perish every fond ambition,
All I’ve sought and hoped and known;
Yet how rich is my condition,
God and heaven are still my own!”
Immediately following later similar assaults, I have had to have my
wounds dressed by a physician before seeking my room, and on one
occasion had to enter a hospital. But on this occasion I waited until
the following morning to summon my physician. He made one significant
remark: “It would be worse than useless for you to try to prosecute your
assailant. The court would immediately turn around and prosecute you as
a felon!”
For two weeks I had to keep to my room. Never [Sidenote: _My Visage the
Most Marred._] in all my life have I seen such a swollen and discolored
face; with one exception, and that exception died a few days later as a
result of his terrible blows in the face. I told my landlady I had been
in a fight defending a woman from her drunken husband. I telephoned my
office that I was _slightly_ indisposed. Thus emphasized so no business
associate would call.[34]
After two weeks, when my face had become somewhat presentable, I
ventured to the office still retaining only a black eye. “In my room in
the dark, I struck the edge of the eye-socket on a chair spindle.” I
doubt whether all believed me, but none proved so impolite as to ask
embarrassing questions.[35]
* * * * *
But HARVEY GREEN! I here address you in case your eyes should ever fall
on these lines. I shall remember you to my dying day as occupying third
or fourth place among the hundreds of hero-boys with whom Providence
permitted me to commune. I never [Sidenote: _Apostrophe to the Supreme
Man._] met your equal in strength and muscle. Whenever I think of you,
the words, SUPREME MAN, come into my mind. If I ever run across and
recognize you after the lapse of more than a quarter of a century, I
shall merely step up behind—where your eyes can not recognize me—and
call: “SUPREME MAN!” “SUPREME MAN!” Then, without yet seeing me, you
will recognize “Ralph” to be behind you; because no one else has
probably thought to call you “Supreme Man”; because no one else could
ever have worshipped you as I!
Poor deluded youth that you were in 1895! I almost weep whenever I
reflect what you have missed in life through your poor judgment in
robbing, and even aiming to murder, your would-be benefactor. For a few
dollars worth of trinkets and for the satisfaction of torturing
effeminacy, you turned your back on benefits to which could be
attributed a money value of at least ten thousand dollars. But I freely
forgive. Like the soldiers who crucified the world’s Savior, you did not
know what you were doing.
[Sidenote: _The Fairie Boy._]
V. Evenings at Paresis Hall.
During the last decade of the nineteenth century, the headquarters for
avocational female-impersonators of the upper and middle classes was
“Paresis Hall,” on Fourth Avenue several blocks south of Fourteenth
Street. In front was a modest bar-room; behind, a small beer-garden. The
two floors above were divided into small rooms for rent. In 1921 I
visited the site, as well as that of the “Hotel” Comfort (the two Rialto
resorts with which I was most intimately identified) in order to take
photographs for publication in this book, but found both structures
supplanted.
Paresis Hall bore almost the worst reputation of any resort of New
York’s Underworld. Preachers in New York pulpits of the decade would
thunder Philippics against the “Hall,” referring to it in bated breath
as “Sodom!” They were laboring under a fundamental misapprehension. But
even while I was an habitué, the church and the press carried on such a
war against the resort that the “not-care-a-damn” politicians who ruled
little old New York had finally to stage a spectacular raid. After this,
the resort, though continuing in business (because of political
influence), turned the cold shoulder on androgynes and tolerated the
presence of none in feminine garb.
But there existed little justification for the police’s “jumping on” the
“Hall” as a sop to puritan sentiment. Culturally and ethically, its
distinctive clientele ranked high. Their only offence—but such
[Sidenote: _Is Bisexuality the Worst of Crimes?_] a grave one as to
cause sexually full-fledged Pharisees to lift up their own rotten hands
in holy horror—was, as indicated, female-impersonation during their
evenings at the resort. A psychological and not an ethical phenomenon!
For ethically the “Hall’s” distinctive clientele were congenital
goody-goodies, incapable (by disposition) of ever inflicting the least
detriment on a single soul. They were of the type in the United States,
by every-day associates totally ignorant of the secret sexual practices
of Nature’s step-children, denominated “innocents;” and in France,
“little Jesuses” even though in that country their sexual character is
an open book, since there the sexual appetite is regarded as no more
shameworthy than the alimentary. But the “Hall’s” distinctive clientele
were bitterly hated, and finally scattered by the police, merely because
of their congenital bisexuality. The sexually full-fledged were crying
for blood (of innocents), as did the “unco’ good” in the days of
witch-burning. Bisexuals must be crushed—right or wrong! The subject
does not permit investigation! The fact that it is race suicide
justifies the denial of all mercy! Let Juggernaut’s car crush out their
lives!
It was Nathan’s parable of the ewe lamb all over again. (Second Book of
Samuel, chapter 12.) The full-fledged had innumerable opportunities for
the satisfaction of their instincts. Androgynes had only “the Hall” with
the exception of three or four slum resorts frequented by only the
lowest class of bisexuals who had never known anything better than slum
life.
Why deprive cultured androgynes of their solitary rendezvous in the New
York metropolitan district and [Sidenote: _Homosexuals No Worse Than
Heterosexuals._] give _carte blanche_ to the thousands of similar
heterosexual resorts?
Paresis Hall was as innocuous as any sex resort. Its existence really
brought not the least detriment to any one or to the social body as a
whole. More than that: It was a necessary safety-valve to the social
body. It is not in the power of every adult to settle down for life in
the monogamous and monandrous love-nest ordained for all by our leaders
of thought. For example: The existence of Paresis Hall was due chiefly
to the fact that in about one out of every one-hundred-and-fifty
presumed males, the internal testicular secretion has failed to be of
the right consistency.
While in this book I use the resort’s popular name, androgyne habitués
always abhorred it, saying simply “the Hall.” The full nickname arose in
part because the numerous full-fledged male visitors—it was one of the
“sights” for out-of-towners who hired a guide to take them through New
York’s Underworld—thought the bisexuals, who were its main feature, must
be insane in stooping to female-impersonation. They understood “paresis”
to be the general medical term for “insanity.” The name also in part
arose because in those days even the medical profession were obsessed
with the superstition that a virile man’s association with an androgyne
induced paresis in the former, it not yet having been discovered that
this type of insanity is a rare aftermath of syphilis.
By means of an introduction of the reader to several androgyne
patrons of Paresis Hall, I aim to demonstrate that instinctive
female-impersonation has no relation to brain lesions, dementia
præcox, or other psychic disease. The prevalent diagnosis, by
physicians, [Sidenote: _Cause of Androgynism._] of androgynism as
insanity is as rational as for a male alienist to pronounce all
women insane because their psyche differs radically from his own. As
already stated, androgynism is a mere matter of arrested
development, due to imperfect internal testicular secretion, in the
natural sex differentiation that begins in the early fœtus and ends
at puberty. This arrest has for its result an adult _homo_ more or
less bisexual—a sexual intermediate, whose existence the bigotry of
the leaders of thought has hitherto prevented their recognizing.
At the university, the student is taught all about the anatomy of the
frog, but the prevalent view among the leaders of thought that
everything connected with sex is taboo has prevented even the
_professors_ of physiology from investigating androgynism, which touches
the social body so intimately. They have turned their backs because “the
subject leaves a bad taste in the mouth!”
You milk-and-water hypocrites! Is it nothing to you that innocent
androgynes are pining in prison an aggregate of thousands of years, and
being continually murdered by prudes, like Harvey Green, because you
have taught them that no punishment is too bad for so-called
“homosexuality”? For prudery is common to some ultra-criminals and to
the leaders of thought.[36] In the sight of God, you latter, when
deliberately refusing to hearken to the wailing of bitterly persecuted
[Sidenote: _Leaders of Thought Are Murderers._] androgynes, are morally
on a par with Harvey Green and the murderers of X, Y, and “Jimmie Q”,
the latter being three bisexuals whose cases are outlined at the close
of this volume.
Paresis Hall was never my own headquarters. I visited it only now and
then. I had too early become wedded to the “Hotel” Comfort. Moreover, I
wandered more widely, and in some respects flaunted my androgynism to a
greater extent, than any other female-impersonator of my day. I took
greater chances than any other, except in the appearing in public places
in feminine apparel, but was never arrested in the Rialto because always
careful never to render myself liable. Never for a moment did I forget
the possibility of being arrested. I was even hypersensitive in this
matter. A common dream was that of being arrested. But this
hypersensitiveness probably saved me, since others of my type were
continuously being arrested and sent to the penitentiary. But the
cultured androgyne is almost never caught by the police. Only those of
poor mentality.
On one of my earliest visits to Paresis Hall—about January, 1895—I
seated myself alone at one of the tables. I had only recently learned
that it was the androgyne headquarters—or “fairie” as it was called at
the time. Since Nature had consigned me to that class, I was anxious to
meet as many examples as possible. As I took my seat, I did not
recognize a single acquaintance among the several score young bloods,
soubrettes, and androgynes chatting and drinking in the beer-garden.
In a few minutes, three short, smooth-faced young men approached and
introduced themselves as Roland [Sidenote: _Earmarks of Androgynism._]
Reeves, Manon Lescaut, and Prince Pansy—aliases, because few refined
androgynes would be so rash as to betray their legal name in the
Underworld. Not alone from their names, but also from their loud
apparel, the timbre of their voices, their frail physique, and their
feminesque mannerisms, I discerned they were androgynes. Indeed
effeminacy stuck out all over Prince Pansy. Manon Lescaut’s only
conspicuous anatomical feminesqueness was extraordinary breadth of hips.
While Reeves’ trunk and legs were not so feminine, he excelled in
womanly features, with such marine-blue eyes and pink-peony cheeks as
any beholder regretted should be wasted on a member (?) of the sterner
sex. Moreover, Reeves alone, of the two score ultra-androgynes that I at
different times met at Paresis Hall, was naturally beardless.
While Roland, Manon, and the “Prince” looked to be between twenty and
twenty-five, I later ascertained the first mentioned was thirty-seven.
As already observed, perennial youth is an earmark of ultra-androgynism.
Roland was chief speaker. The essence of his remarks was something like
the following: “Mr. Werther—or Jennie June, as doubtless you prefer to
be addressed—I have seen you at the Hotel Comfort, but you were always
engaged. A score of us have formed a little club, the CERCLE
HERMAPHRODITOS. For we need to unite for defense against the world’s
bitter persecution of bisexuals. We care to admit only extreme
types—such as like to doll themselves up in feminine finery. We
sympathize with, but do not care to be intimate with, the mild types,
some of whom you [Sidenote: _The Cercle Hermaphroditos._] see here
to-night even wearing a disgusting beard! Of course they do not wear it
out of liking. They merely consider it a lesser evil than the horrible
razor or excruciating wax mask.
“We ourselves are in the detested trousers because having only just
arrived. We keep our feminine wardrobe in lockers upstairs so that our
every-day circles can not suspect us of female-impersonation. For they
have such an irrational horror of it!”
* * * * *
On the basis of different visits to an upper room permanently rented by
the CERCLE HERMAPHRODITOS, I am going to build up a typical hour’s
conversation in order to disclose into what channels the thoughts of
ultra-androgynes run when half-a-score find themselves together. The
reason for its unnatural ring is that I omit the nine-tenths that were
prattle, retaining only the cream that I consider of scientific value.
It was about eight o’clock on an evening of April, 1895. Some of the
hermaphroditoi were still in male apparel; some changing to feminine
evening dress and busy with padding and the powder-puff; some in their
completed evening toilette ready to descend to the beer-garden below to
await a young-blood friend.
I do not recall that a single hermaphroditos was man enough to use
tobacco, or even to spit. They affected foreign languages, particularly
French. I recall one whose favorite method in beginning a conversation
was: “Mes cheris, qu’est ce que c’est que vous savez de nouvelles?”
A second: “Have you observed the new styles? Very [Sidenote: _Androgyne
Talk._] narrow skirts,[37] and very large hats. The material saved on
the skirt goes into the chapeau.”
“Nothing could be more beautiful,” Angelo—Phyllis, the most effeminate
of the hermaphroditoi, opined softly and sweetly, “than a feminine face
framed in a picture hat set sidewise, with rim reaching below the
shoulders. How I do like to stalk Fourteenth Street myself with such a
chapeau![38] How the young fellows stare and throw remarks after me! I
am glad the petite turbans are going into the rag-bag. And what low
necks and short arms the new evening dresses are showing! And the
material hardly more than cobweb! One could almost hide an up-to-date
corsage in the fist.”
“You seem, Phyllis, to be an expert on lingerie.”
“My woman friends tell me I have the best eye for color effects they
ever heard of. Millinery happens to be my business. A star actress whom
I happen to know always asks me to accompany her to the modiste’s. I
must practically pick out all her robes, as well as hats—including the
way they are to be made up. Just the sight of the artistic fabrics, as
they are unrolled by the saleswoman, is an exquisite delight. My mind
becomes crowded with emotions, and on the spur of the moment I could pen
a lyric _sur les etoffes jolies_ that any ladies’ magazine would
publish.... The [Sidenote: _A Gynander’s Fate._] stupidity of some
women! This actress has just divorced her husband and is looking around
for a new alliance. If I happened to have been born a marrying man, I
could make her my wife, although all the front-row bald-pates are crazy
after her. She has given every hint—everything except an actual
proposal. But if I did let her marry me, the morning following the
bridal night, she would apply to the court for an annulment. She does
not even suspect the existence of pseudo-men.”
Another: “It is strange how often a girl falls in love with us
women-men. I myself have had three proposals. Girls are particularly
prone to fall in love with members of their own sex disguised as men. Of
course we are really only girls ourselves whom Nature has disguised as
men. Particularly, rather mannish women fall in love with us Mollie
Coddles.”
* * * * *
Phyllis: “That reminds me of a young heiress[39] whom I knew. Perhaps
you read in the papers two years ago how a New York young woman
disappeared, and the utmost efforts of the police were not rewarded with
the least trace. She was of that mannish type. For months she was the
pest of my life. I still have a big pack of letters and poems—all
sickening—which she mailed me.
“I myself have no doubt of the fate of the poor girl. When the papers
were full of rumors and hypotheses about her, I repeatedly wrote my
theory to her father. When he ignored my letters, I gave the [Sidenote:
_Gynanders Love Androgynes._] police my theory. They likewise thought it
absurd and refused to investigate along the lines I suggested.
“When some mannish women find it impossible to marry an effeminate man,
they adopt some petite cry-baby woman as their soul-mate. The papers
stated that the last trace of Mollie Dale was her carrying away from
O’Neil’s several purchases. The latter immediately struck me as such
alone as a gallant would buy to present his lady-love. When I told the
police, they said: ‘Absurd! Who ever heard of one woman being in love
with another!’
“On leaving O’Neil’s, Mollie Dale absolutely dropped out of sight for
all time. It was as if the earth had suddenly yawned for her body and
closed again so rapidly as to be unseen by the people nearby. Or as if
she, absent-minded, had stepped into an open sewer man-hole and no one
happened at the moment to have his eyes on the spot.
“My theory, hermaphroditoi, is that Mollie went right from O’Neil’s to
her cry-baby chum’s. Probably within walking distance, because every
soul in New York was asked through the newspapers over and over again if
they had met on any public conveyance the morning of Mollie’s dropping
out of sight a young lady of her description, so detailed as to give
even the pattern of her shoes, besides her much published photographs.
Her disappearance was at the time the seven-days wonder of New York and
every one was discussing it.
“The rule with men-women[40]—as with us women-men—is [Sidenote:
_Solution of Mollie’s Disappearance._] never to breathe to any one of
their every-day circle a word about their sweethearts because of the
misunderstanding and horror evidenced by people ignorant of psychology.
As a rule the soul-mates of us better-class bisexuals belong to a much
lower social stratum. Very likely Mollie’s lived in one of the thousands
of tumbledown tenements within walking distance of O’Neil’s.
“According to my theory, hermaphroditoi—and I have seen a hundred times
more of life than the average man, and possess some sense
notwithstanding people not knowing me well set me down as only a
high-grade idiot because of my outward frivolousness and an unfortunate
infantile carriage—the cry-baby’s husband or father had only just
learned of what he, as well as ninety-nine out of every hundred men,
mistakenly regarded as the horribly corrupting influence of the poor
martyr Mollie on the hare-brained cry-baby. Ignorant that men-women are
victims of birth and that their so-called ‘depravity’ brings not the
least harm to any one, and insanely angry with Mollie into the bargain,
he that very morning bludgeoned her in his apartment. And he happened to
succeed in disposing of the corpse.
“I thought of Mollie when last week the papers told about an
unrecognizable female body, bent double, having been found in a trunk
filled with salt that for two years had rested unclaimed in the
trunk-room of the third-class Hotel X—just the type that a
tenement-dweller would select to harbor such a trunk. The murderer was
evidently a meat-packer, familiar with the processes of salting down.
“In such strange ways a continuous string of both [Sidenote: _Man’s
Prudery Causes Many Murders._] men-women and women-men are being struck
down in New York for no other reason than loathing for those born
bisexual. And public opinion forbids the publication of the facts of
bisexuality, which, if generally known, would put an end to these
mysterious murders of innocents.”
* * * * *
“Hello, Mith Nighty!” several called as one of the tallest, oldest, and
most brunette of the hermaphroditoi entered the Cercle’s dressing-room.
The androgyne who had adopted the name of a romantic woman had, during
his twenties, before becoming thick-set, been a female-impersonator on
the vaudeville stage.
“Mith Nighty!” one of the youngest hermaphroditoi shouted in a falsetto.
“Queenie and I want you to coach us in female-impersonation. Next Friday
at the Masked Ball we make our debut as public female-impersonators.”
A senior: “The world would call our hobby insanity. But the explanation
is that we were created psychic females, who yearn for the dress and
role of that sex—to feel skirts flapping about our ankles—and
nevertheless Nature has been so cruel as to incarnate our woman-souls in
the abhorred male body.”
Another: “But other than in us women-men, the male figure is infinitely
more artistic than the female. The only disgusting thing in man is the
beardal growth. I can tolerate in a beau a small moustache only, but
prefer him clean-shaven. But feminine breasts are the very badge of
beastliness! You, of course, excepted, Ralph-Jennie. The short, fat,
knock-kneed feminine legs are monstrosities! If you’ll pardon [Sidenote:
_Common Androgyne Practices._] me for saying it, Phyllis. On the other
hand, the muscles of an athlete compel the attention.”
Later it chanced that Roland Reeves and myself entered into a
soft-spoken dialogue: “Ralph, do you know any woman-man whom we ought to
get into the Cercle?”
“Four! But they do not realize anybody is wise outside the young athlete
each has selected as chum. No one but another woman-man, or a
full-fledged man who had read Krafft-Ebing,[41] would ever suspect them.
Their public conduct is always the height of propriety. One of them even
makes it a practice to boast of excesses _cum femina_—to ward off
suspicion, for he has always shunned females as one would the plague.
But on the basis of self-knowledge, we women-men easily recognize our
own kind. I need only hear the voice and glimpse the features and
figure.
“But none of the four ever visits the Underworld. They do not feel the
need. Their being so fortunate as to have secured soul-mates among their
every-day circle has proved their safety-valve. You, Roland, and I have
simply been denied by Providence a hero-confidant from among our
every-day circle. Moreover, we have been unwilling to risk betrayal to
that circle. We are not hunting for high-figured blackmail and possibly
years in prison.
“One is a university student. The college body refers to his
ultra-virile room-mate and himself as “X and wife.” But no user of the
phrase ever dreams of its real significance, not knowing of the
existence of intermediates. Of course they have heard of homosexuality,
[Sidenote: _An Androgyne Outcast._] but think only the scum of mankind
could be guilty. Impossible in the case of a high-minded intellectual!
“Here’s Plum. Plumkin, you look as if you had lost your last friend!”
The 23-year Mollie Coddle sobbed: “Everything looks dark. Two days ago I
was fired. I have hardly slept a wink since. I have hope for the future
only in the grave. Some bigot denounced me to the boss. He called me
into his private office. As this had never happened before, I guessed
the reason....”
Plum outlined his conference. I have listened to several similar
confessions. The following is a composite.
* * * * *
Plum: “I confess to being a woman-man and throw myself upon your mercy.”
Fairsea: “That confession is sufficient, and proves you an undesirable
person to have around!”
Plum: “It will be hard to find a new job, since I have been with you for
five years and must depend on your recommendation.”
Fairsea: “Knowing your nature, Plum, I could not recommend you _even to
shovel coal into a furnace_!”
Plum: “But you have steadily advanced me for five years! Why should
to-day’s discovery make any difference in your opinion of my business
ability?”
Fairsea with a sneer: “An invert ought to leave brain work for others!
He ought to exhaust himself on a farm from sunrise to sunset so that the
psychic movings would be next to non-existent. He should pass his life
in the back woods; not in a city. He has no [Sidenote: _Bigotry
Unparallelled._] right in the front ranks of civilization where his
abnormality is so out of place!”
Plum: “You mean that he should commit intellectual and social suicide in
obedience to the æsthetic sense of Pharisees?”
Fairsea: “Certainly! The innate feelings and the conscience, as well as
the Bible, teach that the invert has no rights! I myself have only
deep-rooted contempt for him! Every fibre in my body, every cell in my
tissues, cries out in loud protest against him! He is the lowest of the
low! I dare say that at the bottom of your heart, Plum, you are
thoroughly ashamed of the confession you made a moment ago?”
Plum: “By no means. I have learned to look upon bisexuality as a
scientist and a philosopher. But you have just shown yourself to be
still groping in the Dark Ages.
“No, Mr. Fairsea, I can hardly bring myself to be ashamed of the
handiwork of God. A bisexual has no more reason than a full-fledged man
or woman to be ashamed of his God-given sexuality.
“You appear, Mr. Fairsea, to be unable to get my point of view. All in
my anatomy and psyche that you gloat in calling depraved and
contemptible I have been used to since my early teens. If your views
have any justification in science or ethics, I am unable to see it.
Although it almost breaks my heart to be made an outcast and penniless
by yourself, I prefer that lot, knowing I am in the right, than to be in
the wrong even if sitting, as yourself, in the chair of president of the
X—— Company.
“How do you define ‘depraved’, Mr. Fairsea? [Sidenote: _Reasons for
Non-Segregation._] If in such a way as to exclude Socrates, Plato,
Michael Angelo, and Raphael, then you exclude me also.”
Fairsea: “But the phenomenon works against the multiplication of the
human race. Nature, with this in view, instilled in all but the scum of
mankind this utter disgust for the invert. To the end of the continued
existence of the race, he must be condemned to a life of unsatisfied
longing. For this reason he should be imprisoned for life, not for only
ten or twenty years as the statutes now provide!
“We strictly segregate diphtheria and scarlet fever, Plum. Why should we
not similarly quarantine against inversion?”
Plum: “Because there is a vast difference. Contagious disease, if not
strictly segregated, would occasion death and acute suffering to many
additional persons. WHEREAS THE BISEXUALS’ BEING AT LIBERTY OCCASIONS
NOT THE LEAST DETRIMENT TO ANY INDIVIDUAL, NOR TO THE RACE AS A WHOLE.
“A second reason: The quarantining of contagious disease is only a
matter of shutting up a few persons for a few weeks in their own homes.
It causes no serious privation or suffering. Whereas the segregation of
bisexuals would affect for a life-time tens of thousands of our most
useful members of society. It would occasion, among these already
accursed by Nature, additional intense mental suffering, despair, and
suicide.
“Any one who can suggest the latter segregation is unable to see farther
away than the end of his nose.
“And as to race suicide, Mr. Fairsea. You should be the very last to
lecture anybody on that subject! You are the father of only two children
and have put [Sidenote: _Leaders of Thought Ignore Evidence._] three
wives under the sod through your beastly, excessive demands!
“Can it be that you shut your eyes to all evidence? Do ocular proofs
count for nothing? Hasn’t the human race survived the best decades of
classic Greece? While the Greeks are acknowledged by all modern
historians to have attained the highest development of mind and body
ever known, they at the same time gave to the women-men who happened to
be born among them—as among all races of all ages—an honorable place.
And by far more place, both in their personal and social life, than in
the case of any other nation of the ancient or modern world.”
Fairsea: “But I had hoped that the human race had evolved above this
phenomenon! I hate to believe it of the human race! Because the
phenomenon lowers humanity down to the lowest levels of animal life!
I——”
Plum: “So does eating!”
Fairsea: “I detest it! My disgust is innermost and deepseated! To begin
now to show any mercy to the invert, after having for two thousand years
confined him in dungeons, burned him at the stake, and buried him alive,
would be a backward step in the evolution of the race!
“Plum, the invert is not fit to live with the rest of mankind! He should
be shunned as the lepers of biblical times! If generously allowed
outside prison walls, the law should at least ordain that the word
‘UNCLEAN’ be branded in his forehead, and should compel him to cry:
‘UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!’ as he walks the streets, lest his very brushing
against decent people contaminate them!”
[Sidenote: _Bias Rules in Sex Domain._]
Plum: “All that is only bigotry and bias! Nearly every man’s conduct is
still governed by bias!”
Fairsea: “I even acknowledge that it is bias! For bias is justifiable in
matters of sex!... You say that medical writers have declared inverts
_irresponsible_! That declaration proves that they know nothing about
them! You say inverts are assaulted and blackmailed! They deserve to be!
It would be wrong for any one at all to show any leniency! Their
existence ought to be made so intolerable as to drive them to lead their
sexual life along the lines followed by all other men! Your case, Plum,
fills me with such disgust that I could not rest knowing you were around
the office!”
* * * * *
Roland brought the conversation to a close: “Mankind are so steeped in
egotism! Whatever they are not personally inclined to is always horribly
immoral! Whatever they are instinctively inclined to is always supremely
right!
“Why not go to the root of the matter and take revenge on Nature,
instead of her irresponsible and pitiable step-children? Nature alone is
to blame for the existence of sexual cripples. Why not marshal every son
and daughter of Adam for the work of honeycombing the entire crust of
the earth with galleries to be filled with dynamite? And then set off
the world-wide charge simultaneously so as to destroy all terrestrial
Nature at one coup, humanity included. This would constitute man’s sole
_logical_ vengeance on bisexuality.
“BUT MAN IS TRULY A PASSIONAL, RATHER THAN A RATIONAL, BEING.”
[Sidenote: _The Fairie Boy._]
VI. Thoughts Suggested by the “Hermaphroditoi” in General.
I associated with the hermaphroditoi less than a year. Paresis Hall then
happened to be raided by the police and the hermaphroditoi—who happened
to be the police’s chief quarry—afterward gave the resort a wide berth
for fear of arrest.
The hermaphroditoi numbered about a score. All were highly cultured
ultra-androgynes varying in age from eighteen to forty. Half-a-score
have given me their life-story. But the careers of only two were
particularly tragic. I have therefore, in PARTS FOUR and FIVE, detailed
the life-stories of these two as nearly as I can remember, having of
course taken no notes at the time.
In the lives of some hermaphroditoi, nothing particularly remarkable had
ever transpired beyond their chronic female-impersonation sprees. For
example, Roland Reeves, the most brilliant, was, in every act, moderate
and sensible. He was of the type of cross-dressing androgyne that
possesses little animality. He was by no means a coquette—as were most
of the hermaphroditoi. People would say that he had more self-restraint
and moral backbone than the coquettes. But my unusually wide
observations have taught me that sexual moderation is as a rule due to
weak instinct when not to lack of opportunity.
[Illustration:
The Author at Thirty-four
(Amateur Photo)
]
A prime regulator of the sexual intensity of the adult androgyne—as
probably of all humans—consists [Sidenote: _Parents, Take Time for Your
Children!_] of the influences toward sexual expression during childhood.
My own adult career had its prototype in my intense fairie-ism from two
until seven. Sexual impressions of early childhood have often a powerful
influence down through middle life. In large measure they determine the
course to be taken by the adult sexual life. PARENTS CAN NOT BE TOO
WATCHFUL OF THE SECRET PRACTICES OF SMALL CHILDREN, AND OF THE INFLUENCE
OF SERVANTS.
Androgynes, during childhood, are particularly prone to fall into bad
habits (fellatio; or pathicism in pædicatio) because always confined
with their sexual opposites. What would one expect of the chastity of a
high-strung girl of twelve marooned for a summer on an island with
merely a dozen ultra-virile youths? That is the identical situation of
youthful androgynes.
As a rule, when an androgyne reaches the middle thirties, the instinct
to dress and pose as a mademoiselle gradually becomes feeble. Age sobers
many and they become practically asexual. I have observed the same thing
in ultra-virile men during my twelve years career as their mignon. Their
craze for the opposite sex is strongest from twenty to twenty-five (just
at the time when Christian custom interdicts the propensity) after which
it gradually declines. It is the same with animals. Poulterers cut off
the heads of all but “adolescent” roosters. I have myself been a Guinea
pig fancier. I discovered that the males gradually lose their virility
at middle age.
Indeed I have observed that as androgynes approach fifty, they sometimes
become more masculine than they ever were, and will even marry. It seems
that in rare cases mild virility supplants sexual [Sidenote: _“Change of
Life” (Climacteric)._] passivity as fifty is approached. On the other
hand, I have heard of mildly virile men marrying in their twenties,
begetting children, and only after reaching middle age, becoming
somewhat sissified, acquiring _horror feminæ_, like ultra-androgynes,
and finally seeking the latter’s sexual role.
These changes in ultra-androgynes and in the mildly virile are like
menopause in woman. There is a turning point in the sex life. The
hitherto passive ultra-androgyne occasionally becomes active. The mildly
virile occasionally develops a quasi-feminine leaning. The latter class
were possibly mildly androgynous by birth, but the idiosyncrasies did
not come to the front of the mental life until the climacteric
corresponding to menopause.
In my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, I said nothing about my personal
“menopause” because it came at about the close of my writing that book,
and I did not recognize it as such until after the latter’s publication.
On page 197, I described how, at the age of forty-two, my weight,
stripped, within six weeks, jumped from 133 to 160. For ten years, it
had been stationary at 133. For the following five years, it has been
stationary at 160. I now attribute the change to “menopause.” Moreover,
a few months after the increase in weight, I kept company with a young
lady for half-a-year. I drifted into it almost unconsciously and
involuntarily. I paid her gallantries immeasurably beyond any other
incident of my life. I even regarded a Platonic marriage as a
possibility, though not a probability.
But I was too extreme an androgyne, in addition to my having been
castrated. The virility that occasionally [Sidenote: _My Personal
Menopause._] for the first time surges up in ultra-androgynes at “the
change of life” could not go very far with me. After six months, I
renounced the pseudo-courtship entirely, with disgust at the feminine
sex, but particularly with the young female who had done her best to
rope me in as her husband. For she did most of the courting. I merely
let myself almost fall into her trap.
* * * * *
Even in my twenty-second year—the period when I belonged to the Cercle
Hermaphroditos—I had already written a brief AUTOBIOGRAPHY. But the
bigotry of cultured man made me wait twenty-three years for publication.
Already—because I happened to be an ultra-androgyne myself—I had
selected androgynism as my special field in science and literature. I
therefore desired to collect all the data possible, although not yet
having acquired the habit of note-making.
In order to draw out atypic individuals—particularly androgynes—I made
it a practice first to reveal my own secrets. This frankness generally
led them to confide to me what they never breathed to another—people in
general, and particularly cultured androgynes, having an absurd
reluctance to discuss the sexual side of their lives. (Androgynes for
fear of persecution and prosecution, not by reason of prudery.) And the
human race has suffered so greatly as a result of this obsession!
When God created human nature, his handiwork was so horrible that
mankind, as soon as they reached the stage of civilization, have thrown
a blanket over their own nature, after the example of Shem and
[Sidenote: _Man Ashamed of His Nature._] Japheth with their father
Noah’s drunken nakedness. Cultured man has interdicted human nature’s
coming out into the light of day because of its inexpressible ugliness.
Even in the twentieth century in the English-speaking world, next to
nothing is known about human sexuality. At least with the exception of a
handful of sexologists. Each individual simply knows his own sexual
life, refuses to divulge it because of its “nastiness,” and is unable to
overcome his shame to inquire whether other humans (men and women,
respectively) are of like passions with himself. He assumes yes. But the
truth of the matter is that on the sexual side of life, every individual
is _sui generis_. And if a man or woman does chance to discover that an
associate is different “from _me_,” right away he or she is crazy to
murder the associate for daring to be different! On no side of life is
charity so much needed as on the sexual.
But Frank White (or Eunice)—whom, out of deference to the predilections
of the general reader, I am going to let tell “his-her” own story in
PART FOUR—needed, by exception, little urging to draw him out. He told
me piecemeal. But I hand it on to my readers without a break. Moreover,
I endeavor to reproduce his unconscious hifalutin, Johnsonese style of
expression.
At the time he epitomized his life for me, Frank—Eunice (as he was known
in the Underworld) was a comely blonde around forty, and five feet five
tall. His physique was not noticeably feminine. He possessed merely a
small-boy air and appearance, notwithstanding his hair was nearly white,
though not thin. The [Sidenote: _Frank White Introduced._] beardal
growth was sparse, always clean-shaven, and for special occasions,
eradicated. The amative side of life (“erotic ardor”, as he phrased it)
was his only fault. In leisure hours he could talk of little else than
modern exemplars of adolescent Adonis or Hercules. In this respect he
was one of the two or three extreme hermaphroditoi.
[Illustration:
Bowery, in the Nineteenth Century America’s Main Red-Light Street, and
Stamping-Ground of Frank—Eunice, Angelo—Phyllis, and Ralph
Werther—Jennie June
]
Part Four:
Frank—Eunice
I. Debut as Adult Female-Impersonator.
Ralph, I was ushered into this mundane sphere in the year of our Lord
1854. I was a lucky dog to be brought up on the upper West Side a few
blocks from Central Park [New York City]. As a diminutive urchin, I
dolled myself up in feminine habiliments at every opportunity. Eunice
was my favorite playmate. I opined her appellation the most melodious
that ever impinged upon my eardrums and regretted it was not mine
personally. Whenever I flaunted myself in skirts, I adopted it.
In my early teens, father escorted me to a physician that the latter
might query me concerning my feminine predilections and ridicule me out
of same. Simultaneously father, through severe castigation, imposed a
finis to female-impersonation in my own clique. I therefore commenced,
during periods of special obsession to be a _puella_, the practice of
perambulating the slums, first by daylight, and later after the shades
of night had fallen. During these insensate peregrinations, there would
swarm through my mind visions of flirtations with the ruffians around my
age that I encountered. These “huskies” riveted my gaze. They fascinated
me. But not until the fifth or sixth [Sidenote: _The Pugilists’ Haven._]
peregrination could I screw up courage to insinuate myself into the
confidence of one of these magical intelligences.
I chanced for the first time to run across a Bowery bar-room, the
“Pugilists’ Haven,” which, I had read in the papers, was the rendezvous
of prize-fighters, gamblers, and gunmen [the most desperate type of
gangster who will murder for pay]. The press advocated its obliteration.
Curious that just because of this reputation, I was immediately insane
to enter. For it was unholy ground. I reflected: “In this lowest of
dives, they may accept me as a _puella_, although superficially a boy.”
Because all early influences, Ralph, had made me opine that taking the
part of a girl was the very lowest thing a boy could descend to. I
further pondered: “Between the luxurious mansion of _pater familias_ and
this dingy dive, give me the latter! For here alone I might be able to
pass as a _puella_. In my own cultured, Christian circle,
female-impersonation is castigated. But would not the attitude of the
offscouring of our mundane sphere—the Pugilists’ Haven gunmen—be
different?”
And how crazy I was to insinuate myself with the adolescent gunmen, whom
I had only read about! The very supposition of their presence just
within that latticed door attracted me as a potent magnet snatches steel
filings to itself. I passed and repassed the dive, continuously
imagining what would transpire if I should penetrate this unholy of
unholies, and having delectable visions of every species of flirtation
with the demigods who made the saloon their rendezvous.
I finally emboldened myself to thrust aside a leaf of the latticed
portal. It was my first appearance inside [Sidenote: “_A Cat in a
Strange Garret._”] a saloon, and I never had tasted any intoxicant. In
my diffidence and ignorance of the proper course to pursue, I subsided
into the first vacant fauteuil. For, on one side, against the wall, were
rude, wooden fauteuils, almost all occupied by middle-aged cherry-nosed
individuals. Extending the full length of the other side was a bar
crowded with fast-looking younger men, each with a glass before him.
Doubtless because of my verdancy, several commenced eyeing me, making
remarks, and laughing. The nearest bar-tender immediately inquired:
“Doll-baby, what’ll yer have ter drink?”
“Nothing.”
“Jackass! Every bloke dat comes inter dis here joint has ter take
somethink!”
“Then give me a glass of beer,” I replied hardly above a whisper. In my
embarrassment, I imbibed the beverage almost at a swallow. That gave all
the witnesses hysterics. They assured me: “We only sip it!” They
addressed me as “Siss!” “Pet!” “Fairie!” I did not immediately perceive
the significance of the last appellation. I was encircled. Particularly
two sailors ingratiated themselves. They requested me to purchase
“schnapps” for them because impecunious. I provided glass after glass,
for they were bewitchingly gallant. All the other individuals were
kidding me: “The doll-baby likes the blue-jackets, sure Mike!”
“Sailor-boy, take off your suit and make it a present to her!” “How I
wish I was one of Uncle Sam’s boys and I’d git steeped in schnapps too!”
I was mortified by such observations, and as soon as the sailor-boys
invited me, departed under their escort.
I hired a chamber at a third-class hotel nearby. [Sidenote: _A
Transformation Not Bargained For._] I gave them funds to secure another.
For we did not desire that the clerk perceive that we were all to occupy
the identic room. We pretended the sailors and I were unacquainted....
They finished by inserting a handkerchief into my buccal cavity, tying a
strip of the bed linen over it, binding my hands behind my back, and
fastening my lower extremities to the bed springs so that I could not
even kick. They then departed with my wallet and outer clothing.
After an hour of helplessness, I discovered that the partition to the
adjacent chamber was scarcely more than cardboard. Because I perceived
sounds of the entrance of an individual. I could even hear his
breathing. I discerned the words: “How I wish I had three hundred
dollars!”
I commenced a continuous jouncing up and down. The uninterrupted
tintinnabulation of the springs attracted the individual’s attention and
he addressed me. I could respond only with a low gurgling. The clerk
soon liberated me. I had to confess everything. But he manifested
sympathy and donated a nickel for carfare.
One blue-jacket was of about my own measurements. Evidently he intended
to desert. For he had abandoned his uniform. I was compelled to attire
myself therein and boarded a car for my domicile.
My house-key had remained in my appropriated habiliments. How to enter
was my problem. If I rang, my arrival at midnight costumed as a sailor
would disclose everything. I hoped the butler had neglected to secure
the covering of the coal-hole in front of the basement windows.
[Sidenote: _Androgynes Resourceful._]
Every one had retired. Able to raise the covering, I dropped to the
coal-pile. I discovered that the door at the head of the cellar stairs
was also fortunately unsecured. With trepidation and in absolute
silence, I ascended, in stocking feet, to my chamber and devoutly
thanked Providence for restoration to my family without a hair injured.
I had only recently purchased the appropriated habiliments. The
subsequent day I visited the same establishment and succeeded in
securing an exact duplicate so that my family would not observe the
disappearance of the original.
[Sidenote: _Frank—Eunice._]
II. The Pug Heaven.
I henceforth visited the Pugilists’ Haven one evening each week. After
the appropriation of one good suit, I always attired myself rather
shabbily. After seven o’clock dinner, I would change to the cast-off
apparel and noiselessly glide down the two flights of stairs from my
chamber. Fortunately father always had prayers after dinner. While the
family were in the prayer-room and all the servants in their
dining-room, I succeeded in engineering my exit for an evening’s revel
with little risk, in my poverty-stricken disguise, of encountering any
individual in the halls. No one ever suspected the reason for my
absences. It was several times remarked that I had been out late. But I
threw the observer off the scent by the pretext of a perambulation to
obviate insomnia.
As I proceeded rapidly from my domicile, I would, if I detected a
familiar figure advancing, cross to the other side of the street and
make a feint of ringing a door-bell. In order, in my dilapidated
apparel, to avert the danger of encountering on the public conveyance
some one acquainted with my identity, I would perambulate more than a
mile in order to attain the Bowery by an east-side car. On the way I
would conceal my house-key and an emergency greenback in a crevice in
the Central Park stonewall—always the identic cavity in order to be
regained with ease.
At Pug Heaven—as my dive was nicknamed—I was universally given a hearty
welcome and secured [Sidenote: _A Female with Male Genitals._] the
society of adolescent ruffians fairly clean and sprucely attired. Of
course they always ransacked my pockets the first chance that offered.
Before it could happen, I had treated liberally half-a-dozen of the
handsomest, and thus insinuated myself into their good graces. I always
kept a reserve five-dollar bill sewed in the waistband of my trousers—a
pair worn on these sprees alone because too shabby to be a temptation
for appropriation.
On my second appearance at Pug Heaven, the heroic gunmen entertained
me with episodes about other female-impersonators they had
encountered. I particularly remember stories about the “Duchess of
Austria,” from whom, they recounted, “some lucky guys had pumped”
hundreds of dollars. One narrated anecdotes of a physician located
south of Fourteenth Street. Young fellows would visit his office to be
medicated and he would reveal his own bisexuality. My pals did not
marvel at all over my strange appetencies. They entreated me to bring
around other female-impersonators. They were merely anxious for the
money it would bring them. When I apologized for my queer penchant,
they said: “It is nothing. It is Nature.” Ralph, those adolescent Pug
Heaven sluggers knew more about the psychology of instinctive
female-impersonators than all the M. D.’s in America combined! From
that single hour’s conversation, I ascertained more about my own
personality than in my prior fourteen years pilgrimage on this planet.
For the first time, the riddle of my existence was solved; I perceived
that I had been born a biological sport—a female with male genitals.
I soon acquired half-a-dozen permanent favorites. [Sidenote:
_Impersonators Expert Actors._] These adolescent sluggers and gunmen
lost no time in assuring me: “You’re only a doll-baby, Eunice, and so
need us big, strong fellows to fight your battles. But you must stay
with our gang! If we should catch you running around with any other,
we’d murder you!”
I coveted to be their slave, Ralph, and did all I could for them without
disclosing that I belonged to a wealthy family, because a
female-impersonator of a higher social stratum associating incognito
with gangsters must conceal his status. At Pug Heaven, I became an
expert detective and actor—an accomplishment requisite for every
upper-class impersonator destined to sprees in the Underworld.
A thousand times I desiderated female corporeality so that I could have
married one of these magic gunmen. How I have envied many a young mother
before my eyes with babe in arms! How could a God of love have created
me physically a male when I have always so coveted personal female
corporeality, and, in adulthood, the mothering of offspring!
These weekly female-impersonation explosions continued more than two
years, when my father relegated me to a university several hours from
New York. I leave it nameless—to spare it the disgrace of having once
numbered “Frank White” among its students. These evenings in Pug Heaven
were the most beatific feature of life. During college vacations, and
for several years following graduation, I occasionally visited the
joint. But finally, on my return from an extended residence in Europe, I
discovered a haberdashery occupying the site. I was informed that an
application for renewal of license had been denied. Its habitués became
thus scattered.
[Sidenote: _Frank—Eunice._]
III. A University Friendship.
Would it interest you, Ralph-Jennie, to hear how I was blackmailed in
college? The episode commenced only in my junior year. Throughout the
first two years, because of the safety-valve I possessed in the Pug
Heaven gunmen, I had succeeded in restraining my appetencies and
presenting no occasion for _chantage_. But early in my junior year, the
janitor of my dormitory happened to be an exquisite chocolate
cream-drop. Only twenty, and with such a “divine” countenance! I could
have gazed into it throughout eternity without a second’s
intermission—until I detected the rascality underneath! Such dreamy
brown eyes! Perfect, arched eyebrows! Sun-flower cheeks! And soft
chestnut hair! Ralph, you never saw anything so fascinating! For weeks I
experienced anguish at being denied a declaration of my admiration! I
then commenced making the “divine” creature presents. And it was then
not long before I began inviting him around to my room after all the
other students had retired and there was little risk of any individual
discovering the unequal friendship. For I would have been ostracized for
entertaining a janitor. And again it was not long before Jack manifested
a roguish streak in his character, which any one but an intimate would
have opined equally beautiful with his countenance and figure. After I
discovered his true character, my fascination died down. But there was
absolutely nothing to do but tolerate him up to graduation.
[Sidenote: _Anglo-American Law Unintelligent._]
In the course of my two decades of adulthood, I have repeatedly fallen
victim to the physical charms of some adolescent stalwart menial in my
every-day environment. I have lived much abroad. In the United States
and Great Britain, three out of four, if of generally good reputation,
demonstrate themselves diamonds in the rough. They refuse to take
advantage of a step-child of Nature whose secret they happen to unearth.
But on the continent of Europe, the proportion is as high as nineteen
out of twenty. There a correct knowledge of sexual intermediates is
widely disseminated and the courts deal out justice to the woman-man.
Even the Paris apache realizes that these bisexuals are worthy of
commiseration and not responsible for their idiosyncrasies. But
English-speaking countries give _carte blanche_ to every prude actuated
to pillage and even murder us women-men. We are outlaws; enjoy no police
protection; and are denied recourse to the laws and courts. In
English-speaking lands, as already in other civilized countries, even
the scum of society should be educated, first by newspaper propaganda
whenever the murder of an intermediate is described, and then from mouth
to mouth, that the woman-man and the man-woman are irresponsible for
their exceptional sexuality and should not be tortured on account of it.
Notwithstanding that I immediately entered into an arrangement by which
Jack benefited fifty dollars a month, I soon perceived evidences of
whisperings that “Frank White is abnormal!” An exasperated classmate
once even exclaimed sarcastically: “You are not a proper person to
associate with!”
In my senior year, I failed of a much coveted [Sidenote: _Persecution of
Androgynes._] election to a senior society—an election which many indeed
had prophesied on the basis of my wealth and scholarship. The failure
was explicable only in the rumors apparently being circulated. But
fortunately they were only _rumors_. In my college days, I would never
have been so reckless as to have permitted any individual ever to
discover me, even for a second, in conversation with such as Jack. Thus
Incredulity followed closely on the steps of Rumor. Because of my
general goody-goodiness, the fellows probably thought it impossible for
me to be so utterly depraved! But the actuality was far beyond rumor.
The only mistake was the rumormongers _a priori_ assumption of deepdyed
depravity. I was not a whit more corrupt than those Pharisees
themselves! The worst of the matter was that I am a girl incarnated in a
fellow’s body, and nevertheless doomed to be segregated exclusively with
males. If the world could only realize that nearly all their anxieties
and horrors are as groundless as this abhorrence of myself in the
university!
Because no busybody engaged a detective to ferret out my secrets, I was
privileged to graduate. But commencement day was like that of my own
funeral. For I realized I was bidding _alma mater_ a farewell forever.
First, on account of Jack’s treacherous character, who had remained with
the university because of his advantages with me; and secondly, on
account of my questionable reputation. Tears even trickled down my
cheeks during the commencement exercises, Ralph. For I felt that I was
in my death throes so far as the university is concerned. I was
compelled henceforth to keep out of touch, including all alumni
gatherings. In all class letters and address lists published [Sidenote:
_Wiles of Androgynes._] the first five years, I engineered things so
that there appeared after my name: “Whereabouts unknown.” Otherwise Jack
might have ferreted me out. The Pharisees doubtless concluded my
“depravity” had wrecked my life. But the fact was that I rose rapidly in
my business career.
Primarily in order to give Jack the slip, I spent the year after
graduation in Europe—for the most part in Paris. I despatched Jack
several cards in order to put him on a false scent.
On resuming residence in New York, I had to make the best of its
Overworld. I ascertained that they are incredibly bigoted as compared
with the liberalism of continental Europe. Only a person who has resided
there has acquired the acuteness of vision to discern the legend on the
hatbands of upper-class New Yorkers: “I am holier than thou!”
I had heard that the Rialto is New York’s stamping-ground for amateur
female-impersonators. Accordingly I commenced devoting one or two
evenings a week to its resorts. As soon as I learned that “the Hall” is
the home of cultured female-impersonation, I made it my own
headquarters.
[Sidenote: _Frank—Eunice._]
IV. The Masked Ball.
You inquire, Ralph-Jennie, if I have been blackmailed during my business
career. I confess I have been more negligent than most cultured
women-men, and as a punishment, have suffered more blackmail. I have
insanely betrayed my secret to several dishonest young bloods who knew
who I am and therefore forced large sums out of me. I shall describe the
most remarkable case.
But first, why have I been the victim of blackmail? Because my strongest
passion is to get into feminine finery now and then and play the
coquette. I also occasionally yield to instinct in the way Nature
ordained for me. But in all this I transgress not in the least against
God or man. Of course I have offended against laws that are a legacy
from the Dark Ages.
No man should cast a stone at me who indulges in marital joys more than
once a week. For since my Pug Heaven apprenticeship, I have not myself
averaged once a week. True I have changed partners about thirty times.
But if circumstances had rendered it possible, I would have been
satisfied with a solitary permanent one. But in the case of women-men,
there do not exist the reasons for monandry and the permanency of the
bond.
But while I have been guilty of nothing to be ashamed of in the eyes of
the All-Wise, I have—owing to irrational laws, fear of imprisonment, and
particularly [Sidenote: _Androgynes’ Families Unsuspicious._] of
bringing bitter disgrace and sorrow on my family—suffered myself to be
bled unmercifully.
Ever since resuming residence in New York, I have taken advantage of all
the public masked balls to gratify my instinct to pose as a belle. Even
those under the humble auspices of the Draymen’s Union, the “Tonsorial
Artists,” and the “Société Universelle des Cuisiniers.”
A particularly great event has been the annual Masked Ball of the
Philhedonic Society. Every pair of trousers may attend which can scrape
together $10 for self and “lady.” The patrons range from scions of the
aristocracy out for a lark, to crooks bent on thievery. For conditions
at the Philhedonic Ball are ideal for the light-fingered fraternity,
particularly because every patron is in disguise, with a mask covering
at least the upper third of the face, and the millionaire and the thief
dance and flirt together.
Our families have, of course, no suspicion that we hermaphroditoi are
only pseudo-men. While marvelling because we have never courted a girl,
they have not been so far enlightened as to discern what that signifies.
That they may always remain in their ignorance, we hermaphroditoi—as you
are aware—set out from our respective domiciles for a public Masked Ball
in masculine attire. Later, with hired masculine escort, we depart from
[Paresis] Hall bewigged, bepadded, bepowdered, bejewelled, and begowned
to shine as belles on the bewaxed floor of X——Garden. After arrival
there, we associate, without waiting for an introduction, with whatever
pair of trousers—that is, presumably—appears fair to look upon. We
hermaphroditoi do our best to converse like real belles. An accidental
[Sidenote: _America’s Most Impious._] gruff note does sometimes betray
us. But usually the gallant comprehends, sympathizes, and merely laughs
at a good joke on himself.
The Philhedonic Ball is the spectacle of a life-time. I do not approve
all that transpires. The two large orchestras, playing alternately, pour
forth continuously into the inebriated ears of the three thousand
revellers the thrilling music of the most voluptuous dances, rightly
tabooed by all decent society. The revellers are as impious a crowd as
ever gathers in America. I would approve the police’s radically
restricting the present license. I am sure we hermaphroditoi are not
among those who give the ball a bad name.
Some of the costumes have been ordered from Paris and London. Many have
already graced the Mardi Gras of New Orleans or Nice. Practically every
romantic or grotesque character ever heard of is on the floor: monkeys,
parrots, geese, yellow kids, foxy grandpa, Happy Hooligan, Cupid,
Mephistopheles, and a thousand others.
At a Philhedonic Ball of about ten years ago—at which the most
remarkable blackmail episode of my life had its origin—I impersonated
Euterpe. Down to my debacle, money fortunately came easy with me. I
therefore endeavored to adorn every Masked Ball with the most elaborate
feminine costume on display there. My Euterpe gown, terminating at the
knees, was of turquoise satin. It was ornamented with several flounces
of miniature sleigh bells washed in gold. Whenever I moved, they emitted
a melodious jingle. My silk, open-work stockings were of an azure hue,
and the pumps of purple kid, with mother-of-pearl buckles. My chevelure
was surmounted with a goldplated [Sidenote: _The Belle of the Ball._]
lyre, studded with hundreds of Paris diamonds, which, under the myriad
gas flames, scintillated dazzlingly. I had had my beardal hair
eradicated so that I could glory in a countenance of an infantile
softness and an exquisite glabrity.
Until about three, everything transpired after a beauteous fashion. My
unrivalled costume had attracted a score of flirts, begging a dance with
me. I finally fell to chattering with an individual in a bearskin. He
soon declared his conviction that I was merely a female-impersonator.
But by exception he manifested irritation at being hoodwinked, and
nausea at the very idea of cross-dressing. A panic supervened upon his
strident tones. I was overwhelmed with mortification and trepidation on
discovering myself in the clutches of what I supposed one of those
charlatans who attend the function in order to unearth a moneyed
female-impersonator of some prominence with _chantage_ as objective. I
lost all heart for mimicking a belle. Most terrible of all, the fellow
next denuded my face of the mask. Horrified lest my identity be
disclosed, I pressed the lacerated fabric to my countenance and
proceeded toward the dressing-room.
In the corridor, the fellow blurted out: “I think I know you. Those eyes
of yourn—how far apart they are! They give you a queer look that no guy
kin forgit who has seen you several times. Any bloke’d recognize you
anywhere, even with a girl’s wig on. I have often passed you down on
Wall Street.”
Though actually employed a stone’s throw from that street and
promenading it almost every lunch hour, I responded almost inaudibly, I
was in a state of [Sidenote: _Tony Neddo._] such trepidation: “You are
in error. I am employed on 42d Street.”
“Don’t think I’m a fool! I’m so sure of meself that I’m goin’ to hang
‘round Wall Street till I run into you agin. And I’m sure comin’ up to
say ‘Hoddo!’ Sure I remember your sissie stride and, most of all, the
way you stare at young fellers as if you were goin’ to eat them up! I
work on that street meself; elevator man in the Z—— Buildin’. Me name is
Tony Neddo. I’m not ashamed to let any one know who I am! But you! Do
you know you’ve done an awful dirty, disgustin’ thin’ in comin’ to the
ball in a girl’s rig? For this you’ll have to pay dear! But if you know
on which side your bread is buttered, no guy’ll ever be the wiser on
account of what I’ve just found out.
“But get rid of your tremblin’! You needn’t be ’fraid of me. I ain’t the
mean guy you think. When you meet me in my every-day clothes, you kin
see for yourself. You’ll see I’m a young feller of strong, pure manhood.
You’ll see I’ve the build of a pugilist. Whoever you are, Mr. Skirt, I
know, from the diamonds in your harp, you’re rich! On the other hand, I
know I kin do for you far more than you kin for me. Any how, let’s you
and me be best friends? We’ll part now, but you’ll sure see me comin’ up
to you on Wall Street soon. Bye-bye, sweetheart!”
O Ralph-Jennie, the fellow was really cute as he took his departure. He
captivated me by his good-humored farewell. It dissipated all my
depression. While I realized he would descend to _chantage_, I already
perceived he possessed innumerable compensating characteristics. Every
individual is derelict in [Sidenote: _Infatuation._] some respect. Tony
had never been enlightened on the immorality of _chantage_. So I hardly
devoted a second thought to his cupidity. At the time I possessed no
“best friend”—no “adopted son”, as we older hermaphroditoi designate our
sweethearts. I immediately commenced to gloat over Tony as _my
conquest—my boy_! How proud I already was of him, although not yet
having visioned his countenance! But he had strutted away in such a
manly fashion and possessed such a deep bass, ultra-masculine voice! I
could perceive he was athletic and a little larger than the average man.
And I was particularly obsessed with his blatant, nonchalant description
of himself: “Strong, pure manhood”!
Henceforth my stream of thought was surfeited with visions of conversing
with him again. But the opportunity did not supervene until two awfully
long hours—in the closing half-hour of the ball. The floor was
ankle-deep with confetti, rendering further dancing impracticable. A
goodly proportion of the revellers were anyway too tipsy or too fatigued
to be on their feet. The hundreds promenading the arena, besides the
couple of thousand in the boxes and balconies, were sprinkled with red,
white, and blue confetti and wound round and round with paper streamers
of all colors. A steadily flowing river of humanity was discharging into
the street. I would myself have already taken my departure, but had
devoted the last half-hour to dragging myself wearily to every nook and
corner in search of my bear.
Finally, in the main corridor, a handsome adolescent stepped smilingly
out of the stream of humanity [Sidenote: _Chantage._] slowly moving
streetward: “Are you looking for me, sweetheart? I am Tony Neddo.”
He dared excuse himself, for a moment or two, from his
“lady”—considering to what class she belonged! We withdrew out of her
hearing. I was tickled to death on now beholding what I had drawn in the
lottery. I had known the fellow was ultra-masculine. But not until that
moment did I discover that he was handsome into the bargain. Indeed he
was indisputably the best looker of the hundreds of young fellows who,
with their “ladies,” streamed by as we whispered together.
“How old are you?” I began.
“Nineteen is all.”
“Eleven years younger than myself. Just my ideal age for a young man to
be adopted as my son. Tell me frankly: Did anybody ever tell you that
you are unusually good-looking?”
“That’s not for me to say. But you yourself see me now when I have my
own clothes on. I don’t look as if I belonged to the weak, crippled
sex—as you do yourself—do I? I look to be a he-man, don’t I? While you
are one of those awful she-men! Mr. Skirt, just think of your own
shameful, disgustin’ nature! Your secret and character have come into me
power. And it wouldn’t do you any good to hit back. I have nothin’ at
all to lose.
“But I’m only talkin’ business now. Every bloke puts his foot into it
now and again. And I did at our first meetin’. Because I was then just
crazy for money. That’s all. But it only _looks_ as if I’m after your
money. What I really and truly want is the chance to make your life
happy. I want to be your [Sidenote: _Boon of an “Adopted Son”._] best
friend. Just let me see what you would do for a young feller who would
give himself to you, body and soul. No one is poorer than me these days.
All I got is the suit on me back. I only rented that bear rig for the
evenin’.”
“Well, Tony, how much would you expect?”
“Two hundred bucks a month.”
I argued for one hundred—all that at the time I cared to part with,
although my infatuation soon after augmented so that I voluntarily
presented him three times my first offer. But on this first night I
repeatedly assured him coaxingly, though sincerely, that he was just the
type of young fellow that appealed to me. Over and over again he
replied: “I wouldn’t sell me goodwill so cheap! All your fine talk, Mr.
Skirt, doesn’t get us anywhere. It doesn’t have the least effect on me.
Only money talks. If you’ll part with two hundred bucks, I’ll know you
think that much of me. Besides, if we don’t fix up matters now, don’t
ever show your face again on Wall Street!”
But when he had bluffed to his limit, he accepted my first offer. And I
didn’t mind the promise of that stipend to _him_—so winsome and handsome
and assuring me he would be my soul-mate.
Because his “lady” was dancing attendance, our conversation had to be
broken off before the end of five minutes. In parting, I said: “The more
I have heard you converse, the better I like you, Tony. You are a pretty
smart boy. I would be glad to give you an education, so that you can
rise to my own social level instead of continuing in the servant class.
We shall not regard our agreement as blackmail. Instead I now adopt you
as my sole well-beloved son. I will [Sidenote: _Now Man; Now Woman._]
even be your slave. We shall enjoy together all the good things of life.
But, remember, you must never do anything to betray my character and our
relations to anybody. And, Tony, always call me ‘Frank.’ I would prefer
that in private you called me ‘Eunice,’ but if you acquired the habit,
you would sometimes make a break before people.”
[Sidenote: _Frank—Eunice._]
V. Frank—Eunice’s Indiscretion.
Would you like, Ralph-Jennie, to be enlightened as to how I came to
reside, five years of my prime, within prison walls? You have censured
me for black-guarding the Church and religious people. But do you marvel
thereat after I disclose that it was _they_ who were instrumental in
robbing me of five years of man’s all too brief sojourn on earth? In my
youth, I was naturally religious. While no longer a church member, not a
Sunday passes but I attend morning service. I continue to be a disciple
of Christ in my own way, and estimate church attendance as one of the
greatest privileges of existence. But religious people, the Church, and
the Bible have occasioned me such terrible persecution that I can no
longer do aught than revile them for their hypocrisy. And the average
preacher, while meaning well, is so bigoted! Only recently I heard one
declaim about the deluge: “God then drowned humanity as rats with the
exception of Noah’s family because MONSTERS were being born in
considerable numbers.” He claimed that “monsters” is the correct
translation for “giants” of King James’ version. And he made evident
that he understood by “monsters” us bisexuals. Must we poor sexual
cripples bear the blame not alone for the decline and fall of nations,
but also for the Noachian deluge?
You ask, Ralph-Jennie, my philosophy of life. First: To brighten the
lives of unfortunates. Secondly: To get out of existence all the good
times one can without transgressing against any one else. We are
[Sidenote: _Making a Misanthrope._] certain of nothing in this life
except the passing moment. I even do not _know_ that you exist, Ralph,
otherwise than as a percept in my stream of thought.
My incarceration supervened, but not immediately, upon my reception of
Tony Neddo as adopted son. Nature created me impotent. I could never
possess wife and children. And for the reason that I accepted the only
alternative of an adopted son, society incarcerated me! Ralph, do you
call that Christianity and enlightenment? You, Ralph, recognizing that I
am a congenital goody-goody, are in condition to accept my declaration
that I have never in all my earthly pilgrimage transgressed against a
solitary individual. In addition, Mother Nature endowed me with such
cerebral capacity that at the university I was one of the leaders in
scholarship. Nevertheless policemen and jailers—who of course are not
responsible for their meager education in the rural districts of
Ireland, where they were instructed merely to spell out the primer and
scrawl their own names—have tyrannized over me, handcuffed me, and
compelled me, when absolutely guiltless of any offence against the Deity
or society, though having transgressed against mediæval jurisprudence,
to accompany them whither I strenuously did not desire, and to perform
hard labor for years without remuneration, and to abide in a cell, amid
vermin, and subsist on disgusting nourishment! Do you marvel that such
impositions, continued for years, have rendered me a misanthrope? For
while I sympathize with and alleviate the sufferings of humanity up to
my capacity, I experience only detestation for hypocritical humanity
surfeited with exuberant health and in influential positions.
[Sidenote: _Androgynes Nabobize Menials._]
After the Masked Ball of ten years ago, Tony Neddo continued, for a
longer period than any other young fellow, to be my adopted son and
soul-mate. With the exception of his initial roguery, he rang true. Of
course the consideration that I loaded him with benefits exercised an
enormous influence. He realized that solely by cultivating my affection,
he could play a good thing for all it was worth. My ambition to educate
him for a profession was doomed to disappointment. While sufficiently
intelligent in practical affairs, he lacked the gray matter for
acquiring book knowledge.
The immediate reason for my incarceration was merely an indiscretion. I
had resided two years on the continent of Europe, where every individual
comprehends bisexuality and nobody oppresses those so unfortunate as to
be afflicted therewith. That tolerance unfitted me for residence in the
United States, where the words “sex” and “sin” are synonyms. I
erroneously opined I could be as overt in New York as in Paris.
Therefore, while continuing to reside with my aged parents, I, soon
after adopting Tony (not legally of course) leased for him a furnished
apartment at a high-class residential hotel. Two successive hostelries
finally refused to rent further to Tony and me. In the third year, we
were in our third caravansary. But its personnel proved of unexampled
bigotry—because the manager was a narrowminded Methodist. He opined that
simply expelling Tony and myself ignominiously was not sufficient. He
was busybody to the extent of praying for my incarceration. Therefore he
engaged an unusually handsome youthful [Sidenote: _Immorality a Novelty
in New York._] detective to enmesh me. Attired as a Beau Brummel, the
sneak first scraped acquaintance and then insinuated himself into my
confidence. Soon he succeeded in seducing me where it was possible for a
confederate to employ a camera without my suspecting anything. It was on
the basis of that photograph that I was sentenced. My accomplice, who
had been the sole occasion of the so-called felony, and who alone had
proceeded deliberately and wilfully, received merely the thanks of the
court and of society.
You inquire about the element of suffering during my incarceration. The
first week in the Tombs jail, I lay awake half of every night in mental
anguish, for I realized I was a martyr. Every one was accusing me of
deepdyed depravity when my life was actually on a high ethical plane.
All the journals announced in big headlines that I had been surprised in
a double life—intimating wilful immorality. “Immorality”! “Immorality”!
That was the keynote of all newspaper accounts of myself, as if hitherto
“immorality” had been an unknown quantity with Knickerbockers. People
could not get through singing the refrain: “At last a New Yorker has
been discovered who is infected with _immorality_!!!” The journals
stated that I had been incarcerated in the Tombs to await trial, the
evidence against me being so incontrovertible and the felony charged so
revolting that bail had been refused. At the time I was unenlightened as
to what that evidence was and a thousand possibilities coursed through
my stream of thought, none of which, however, emerged in my subsequent
trial.
I was terribly browbeaten by the plebeian police. They resorted to
subterfuge and endeavored by every [Sidenote: _Intellectual Aristocrat
Browbeaten by Plebeians._] means to betray me into confession of the
secrets of my heart that they suspected. They adopted insulting
language. They inquired point-blank over and over again in the common
indecent expressions whether I had not with such and such persons
(particularly Tony) been guilty of what jurists denominate ridiculously,
though solemnly and with bated breath, “the crime against Nature,” when
in fact nothing is more natural than the conduct in question. It is
exclusively Nature’s feat. But I scrupulously guarded myself from making
a single incriminating statement. I refused in any way to admit being a
bisexual—because all my inquisitors presented evidence that they
considered that condition the most horrible of crimes.
This was before I ascertained the existence of the photograph and I
fully expected to elude incarceration. And the result proved that they
were impotent to lay their hands on any other legal evidence beyond the
detective’s statements.
That first week in the Tombs I would have committed suicide if I had
been vouchsafed an instrument. For I was continuously immersed in the
deepest melancholia. But the jailers were careful to deprive me of my
pocket-knife and everything else by which it was possible to do myself
harm. Even while at meals, I was continuously observed lest I utilize
the table knife on my body.
“Who ne’er his bread in sorrow ate,
He knows you not, ye heavenly powers!”
Before I experienced it, I did not believe an individual could survive
years of such depression. [Sidenote: _Absurd Legal Superstitions._] But,
as you see, Ralph, it turned my hair white. Fortunately it has not
rendered me bald or wrinkled.
And the judge’s charge was so absurd: “The crime of which you, Frank
White, have been convicted, is of such a disgusting character that it
can not even be defined!”
To think of relegating an individual to state’s prison on a charge that
no one comprehended; that no one had ever been permitted even to
investigate—because the subject is beyond investigation, no intellectual
even being willing to define it!
The judge said: “It is as heinous as murder, because it strikes at the
very existence of the race! No one but a criminal of the deepest dye
could descend to it! Frank White, you have been convicted of the awful
felony of race suicide!”——Unreason and prejudice! There was hardly an
individual within the hearing of the judge who had not been guilty of
race suicide, though in a different way from my own! And they for the
most part deliberately, whereas I was compelled by Mother Nature. They
imprisoned me for what they conceded to themselves: Following Nature’s
behests other than solely for the perpetuation of the race!
And then the day following my sentence, in the yard of the Tombs jail,
being thrust into an iron-barred bus along with a score of hardened male
criminals—just as if I were myself a male!—to be driven to the Grand
Central to board a train for Sing Sing. I, the goody-goody girl-boy,
having evolved into a felon!
But my prosecution by self-righteous Christians for what were really
offences against no one—simply to satiate these Christians’ thirst for
tormenting [Sidenote: _Publicity Would Remove a World of Woe._] people
whose views differed from their own—had more serious results than my
five years in prison. My life has been a wreck ever since. My having
been incarcerated on a conviction so utterly loathsome to the ordinary
mind—because it has never been permitted access to the truth of the
matter and is governed solely by mediæval bias—completely alienated
every member of my family, who now regarded me as dead, and disinherited
me on the ground of deepdyed hypocrisy and degeneracy. If we encountered
one another on the street, they would not speak.
When liberated from Sing Sing, I was compelled to adopt a new
appellation and strike out into a new field of labor, where it has been
possible only with difficulty to make ends meet.
As for Tony, he escaped to parts unknown immediately following my
arrest. My deprivation of his friendship was the severest blow of all,
for he had shown himself so devoted—but only, as results demonstrated,
because of the fortune he derived from me. He merely left a memo
declaring he would write me some day, but never effectuated his promise.
If only the Javerts who prosecute Nature’s step-children realized the
world of woe they thereby occasion these most unfortunate of mankind,
they would reflect twice before inaugurating the prosecution. But
society prohibits the reasons for the conduct of bisexuals becoming
known. Which knowledge would prove a death blow to such prosecution.
Part Five:
Angelo—Phyllis
I. Angelo Angevine’s Debut as Public Female-Impersonator.
That fancy masculine name was only an alias, androgynes having a
penchant for such as are musical and of exalted connotation. Further,
its first element was after Michelangelo, an arch-bisexualist.
In 1895, Angelo—Phyllis divulged what I have here recorded as nearly as
I can remember. As I said in the first chapter of this book, I remember
only the general outlines of the originals of the monologues I give. But
I have listened to numerous confessions of the sort of which I now
present a sample. Where definite memory fails me, I have had recourse to
my sea of general memories of the way the hermaphroditoi talked, how
they looked upon life, what they did, and what befell them. I aim at a
fairly full, but essentially true, portrayal of the inner history and
life experience of cultured female-impersonators who were my bosom
friends during my own hey-day in that avocation in the Rialto. In order
to economize the reader’s attention, I present all of Angelo—Phyllis’s
life-story as if confessed to me at one sitting.
In referring to Frank White it seems more natural to use the masculine
alias and pronoun, but [Sidenote: _Cross-Dressing._] the feminine with
Phyllis. For the latter was conspicuously womanish: beardal growth
sparse and always clean-shaven, if not eradicated; breasts as large as
in some women; hips very broad; spine disproportionately long and legs
correspondingly short. “His-her” body approached the feminine to a
higher degree than that of any other androgyne I ever set eyes on with
the possible exception of myself. Phyllis surpassed me in meagreness of
beardal growth, sissie voice, feminine strut and gestures, and craze and
taste for feminine finery. As a cross-dresser and female-impersonator,
the bisexual now to be portrayed was one of the two or three extreme
hermaphroditoi, while ranking low in erotic _furor_.
[In a physical male, cross-dressing is the instinctive wearing of
feminine apparel, or, in default, of the loudest and fanciest male
styles. In a physical female, it is similar adoption of masculine
habiliments, or in default, of feminine attire and aspect approaching
the masculine as nearly as possible: hair bobbed, stiff linen collar, a
man’s neck scarf, and always severely plain tailor-made waist and skirt.
The reader will recall such photographs of brilliantly intellectual
women, particularly authoresses. Cross-dressing is generally an earmark
of sexual intermediacy. It is not at all due—as bigots claim—to moral
depravity, but entirely to irreproachable instinct. It is not at all due
to childhood’s training, such as the stories of parents’ bringing up
their boy or girl as a girl or a boy when they particularly wished a
female or a male heir. Such child, as soon as he or she became old
enough, would wholeheartedly rebel against such a travesty. In nearly
every case, cross-dressing is due to the fact that Nature injected a
psyche of the one sex into a corpus of the other. The cross-dresser is
not usually conscious of the oddity of taste for apparel. His or her
manner of dressing indicates what he or she considers artistic. All
ultra-androgynes—such as made up the membership of the Cercle
Hermaphroditos—would always, if society permitted, clothe themselves as
women.]
[Sidenote: _Phyllis’s Antecedents._]
In 1895, Angelo—Phyllis was a plump little body looking to be a decade
younger than “his-her” thirty-three, and of decidedly brunette,
Mediterranean type.
* * * * *
Ralphie, _mon cheri_, the sexual cripple now speaking was born in 1862
and brought up in a town of 50,000 within 300 miles of New York City. I
did not move here until twenty. As soon as I became financially
independent of father, I chose New York as the stage for my career
because only in a great city can an instinctive female-impersonator give
his overwhelming yearnings free rein _incognito_ and thus keep the
respect of his every-day circle.
Father was one of the leading lawyers in my home town and wanted me in
his office, for he seemed blind to my being a sissie. But just because
of this fate, I could not stand living in my home town. Furthermore, I
had no taste for law, and pined only one year in father’s law office
after leaving high-school. I was all for Art, with a capital A! Art!
Art! Which taste turned me into millinery channels as soon as I began
life in New York in 1882.
Excepting the years that George Greenwood was with me as “adopted son,”
I have in New York lived [Sidenote: _Not Willingly Half-and-half._] all
by myself in a 5-room apartment. Thus I have been able to transform
myself into a young woman and set out for a female-impersonation spree
without any one getting wise.
If I had had my say at birth, Ralphie, my lot would have been that of a
full-fledged woman, or, less to be wished, a virile man. Not
half-and-half. But at twenty I cut out the foolishness of all the time
shedding tears over my fate. Those tears were chiefly due to the world’s
forbidding a bisexual’s living according to his-her nature. I could not
assume the responsibilities of a man and pay court to women—an ordeal so
horrible, but expected of me if I stayed in my home town. I balked at
having my life forced into a masculine groove. In New York one can live
as Nature demands without setting every one’s tongue wagging.
I was unconscious of sex until my fourteenth year. Up to that age, I
went to pay school. My dozen schoolmates—including four sisters—were all
of the goody-goody type. No one ever tried to seduce me.
From fourteen to eighteen I went to public high-school. Several boys
hugged and kissed me now and then. While I liked this, I shrunk away for
shame. Now for the first time I felt sorry I was a boy. I stole a
sister’s discarded garb, from corset to hat, which I kept under lock and
key in my room and put on now and again in order to strut before a
full-length mirror and feast my eyes on myself as female-impersonator.
Because of shame, I never told a soul.
So counter to the fate of most hermaphroditoi, I was a virgin until the
beginning of my female-impersonation [Sidenote: _Dressing for a Spree._]
sprees. Because in high-school, morbid bashfulness kept me from becoming
well acquainted with a single boy. Down to twenty I lived as sheltered a
life as any girl. I had really never been under any kind of temptation.
Ralphie, _mon cheri_, I can never forget the entire day spent in getting
together my woman’s wardrobe on arrival in New York. I went to a ladies’
store in the Ghetto. I lacked the cheek to buy feminine finery uptown. I
gave the Russian Jewess the usual hoax of amateur theatricals. And women
are so dense as to believe it! She helped hugely to the end of my being
able to turn myself into a stunning soubrette.
An evening or two later, in my flat, I dressed for my first spree. I
touched up eyebrows with a stick of charcoal and cheeks with rouge;
applied padding where needed, laced on a corset, and adjusted a
soubrette’s wig. Lastly I put on my art gown, pinned on a picture hat,
threw an opera cloak about me, and was ready to set out.
On my sprees I have always been careful to avoid a clue to my identity.
No one would have ever learned who I really am even if I had been sent
to Sing Sing. Since the world thinks female-impersonation utterly
disgraceful, I had to spare my family all risk. Furthermore, they
themselves would disown me if they ever learned of my mania for
cross-dressing and female-impersonation.
It is bitter to be so misjudged! And people balk at being set right!
While I get much joy out of life, I often feel crushed to earth when
seeing how I am scorned, and now and again weep a full hour. When,
[Sidenote: _The Bowery a Magnet._] in the pride of their manly vigor,
the virile throw at me a glance full of hatred or of ridicule, I feel
like killing myself!
I always closed my hall-door noiselessly and used the stairs. The
elevator boy might have recognized me in my disguise. If, on the several
flights, I heard an approaching footstep, I would slink for a moment to
a dark corner of the spacious hall. Reaching the street, I had my
regular hiding place for my key and a yellow back. It was most necessary
to be able to let myself in on my late return, when the street door was
locked, instead of ringing up the janitor.
On my first spree, Ralphie—as on all for several years—I boarded an
elevated train and alighted at a Bowery station. Several times in later
years, I spied acquaintances of my every-day world either on the train
or on the Bowery. I always gave them a wide berth, although having a
great advantage in means of recognition.
And why, on my very first spree, did I seek the Bowery, Ralphie? Because
only a few weeks before, in my home town, I had seen a comic opera
staged on that avenue, its keynote the oft repeated refrain:
“The Bowery! The Bowery!
There they say such things!
And they do such things!
The Bowery! The Bowery!
I’ll never go there any more!”
So I was dead crazy to bring to pass there the female-impersonation
sprees of which I, for several years, had had merely waking dreams in my
home town. Such realization was why I moved to New York. [Sidenote: _The
Goody-Goody Transformed._] It was, _mon cheri_, all because I wanted to
live within half-an-hour’s journey of the enchanting old Bowery!
On my first spree, I made my way up and down the crowded sidewalks for
an hour, staring with all my eyes at the brilliantly lighted fronts of
beer gardens, the many gaudily dressed girls strutting up and down all
alone, but, most of all, the sporty-looking youthful laboring men
seeking their evening’s fun. How longingly and beseechingly I gazed into
the latter’s eyes! A hundred times I had accosting words on the end of
my tongue. I but barely lacked the brass for utterance, notwithstanding
that in my every-day life I had always been morbidly bashful. How I
wished I were acquainted with at least one of these powerfully
built—and, to me at least, bewitchingly handsome—foreign-looking young
fellows!
Who, _mon cheri_, that knew me as a goody-goody boy in my home town,
always going to Bible school twice on Lord’s day, and not merely once as
nearly all children of pious parents, would have foretold that some day
I would be tapping the sidewalks of America’s greatest red-light
district as a common strumpet?[42]
Doctors claim to understand such as me _a priori_ and are too squeamish
to investigate. They would say I am insane. I have never shown any sign
of a diseased brain, nor has there been any taint of insanity [Sidenote:
_The “Rabbit.”_] in my family. Ours, _mon cheri_, is simply the case of
half-and-half as to sex. The only taint in my family is that father is
somewhat womanish: falsetto voice, sissie mannerisms, and never any mind
for things thoroughly masculine. He ought never to have married to
perpetuate, and probably strengthen, his own mild sexual intermediacy.
As I walked the Bowery on that first spree, I was puzzling my mind
as to which of the brightly lighted dance-halls or the dark and
fearsome dives—through whose doors I saw pass only sailors,
gutter-snipes, and slovenly gangsters—would be the best stage for
my virgin effort at female-impersonation. At last I slipped into
the least prosperous-looking and, to the stranger, most
uninviting, dance-hall, the notorious “Rabbit.” And why the
“Rabbit”? Because it looked to be the most crime-inviting of all
the dance-halls. I had stood and watched as there passed in and
out the most criminal-faced of the Bowery boys: coal-heavers,
dock-rats, and fierce-and-cruel-stalking gunmen—not to speak of
the poor, deluded “fallen angels.”
I dropped into a chair. Almost in less time than I can tell it, four
youthful coal-heavers came up grinning: “Hello Bright Eyes!”
Those three words were the most soulful, the most infatuating, that had
ever fallen on my ears. I was also delighted because so lucky as to take
in, right off, some of the many bewitching Bowery boys I had stared at
that night, and cement them to myself. I smiled back: “Hello!”
For the next few hours, I was in hitherto undreamed-of bliss because of
being wooed by all four in [Sidenote: _Phyllis Finds “Herself.”_] their
delightfully wild and rough way. Ever since my later teens, I have
always yearned to be treated by young fellows as a girl, and on my
female-impersonation sprees now and again, I have had such yearnings
fully met. On that debut at the “Rabbit,” I was for the first time in my
life with sexual counterparts before whom I could be myself because they
did not know who I was. And they treated me as _their_ sexual opposite.
They danced with me in turn. Only after four hours, I had to own up that
I was not an out-and-out female. But that knowledge seemed to count for
nothing with these lovesick coal-heavers.
Already two hours before, I had felt that I had had more than enough
flirtation for one night. All my efforts to get away, however, were
useless. At two A. M., the “Rabbit’s” doors were locked. I had to allow
one of my beaux to escort me somewhere: to the Grand Central
waiting-room, for there I would be safe. I now warned my beau that if he
did not leave me, I would sit there for a week. But it took him two more
hours to give up all hope of my yielding to his goodhearted pleas.[43]
Five minutes after he left, I sought the street. I turned half-a-dozen
corners, lurking a minute around each to see if the coast was clear. I
then boarded a car. I slowly dragged myself up the three flights of
[Sidenote: _Leader of a Bowery Gang._] stairs and noiselessly let myself
into my flat. Tired out, I threw myself on the bed only half undressed
and slept until noon.
But, _mon cheri_, I had now found myself. For seven years afterward, I
sought the “Rabbit” or the “Squirrel” once every other week, giving the
rest of my time to business or self-culture. One evening out of fourteen
was all I could spare for the female side of my being. But the balance
of my waking hours were filled with blissful thoughts of my
flirtations—memories which will last as long as I. These sprees have
been to me the first thing in life. I would have given up anything else
for them. When now and again something has blocked my fortnightly spree,
I would be the most melancholy person in New York.
On the Bowery, I always went with the same gang of about a dozen
savages. If any one took a look at me, Ralphie—so soft-spoken, so
chicken-hearted, so wishy-washy—they wouldn’t set me down as leader of a
Bowery gang, would they? But that’s just what I once was. All the
members of my gang were of foreign parentage, sturdy, possessed of well
chiselled features, and tolerably clean. I found nothing disgusting
about them. None had had more than three years’ schooling, or the least
training in morality or religion. Nevertheless they were not a bad lot;
far from being as evil-minded as the upper class would judge from the
outside. None was more than twenty-five while a member of my gang, and
none bright enough to earn his bread at an occupation of higher grade
than coal-heaver.
The average age remained low because one after another settled down in
marriage, having brought to [Sidenote: _Androgynes’ Favorites
Fortunate._] an end his sowing of wild oats, and some budding gangster
took his place with me.
On my fortnightly hegiras, I was well supplied with money so that I
could give all a first-rate treat in exchange for their wonderful
kindness. They kept good friends because I loaded them with gifts. Only
after seven years, a born criminal, who had happened to worm his way
into my gang, now and again sought to dog me home. Twice I had to sit
for an hour in the Grand Central waiting-room to get him off my trail.
Up to that time no one had broken my firm command that I should not be
tracked the moment I chose to fade away for a fortnight. For I was like
a good fairy—in the twinkling of an eye bobbing up in the midst of my
gang, gathered by appointment in the “Rabbit,” and a few hours later as
weirdly dropping out of sight. Of course I could not let any of the
gangsters find out in what part of the city I lived. At last, to put a
stop to high-handed and high-figured blackmail by this one rascal, and,
most of all, to escape murder, I was forced to say goodby forever to the
whole Bowery. Of course I did not dare let even the most trustworthy
gangster know that I was never to see him again. It pained me fearfully
to leave them in the lurch, but I could do nothing else.
I henceforth made the Rialto my stamping-ground when yielding my
bisexual body to the woman in me. And fortunately, for I thus met Roland
and the other hermaphroditoi who had likewise turned to the Rialto to
blow off now and again their ordinarily pent up, but at last
overwhelming, craze for female-impersonation.
II. Jailed for Wearing Petticoats.
[Sidenote: _Angelo—Phyllis._]
A scrape that I like to tell about, _mon cheri_, although very bitter in
the happening, is my only arrest for flaunting myself in feminine
finery. Don’t you think a jail a queer home for a wishy-washy gentleman
and art connoisseur? A softy whose swatting a fly was the worst act he
was ever guilty of, and he almost had to weep when he did that.
Ever since driven from the Bowery six years ago, I have, one evening out
of fourteen, clad in my beloved feminine finery, tried to get on the
string strange young fellows in the Rialto ladies’ parlors. My nerves
need such a lark now and again. Otherwise years ago I would have gone
crazy or killed myself.[44] In my later teens, while living in my home
town, where I had to crucify my cross-dressing and female-impersonating
instincts, I was its most melancholy being. Because I, a female soul,
was imprisoned in a male body. How dark life looked from inside my male
prison! How I pined to be free! To have my soul wholly clothed in
woman’s bone and flesh instead of man’s for the most part—the latter so
hated in my own body, but slavishly worshipped when breathing out
[Sidenote: _Regimentals Overpowering._] yells of joy in sport or the cry
to battle and the clash of arms!
One evening five years ago in the Rialto I ran across two youthful
artillerymen from Fort Q and spent the evening with them. Regimentals
have always overpowered me. Even when I was as young as ten, when an
acquaintance enlisted in the national guard, his mere donning the
regimentals brought about, in my eyes, a magic transformation. If
already handsome, the young fellow became supremely, unearthly
enchanting. If plain and unattractive in civilian dress, he grew
handsome. Blue clothing and brass buttons surely bring out whatever
charm was born in a young fellow. Furthermore, his taste for warfare,
shown by his volunteering, proves him a demigod. For I think warfare the
highest function of the real man.
Whenever I catch sight of a youthful soldier, I rivet my gaze every
second possible, even halting at the curb to look back at the wonderful
vision. I yearn to fling myself at the soldier’s feet and cry out my
worship of all his magic traits. As the vision fades away, a pang goes
through my heart that he must pass out of my life forever and I never be
able to make known to him that for the rest of my days I shall be
continuously burning incense in my heart to his memory.
O Ralphie, I am overwhelmed when I call to mind the hundreds of the
cream of physical youngmanhood with whom I have flirted, and whom I
wholeheartedly loved! I have to weep at thinking that the way the world
is made, I must be forever barred from them. In spirit, I am eternally
joined, knit, dovetailed to [Sidenote: _Eternally Dovetailed._] every
man of them, but in the flesh, must never lay eyes on the demigods
again. How I wish I could have continued to heap blessings upon them and
make their sojourn on earth happy! But I am not God! In the next world,
how I wish, as a reward for my always having tried in this to make my
associates happy, I might be placed by Providence in the position of a
sort of sub-deity to the hundreds of rough, uncultured young bachelors
whom I have made protegés in this life, in order that I might be the
means of affording each the eternity of bliss I so covet for them!...
I do not lose an opportunity to see a parade of the national guard, and
particularly of regular soldiers, marines, and blue-jackets. I do not
give a straw to see any other type of men marching. But while witnessing
warriors stalk by, I am seized with a craze to prostrate myself in the
roadway and have those fierce, pugnacious young tigers—as they tramp,
tramp, tramp!—trample upon me until dead.
The two artillerymen I met in the Rialto begged me to make an hegira out
to the barracks to give a female-impersonation before their buddies. One
afternoon I made the hour’s journey, clad as an extreme dresser of the
gentle, and at the same time hare-brained, sex.
Around five P. M., I knocked at my friends’ barracks. Being in woman’s
garb, I would not step inside, but jollied with them on the large porch.
The news spread that I was only a female-impersonator and half-a-hundred
crowded around, flirting for all they were worth. That was, _mon cheri_,
my apotheosis—far above all other adventures. I was overjoyed at hearing
at one time from half-a-hundred demigods [Sidenote: _Female-Impersonate
Intoxication._] cries of admiration and affection. For I would sacrifice
myself more for, and give more richly to, youthful common soldiers than
any other class of men.
When, after half-an-hour, the bugle sounded retreat, how overwhelming,
how unearthly, how infinite and divine, its notes! The bugle-call,
because closely associated with the clash of arms and with that type of
human who shine as demigods, always lifts me up into an unutterably
blissful female-impersonate and cross-dress intoxication. I seem to be
raised to the very zenith of the universe as THE SUPREME WOMAN, THE
FAIRIE QUEEN, and to have all the fighting men that ever lived bowing
low in worship of my feminine attributes. During the minute that the
bugle-call resounds and reverberates, I live infinitely! I live out a
whole eternity!
But to come down to earth again, Ralphie: When I went away at the supper
call, my two friends said they would meet me in a beer-garden in a
neighboring village. It was the favorite evening resort of the common
soldiers. My two friends arrived with four buddies. Of the
half-a-hundred patrons, none else, excepting several additional soldiers
of my friends’ company who happened to drop in, knew, up to the very
last, that I was only impersonating a female.
But toward eleven, some of my party had drunk a drop too much. Their
behavior became boisterous and improper. When the waiters tried to curb
them, a terrible fight started. The waiters were themselves ex-soldiers
and born fighters. Heavy glass schooners were thrown back and forth. I
had to get under a table.
After several minutes, two constables burst in and [Sidenote: _The
Woman-Man._] put all my party under arrest. I had now to ‘fess up that I
was not really a girl. My faltering words filled the constables with
disgust and hatred. This is not to be wondered at, because village
constables do not know psychology like Bowery and Rialto policemen.
The seven of us were locked up for the night. The next morning the
Justice of the peace discharged my companions with a mere reprimand
because members of the army. But he was wild to punish me for putting on
woman’s garb. He sent a constable with me to the White Plains jail,
where I was to spend thirty days, or until I could pay a hundred dollars
fine. The Justice thought I was a low-down poverty-stricken fairie from
New York’s worst slums. I did not have the brass to tell him I was
really a person of good character, a regular church attendant, well
educated, and able to pay the fine.
The jailer, however, was sorry for me. I felt safe in telling him the
worst of my secrets. I let him feel my woman’s breasts. That made him my
best friend and he helped me get into communication with my New York
lawyer. After only a second miserable night in a cell, the lawyer paid
my fine and escorted me back to the city—even in my feminine
“regimentals,” as he had forgotten to bring along one of my male
outfits.
After that scrape, I made an hegira to the barracks now and again, but
always in male garb. The whole fort marvelled at the “woman-man,” as
they called me. They always gave me a great time. Nothing would I have
liked better than to live with them in the barracks as their most
devoted slave. Because they were my farthest opposites.
[Sidenote: _Angelo—Phyllis._]
III. George Greenwood.[45]
Ralphie, I am now going to tell you about the foremost specimen of young
manhood I ever met. If a man show had been held five years ago, on the
model of the horse show, the young fellow I am going to tell you about
would have won first prize.
You know that most of us hermaphroditoi have a single soul-mate. Of
course they are uncultured. Mere diamonds in the rough. For the past
four years, George Greenwood, whom you have seen with me, has been my
own soul-mate. For while I have flirted with many others, he alone has
been like an adopted son—as we older hermaphroditoi look upon our
soul-mates. At present, George is twenty-nine, and in outer
attractiveness, only a wreck of what he was when I “adopted” him.[46]
[Sidenote: _George’s Antecedents._]
I must explain, _mon cheri_, that George is not well bred. About twelve
years ago a portrait painter of my acquaintance ran across him selling
papers on Broadway. George was then only seventeen. At first sight, the
artist felt George’s unique beauty and asked him to pose. Later other
artists did George in oils and with the chisel.
He has never known who his parents were. For he was a foundling. When
discharged from the orphan asylum at fourteen, he was apprenticed to an
upholsterer. But on account of George’s quick temper and nasty tongue,
he could hold no position more than a month. When my friend ran across
him, George’s thoroughly bad record had left him only one means of
earning his bread: selling papers. But ever since his ideal physique was
discovered by my friend, George’s path through life has been strewn with
roses.
Four years ago I happened to lay eyes on George as he posed in my
friend’s studio. Right away his lines of face, head, limbs, and
body—hitherto even undreamed of—held me spell-bound and I took him into
my home. For I thought George was Michelangelo’s Adam stepped down into
flesh and blood out of the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine
chapel. Angelo’s nude figures of youthful men have alone approached
George’s ideal lines.
But he has been such a drunkard and high-liver in general that his
beauty—particularly his head and face—is now far below par. For two
years he has not been hired as a model. And he does not want to earn in
any other way. He has leaned wholly on me to keep up his life in the
Rialto as all-around sport.
[Illustration:
Defective copy of Michelangelo’s Adam in Sistine Chapel, Rome: An
Androgyne’s Conception of the Ideal Adolescent
]
[Sidenote: _Michelangelo’s Adam._]
I breathe to you, Ralphie, under pledge to keep it forever locked in the
chambers of your heart, that George’s face and figure, once driving me
beside myself, have become hideous and loathsome. How I hate his
billiard-ball head! In order to stand his presence, [Sidenote:
_Androgyne Platonic Marriage._] I have to ask him to keep his hat on.
And a man’s wig disgusts me even more than a bald pate. Three months ago
we stopped living together. I could no longer put up with his all the
time scolding and cursing me, and spitting tobacco juice and vomit on
the rugs. While we see each other now and again—because he wants a few
yellow backs—we have come to hate the very sight of one another.
Ralphie, I heartily wish I were forever rid of the brute beast! It now
comes hard, when I see nothing of the hero in him, to fork over a roll
of bills every few days. Our relations the past year have been hardly
more than a case of blackmail. I do not wholly drop him for fear of his
telling abroad how I pass now as a man and now as a woman.
Most of all I want to get out of George’s clutches because five months
ago I met a wonderful young fellow whom I plan legally to adopt. When I
took George Greenwood, I planned the same thing. But his character
proved so terrible! I am now getting on in life, _mon cheri_, and my
health is delicate. I need a close intimate in my home to wait on me
during my many sick days. It is difficult for any of us hermaphroditoi
to take a wife. One hates so to explain to a woman that after marriage,
the life must be that of brother and sister. And no woman—excepting only
the most old-maidish—would marry under these conditions. But I know one
of us hermaphroditoi—before your time, Ralphie—who did marry, after
thirty, under that arrangement, and only because he had political
ambitions, and his being known as a married man would give pause to
enemies who were backbiting him because of the indiscretions of his
youth. This hermaphroditos [Sidenote: _Androgynes Wish a Wife for
“Sons.”_] was one of the brightest of men and rose, as a result, to one
of the foremost posts in the nation. But if he had not been married, the
politicians and the voters would have turned him down. A legal marriage
surely covers a multitude of sins. But I myself have such a horror of
women that I could not live with one even as a sister.
I have a maiden sister, whom I could get as housekeeper, and who would
take the best of care of me. But I can not receive her into my home for
fear she might discover my bisexuality. I could not allow a servant to
live in my flat any more than my sister. For even at the age of
thirty-three, I, although half the time almost too feeble to drag myself
about, do not feel like saying goodby forever to my female-impersonation
sprees. They are still such fun; about all I have to live for! And God
has made young fellows so wonderful, so charming! I still admire their
beauty as much as I did ten years ago. And it is still so easy to get
them on the string, almost as easy as it was ten years ago. But if I am
able legally to adopt Calvin—about whom I will tell you in a minute—I
feel that I then can, having him with me always in my home, always in my
office, always travelling with me wherever I go: I then can say goodby
forever to female-impersonation sprees. For he would be to me a husband
as well as a son. He would be everything to me! I would live only in and
for him! Only to make him, his female wife, and his offspring happy! For
I would not put anything in the way of his taking a full-female wife in
addition whenever he felt like it, because a full-fledged young fellow
is restless without one.
Of course I could have another hermaphroditos [Sidenote: _Calvin
Luther._] live with me, as Ruby, Berenice, and the Duchess live
together. But it has always been my fondest dream to adopt as son a
young fellow who comes up to my ideal.
For several months I have had my ideal under my eyes every day as
stenographer in my millinery house. As “women’s men” are prone to take
for private secretary the prettiest face or “divinest” form among the
gentle sex, likewise _I_ picked out the applicant standing highest as an
Adonis. He is only twenty and possesses golden curly hair; deep-set,
marine-blue eyes; and radiant red cheeks. From his having been baptized
“Calvin Luther” you can tell what kind of parents and breeding he was
blessed with. He is thoroughly pure-minded and unspoiled, having, until
fifteen months ago, lived on a farm.
I slavishly worship the youth. The biased world would tremble at the
thought of the harm I would surely (as they fancy) do this pearl of
great price. For he is truly an angel; God’s child; very religious—a
trait so rare among the strongly virile. I have already made something
of a confidant of him in order to learn his feelings toward a woman-man.
Most young fellows with a puritan bringing up would turn the cold
shoulder. But I found Calvin Luther open to reason. He told me he has
always, as a good church member, struggled against his wanting the
gentle sex. While at business school in a small city, he earned his
board by delivering for a baker in the early morning. A natural thing
followed upon his being rarely good-looking. I barely wormed it out of
him when I was administering the third degree. He ’fessed up that a
number of servant girls where he delivered played on [Sidenote: _Prudery
and Bigotry Now Regnant._] him the trick of Potiphar’s wife on Joseph.
Twice—he ’fessed up with face as red as a beet—he did not show Joseph’s
strength of character. And I did not think the less of him.
And you, Ralphie, of course know that I would never be guilty of
anything that could bring the least harm to this adored innocent. His
health of body and mind will not be damaged a particle. I shall give him
the best educational and cultural advantages. As I have said, he will
some day marry the girl of his choice, and I shall live with the pair as
a parent. He and his children will be my heirs.
Is such an outlook for a poverty-stricken young fellow just cause for
Pharisees holding up their hands in holy horror?[47] The sexually
full-fledged cannot get [Sidenote: _Phyllis “Passes On.”_] into their
heads that we women-men are just as high-minded and conscientious as
themselves. They are continually hurling insults—calling us
“degenerates.” But my only thought is to heap blessings on those whom I
worship. I have always lived up to the maxim: Act in such a way as would
be good if universally followed. Those who through self-righteousness
condemn and crush me are a hundred times worse sinners. Perhaps some
day, _mon cheri_, the world will come to believe that the actual
presence of women-men in all communities—which Nature brings about—is a
distinct blessing to society in several ways.
* * * * *
AUTHOR’S NOTE.—Within a year of the above confessions, Angelo—Phyllis
was found dead in “his-her” apartment. The skull had been fractured with
a hammer.
Part Six:
Newspaper Accounts of Murders of Androgynes
AUTHOR’S NOTE.—These excerpts from New York dailies are presented in
order to impress upon the public that such murders of inoffensive
androgynes are a fairly common occurrence because that public has
tabooed, on the basis of prudery alone, enlightenment of the general
reader on the facts of androgynism. I withhold names of journals and
dates of issue, and cover identities, out of respect for the victims and
their families. But I assure those families that one of my present
objects is to avenge, by enlightening the public, the unmerited
assassination of their dear ones and thus prevent in the future such
martyrdom of innocents. The families have my most sincere sympathy,
particularly because I myself have several times been brought near
death’s door in the manner in which their unfortunate—but not in the
least immoral—relatives were put out of the way.
Each of the first three murders was apparently the work of some prude
not at all criminally minded, but feeling himself the mandatory of
society in ridding the world of “a monster of deepdyed depravity,”
according as he was taught by church and synagogue. The hare-brained
prude had been prohibited by public opinion from learning the truth that
_androgynism is_ [Sidenote: _Androgynes Not Sodomites._] _solely a
matter of abnormal psychology and anatomy, and not at all immorality_.
The term which best calls up the sensations of revulsion of such a
murderer is “sodomite.” To its highly malodorous and fundamentally false
connotation and application can be traced every year, in every corner of
Christendom (particularly puritan), murders of inoffensive androgynes.
The author’s comments are in brackets.
I. Two Murder Mysteries Which, Strangely Alike in Many Ways, Baffled All
Efforts to Solve.
(Much condensed, and slightly edited for diction, by author of THE
FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS, from article in a New York daily.)
VICTIMS WERE TWO ELDERLY BACHELORS OF MEANS, LIVING IN THE SAME
SECTION OF CITY—X AND Y WERE BOTH FOND OF PERSONAL ADORNMENT AND
DISPLAY AND BOTH HABITUALLY CHOSE YOUNG MEN AS ASSOCIATES—EACH WAS
SLAIN IN HIS OWN APARTMENT—ONLY TWENTY-NINE DAYS SEPARATED THE TWO
MURDERS—MANY CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TWO CRIMES BORE CURIOUS
RESEMBLANCE
Consideration of recent terrible crimes in New York which have halted
agents of justice at dead walls of mystery must bring to mind the X-Y
murders of a little more than a year ago. They were committed within
five weeks, the scenes within a few blocks on fashionable Murray Hill.
In both, extraordinary interest was stirred by the maniacal savagery
unleashed. The settings of the [Sidenote: _Androgynes Art
Connoisseurs._] crimes were alike bizarre. The characters of both
victims were most peculiar, yet alike. And the men had been friends.
[Androgynes, in all large cities, form little cliques like the Cercle
Hermaphroditos.]
X was a bachelor of fifty-six, an electrical expert, an art connoisseur,
and collector of jewels and weapons. Though in more than comfortable
financial circumstances, he resided entirely alone, doing his own
housework [common manner of life of androgynes] in a 6-room flat on the
ground-floor of the Q Apartments. [I know one androgyne who purposely
chose a ground-floor apartment in a house without hall-boy so he could
go and come in his disguise with less chance of encountering other
tenants.] He had made it his home for ten years. [This proves his
outward decency, as well, as liberality to blackmailers.] The artistic
luxury of its furnishings was striking. The walls were galleries of fine
old prints, original oils, and copies of masters, and displayed a
strange collection of swords, sabres, and barbarian spears. [Well-to-do
androgynes possess the most highly ornamented homes of any class of
society. While congenitally too “yellow” themselves to handle the
weapons of warfare, such are generally sexual fetishes with them, being
symbols of the highest function of the true man.]
[Sidenote: _Live under Sword of Damocles._]
In this handsome, lonely abode, the detectives made a discovery of
significance: X had lived in extraordinary fear of the lawless invasion
of his rooms. [Cultured androgynes, realizing how bitterly they are
hated by prudes, live constantly under the sword of Damocles. Every
night they fall asleep in the fear of being murdered. They are
uncommonly careful in locking themselves in. The author tries his locks
twice before retiring. While a child, he, every night before getting
into bed, looked to see whether there was not a murderer under it.
Androgynes are extreme cowards.] For he had used his expertness with
delicate electrical devices to set his rooms with a maze of traps for
any person who might try to enter it by force or stealth. Doors,
windows, etc., were invisibly strung with delicate wires. With the
controlling alarm device set, scarcely an article might be touched
without the ringing of sharp bells of warning.
But that thieves were those of whom he lived in dread was contradicted
by other facts. X, far from being a recluse, frequented hotels and cafes
and was prone to make chance acquaintances, especially of young men,
while going about extravagantly bejewelled and habitually carrying a
large roll of bills which it was a pet vanity to display.
His social hours were spent almost entirely with young men. He had been
known to comment: “I keep young because I associate with the young.” The
Q servants said these young-men callers never behaved boisterously. All
were decorous and well dressed. [A small proportion of cultured
androgynes who live alone in their own homes entertain there adolescents
who bear the earmarks of trustworthy gentlemen. X’s murderer could have
been of no other type, but was in addition an extreme prude so far as
concerns homosexuality. The cultured enjoin extreme noiselessness so as
not to arouse suspicions of co-tenants of the same apartment house. The
uncultured commonly receive any adolescent at all in their homes because
having no fear of disgrace and blackmail. By “young men” the author of
the excerpt evidently means those from eighteen to twenty-five, the
age-group preferred, and almost exclusively cultivated, by androgynes.]
[Sidenote: _Androgyne Stamping Grounds._]
The Q servants further said that X frequently started alone on strolls,
many times, however, returning with a youthful companion, who would
spend an hour or two with the elderly host. [The favorite New York
localities for evening “strolls” of cultured androgynes for scraping
acquaintance with a strange Hercules or Adonis are, in cold weather, the
Broadway and the Fourteenth Street Rialtos and cafes; and in summer,
Madison Square, Union Square, the southerly quarter of Central Park (the
three park spaces most frequented at night by idle adolescents who would
be glad to pick up a few dollars), the Battery (because frequented by
common soldiers), and other localities frequented by uncommissioned
warriors, the ideal occupation, as I have already said, for a real man
in the eyes of androgynes. In the case of X, the Q men-servants probably
saw through everything. The servant class often respect a cultured
moneyed androgyne who treats them well, and they act only in a
protecting capacity.]
Of woman visitors, there could be recalled but one—whitehaired, a few
years older than X, said to be an aunt.
Investigators were astonished by the nicety, the fond care, with which X
had done his own housekeeping. Floors, rugs, and every article were
flawless of dust. In spick and span appearance, thoughtful and orderly
arrangement of utensils, neatness of china closets, refrigerator and
provision store-room, a feature of which latter were shelves lined with
jars of homemade preserves labelled in handwriting, the [Sidenote: _Bent
for Woman’s Toil._] bachelor’s kitchen was fit to excite a housewife’s
envy. [Androgynes take naturally to woman’s tasks.]
DISCOVERY OF THE MURDER
It was not discovered until many hours after commission. At noon of
[date omitted by author of THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS] the Q janitor saw a
light shining out of a transom of X’s. He was immediately convinced such
a methodical man would not have gone away leaving the light turned on.
He tried X’s entrance and found it unlocked. He went to the room where
the light was burning. Stretched on the floor beside a divan, with a
couch pillow resting on the face, was X. A few feet away was the sabre
with which he had been murdered.
The divan covers were half ripped off where the falling man had clutched
them as he was repeatedly felled—repeatedly, for it was evident X had
fought hard for his life against the sabre-armed assassin. The sabre had
been ripped off the wall of the hall-way of the apartment. The retaining
wires were strong and the hand must have been strong that snapped them.
[Androgynes cultivate only the best physically developed.]
The deduction was made that the assassin had not entered X’s home with
the intent to murder. He was pictured as having, in all probability,
left his host in the “den” and started down the hall to make his exit
from the flat when the resolution to attack and kill—a resolution which
the weapons on the wall may have suggested—came suddenly upon him.
Ripping the weapon from the wall, he is pictured as having dashed back
to the “den” and surprised X with a fury of murderous [Sidenote:
_Prudery Gone Insane._] attack. [X probably entertained at his home for
the first time that night his well dressed and apparently trustworthy
assassin. Only when the two adjourned to the “den” did X probably
disclose his desire, so nauseating to the unsophisticated and those
ignorant of abnormal psychology. Doubtless a minute after the
disclosure, the prude left X’s side in insane disgust, and on passing
through the hall entertained his first thought to do his “duty by
society and put this monster where he could corrupt no more young
men”—an absolutely unfounded way of looking at the matter. I have myself
scraped acquaintance with a youthful Hercules, who would lead me on
hypocritically, and when he got me where there could be no witnesses,
has half-murdered me because of disgust at androgynism. My adventure
with Harvey Green is an example.]
Physical examination disclosed that despite his fifty-six years, X
possessed the preservation of a man of thirty-five. [Perennial youth is
an earmark of ultra-androgynism.]
The autopsy showed that every character of blow had been inflicted—deep
stab wounds, slashes, and fracturing strokes on the skull either with
the broad side or dull back of the sabre. The coat of X, who was fully
clothed when killed, had been slashed to tatters. [The assassin wished
not merely to kill, but to hack X to pieces because of his loathing of
androgynism. I myself have not alone been half-murdered, but mutilation
has been practiced for its own sake. See page 132 of my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
AN ANDROGYNE.]
[Sidenote: _Murdered by a Guest._]
A MIDNIGHT CALLER
X’s condition of being fully clothed proves of course that he had not
yet retired. [It also indicates that his assassin had repulsed his
amorous advances immediately after the pair entered the “den.” On such
occasions, androgynes usually undress.] Further evidence was that his
web system of alarms had not been set. It was his invariable custom, on
retiring or when he went out, to do this. There was no sign of forcible
entrance of the ground-floor apartment. Therefore X is believed to have
freely admitted the man who was to murder him—probably such a chance
acquaintance as he appears frequently to have made in his saunterings
through the city’s streets and visits to its resorts.
The examination of medical experts resulted in the hour of the crime
being placed between nine and eleven of the evening previous.
MADE NO OUTCRY
It being evident that X had survived the first attack at least for a few
minutes before he finally succumbed under the raining blows of the
sabre, the police were puzzled to understand why, with his life at
stake, the man did not make an outcry. There was only a single wall
separating the scene of combat from the public lobby where were
stationed throughout the night a telephone operator and an elevator
attendant. Tests made showed that a shout of medium volume from the
“den” could be distinctly heard in the lobby. The attendants were
positive they had heard no calls for help.
[Sidenote: _Death Preferred to Disclosure._]
One of the puzzles, therefore, was to determine the character of X’s
murderous guest and the circumstances of his visit. Had X reason so
grave for concealment of the presence of his slayer as to prevent him
from calling for aid even with death immediately upon him? [X’s
consciousness of being a sexual eccentric would likely be an inhibition
to his alarming those who lived in the same house. He probably did not
suspect that the servants saw through everything. Between death and the
disclosure to his co-tenants that he was a sexual eccentric, he probably
chose the former.] None of the wounds was in his throat. The blow that
fractured his skull must have been among the last as indicated by the
evidence that X had fought his slayer long and hard.
MOTIVE NOT CLEAR
A diamond ring, whose value must have been close to $1,000, habitually
worn, together with X’s gold watch and chain, were taken. Very little
money was found in his clothing, whereas it was known he usually carried
large sums. But there were at hand heavy solid silver articles, and gold
ornaments, and valuable jewelry in a frail desk—none of which had been
taken. Only X’s body had been stripped. The police were convinced that
the robbery was committed to conceal another deeper motive, as suggested
by the savage maltreatment of X’s body.
Whatever the motive, the murderer entered the apartment unseen that
night and departed unseen. The police made haste to interview all
persons whom they could trace as having been associated with X. There
was a young sailor whom X had lately befriended [Sidenote: _A Secret
Guest._] and who had been his guest for several days. This youth was
traced to his ship and his presence aboard the night of the murder
established.
One clue was a bit of cardboard on which was scribbled, in X’s
handwriting, the latter’s address. It looked as if made hastily for the
guidance of the stranger guest to X’s apartment. [And in the apartment
thrown away as being no longer of use.]
No slightest clue to the identity of the slayer was uncovered.
* * * * *
THE MURDER OF Y
On the night of [date omitted by author of THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS]
just twenty-nine days after the murder of X, Y was slain in his home
nearby. The two murders instantly linked. For the two crimes presented
an almost perfect parallel. The scene was the same—an elaborately
furnished “den.” As with X, Y’s murderer had been his guest. A secret
guest—in that nobody saw him enter Y’s residence, no sound betrayed him
in the act of killing, and he managed to leave the “den” and Y’s house
unobserved.
Of astonishingly the same stamp were X and Y. Both were elderly
bachelors and art connoisseurs. [The latter an earmark of cultured
androgynism.] Both had specialized in the collection of ancient and
curious weapons. Both were addicted to an extravagant display of jewelry
on their persons. [Androgynes are loud dressers.] Both lived in dread of
attack in their homes and had made elaborate preparations against the
possibility. Inspection of the lives of both found them oddly empty of
attachment to or [Sidenote: _Loathing of Androgynes a Murder Motive._]
association with women. Both had a disposition for the society of much
younger men, and had many such acquaintances.
Living in the same neighborhood, frequenting the same hotels and
restaurants, visiting the same art galleries and antique shops as they
were tireless in doing, it was rather to be expected that they were
found to have been close friends.
The indicated motive for both murders was robbery but in both cases only
the valuables used in personal adornment were stolen, while other
jewels, and silver and gold objects of art and service, plainly in
sight, were ignored. [Robbery being only a blind, loathing of sexual
eccentricity being the true motive.]
In only two particulars did the crimes differ: X was hacked to death; Y
was strangled by the bare hands of his assailant. The marks of
relentless fingers were deeply imbedded in the victim’s neck. The other
difference was that in Y’s case, there had been no struggle. He had had
no chance to put up a fight for his life. He had been taken by surprise
and the strangler’s grip been clamped on his throat before he could make
outcry.
Y was fifty-nine years old, and a native of rural Illinois. He had
prospered as owner of a fashionable ladies’ dress-making concern in New
York. But he had retired and at the time he was murdered was renting an
ex-mansion of a millionaire, where he conducted a boarding house of the
highest class. There were twenty lodgers, but scores of additional
persons living in the aristocratic neighborhood took their meals at Y’s.
He frequently organized card parties and dances for his guests, and to
these were always invited freely [Sidenote: _Murderer Mandatory of
Society!_] young men in war service on leave in New York. [Warriors are
androgynes’ special heroes. A common soldiers’ and sailors’ club was
situated next door, where Y apparently made many acquaintances.]
Y’s body was found at seven A. M. [date here omitted] by George, one of
Y’s eleven negro servants. [Y conducted his establishment on the plan of
a multimillionaire’s residence.] It was George’s daily duty to go to his
employer’s room on the first floor, directly over the kitchen, awaken
him at seven, and serve him breakfast in bed. On that morning, George,
receiving no reply to his knock, pushed the door open and entered the
elaborately furnished “den” and bedroom.
STRANGLED TO DEATH
The bed was in order, and the body of Y on the floor nearby was clad
only in pajamas. [Apparently the assassin had pretended he was going to
retire with Y. Therefore Y got into his night clothes, as also probably
the assassin. But just before the bed covers would have been turned down
the latter fulfilled his mandate from society by “ridding New York of
the monster!”] An autopsy showed that indubitably Y had been strangled
to death. The deep, purple marks on his throat were valueless as
furnishing finger-print evidence, but they did stamp the murderer’s
hands as large and very strong. [Androgynes cultivate only the best
physically developed.] Y had been suddenly attacked by the strangler and
immediately choked into helplessness, for nothing in the room had been
disturbed. He had been borne down to death on the very spot where
seized.
[Sidenote: _A Trusted Murderer._]
Y’s “den” was the scene of many late-hour parties, in which young men
figured exclusively as guests. Frequently also he returned very late
with a single companion. His late-hour guests were never boisterous and
never gave cause for complaint by Y’s refined lodgers.
As in the case of X’s apartment, Y’s house gave no evidence of a
forcible entry. Physicians determined that Y’s death had occurred at
eleven the night before the body was discovered. At that hour the outer
doors of the house were always locked. Many of the lodgers and some of
the negro servants had not yet retired, and must have heard, it would
seem, a ringing of the door-bell. None did.
PROBABLY AN EXPECTED GUEST
The conjecture was consequently made that Y had appointed a late meeting
with his murderous guest and given him a key to his house that he might
enter quietly. Of fully twenty-five persons in the house at the time,
not one heard the slightest sound of distress or noise of any kind from
the “den” at the hour of the murder.
Even more futile than in the case of X were the efforts of the
investigators to round up the many young men [evidently bachelors from
eighteen to twenty-five] whose acquaintance Y was constantly making.
Three diamond rings of a value of $2,000 had been stripped from the dead
man’s fingers, and his gold watch and chain were taken. But as at X’s
assassination, many articles of jewelry and of gold and silver easily
accessible were not touched.
[Sidenote: _A Conscientious Murderer._]
Alike in mystery, the cases of both X and Y manifest the strong
likelihood that the same man effected both murders, with a suggestion of
a deeper motive than robbery, of a desire to do violence aroused to
frenzy, judging by the stark ferocity with which both crimes were
committed.
[The motive of course was to rid New York of androgynes; at least,
extensively promiscuous ones. It is quite likely the same prude was
guilty of both murders. Perhaps at first the assassin had known merely
through hearsay that both X and Y were sexual eccentrics. But he was
reasonable and merciful enough not to put them out of the way until he
possessed ocular evidence. (I have myself associated with torturers who
would act only on such.) For X’s and Y’s murderer was solemnly and
conscientiously acting as the mandatory of society.]
[From the murder of X he had learned that an androgyne might put up
resistance. Therefore in the case of his second quarry, Y, he must adopt
a safer, more sudden, and an absolutely noiseless means of execution. In
sabre-slaughtering, there was too much risk of the victim calling for
help. Moreover, X lived all by himself, whereas Y’s residence was alive
with people. Androgynes like to be treated by their virile associates as
if women, and the ultra-virile always humor that liking. The assassin
probably started in with a pretended “love” embrace, and, before Y could
realize, turned it into a strangling death-grip.]
[Sidenote: _X and Y Offenceless._]
[I will admit that X and Y were extensively promiscuous. But they could
not have been particularly intemperate because my own experience proved
that excessive venery soon wrecks the health of an androgyne. As both
were close to sixty, their lives had doubtless been temperate. They had
probably indulged (the more humiliating role in fellatio) not more than
once a week throughout their adulthood. But although they apparently
sought intimacy with almost every adolescent Adonis or Hercules (only
one out of every twenty adolescents could qualify under either of these
types) whose acquaintance they made, they harmed these youthful rakes
not in the least; nor did they, throughout their lives, bring detriment
to any one else since all androgynes possess the inoffensive psyche of
women. For proof of the harmlessness to an adolescent of an androgyne
intimate, I refer to my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, pages 88, 89, and
194.]
[Far from the adolescent suffering harm, he is loaded with material
benefits by the well-to-do androgyne who worships him. He is
pre-eminently a “lucky dog.”]
[X and Y were entirely irresponsible for being androgynes and sexual
eccentrics. Absolutely no harm came to any individual or to society
collectively through their condition or instinctive functioning. They
did not deserve that any one interfere with their life, liberty, and
pursuit of happiness.]
[Sidenote: _Newspaper Accounts of Murders._]
II. Z Mystery Baffles Inquiry at Every Angle.
(Much condensed, and slightly edited for diction, by author of THE
FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS, from article in a New York daily.)
NO PROOF OF SUICIDE AND NO MOTIVE FOR MURDER FOUND IN CASE OF YOUTH
STRANGLED ABOARD HIS OWN POWER YACHT—FRIENDS INSIST DEATH WAS AN
ASSASSIN’S WORK—DRESSING OF THE BODY IN WOMAN’S CLOTHING FURNISHES
NO CLUES TO FAMILY OR POLICE—FULL DETAILS FOR STUDENTS OF CRIME TO
STUDY
After two weeks of many-sided investigation, the death of Z remains as
great a mystery as on the evening of [date omitted by author of THE
FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS] when his mother discovered him strangled aboard
his power yacht in New York Harbor dressed in woman’s apparel.
“No reason for suicide and no motive for murder—no proof of suicide, no
positive evidence of murder.” Such is the conclusion reached by the
police, private investigators employed by Z’s family, and by newspaper
reporters who have worked on the baffling case unique for its mass of
contradictory theories and circumstances.
[Sidenote: _A Psychopathic Individuality._] [And to the present writer,
himself an androgyne and instinctive cross-dresser, the strongest of
reasons for suicide and the strongest of motives for murder! Androgynes,
because so terribly misjudged by their associates, are the most
melancholy and prone to suicide of any class of mankind. Moreover, they
are often murdered on the strong motive of intense loathing felt by
prudes ignorant of abnormal psychology, in whose eyes the androgyne is a
“sodomite,” with all the terrible, though false, connotation of that
term. Such prudes believe themselves mandatories of society to rid the
world of the “monster.” The present writer did some detective work in
this case “on his own hook.” He ascertained that in the circle of those
who knew Z by sight but were not personal friends, he had the reputation
of being a fellator. I interviewed several of this circle, but did not
dare thrust myself into that of Z’s close friends.]
The view of the police generally is that the death was clearly suicide.
But as to how the suicide was accomplished, police officers hold
theories no two of which agree.
FAMILY SURE Z WAS MURDERED
Z’s family, his closest chum, and his friends generally, maintained from
the first, and still believe, that Z was murdered aboard the yacht by an
assassin who secreted himself in one of the cabins and afterwards
escaped in a fashion equally mysterious.
The fact that young Z wore woman’s clothing is to the police the
strongest evidence of suicide and supplies to them evidence of a
psychopathic individuality. [That fact is to myself the strongest
evidence of murder since I have repeatedly witnessed the intense
revulsion of prudish bigots at any cross-sex phenomenon, and have been
myself half-murdered solely on this incentive.]
[Sidenote: _Families Ignorant of Bisexual Members._]
Opposed to this is the most positive assertion from Z’s family and
friends: (1) That he was a normal boy in every respect. [In nearly every
case of a cultured androgyne in the past, his family have never
suspected anything because of the veil of silence that the deluded
public has insisted be thrown over the phenomenon of androgynism and the
consequent absolute ignorance of the _truth_ about this phenomenon on
the part of the entire Overworld excepting a handful of sexologists.
Just to throw their associates off the scent, some cultured androgynes
purposely do some courting of females, and have even contracted a
marriage (of course, Platonic) as mentioned by Phyllis in the last
chapter of PART FIVE. Moreover, some androgynes are psychic
hermaphrodites and capable of sincerity in courting a girl, while at the
same time Nature insists on occasional female-impersonation sprees. Z
might have been a psychic hermaphrodite.]
(2) That he had never shown any suicidal tendencies. [Readers of my
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE know that I probably showed more suicidal
tendencies than almost any one else who has failed to carry them out;
yet I always hid them absolutely from my family and every-day
associates. Androgynes, because they do not want their friends to become
aware of the cause of their melancholia (fearing it would alienate them,
as at present no one can forgive cross-sexism in an intimate) habitually
suffer in silence and seclusion the most intense mental torture.]
[Sidenote: _Many Female-Impersonation Explosions._]
(3) That no kind of woman's wear was ever known to be in his possession.
[For years together I have myself kept woman’s wear under lock and key
and occasionally put it on, but none of my every-day associates ever
discovered these facts. Cultured androgynes always conceal such
practices because their every-day bigoted circles would make them
pariahs.]
And as yet nobody has been able to find where Z got the feminine
apparel. [It was later discovered he had bought it of a ladies’
outfitter.] Nearly every article found on him was soiled and showed
unmistakable signs of wear. [He had probably worn the articles on scores
of female-impersonation sprees. Cultured androgynes never let their
families get an inkling of these psychic explosions.]
Z was twenty-one. The boy received a common-school education, but left
high-school in the second year to work in the large manufacturing
establishment of his father. He had a strong bent for mechanics. He took
care of the family’s three automobiles, as well as a motor-cycle. Three
years ago his father gave him a motor-yacht, which he himself took care
of.
During the World War, Z enlisted as mechanician in the navy, but was
assigned to shore duty near New York throughout the war.[48] [There
exist all degrees of psychic effemination in androgynes. I estimate my
own proportions as woman, 80 per cent; man, 20. Evidently Z was around
60, woman and 40, man, judging by his willingness to take a fire-arm
into his hands, a thing which I would never do, even as a child
shrinking from a cap-pistol. X and Y likewise were less extreme
effeminates than myself. They would put up a resistance if attacked,
whereas I depended for escape merely on entreaty or flight (Nature gave
me [Sidenote: _Androgyne Expedients._] the legs of a gazelle); or if
they failed me, I pretended loss of consciousness after the first
terrific blow. Through this complete passivity, I came out far better
than if I had shown fight, and probably saved myself, on several
occasions, from being one hundred per cent murdered.]
Z often practiced with a revolver at a target in the basement of his
home. [He was pay-master in his father’s factory and often had in his
possession large sums, and had to know how to defend himself from
robbers.] His rifle was found on his boat, together with cartridges, on
the day of his death. Why, if he intended suicide, did he not use his
revolver, or else the rifle that was handy at the time on the boat?
[This, to me, is conclusive evidence of murder or man-slaughter.]
Z possessed the only key to the cabin of the boat. The family say there
were originally two keys, but the duplicate was “lost” about a year ago.
[Possibly Z staged all his female-impersonation sprees on his yacht and
so gave the duplicate to an idol before whom he regularly posed, just as
I have given a trusted idol a key to enter my own apartment whenever he
felt like it.]
IN HIGH SPIRITS
On the afternoon preceding the day of his death, Z took his motor-cycle
apart in order to renew some mechanism. On his last evening alive, he
was in high spirits, setting every one of his circle laughing. So far
from being depressed, he seemed flushed with happiness at the prospect
of future success in business, having only just received a promotion.
[His unusual [Sidenote: _Androgynes Compelled to Fabricate._] happiness
on the very eve of the murder might indicate that he had just succeeded
in coming to terms with a _new_ idol, who, however, the next afternoon,
on discovering how “deeply depraved” Z was, strangled him with the rope.
I myself have several times been half-murdered under similar
circumstances. I have also been elevated into the third heaven of bliss
on receiving a favorable message from an idol.]
On the morning of the day of Z’s death, he called on a friend who was to
give a party in a few days, and assured the latter he would be present.
He then ate noon lunch with his family. It was his father’s birthday,
and Z promised to take the family out for an automobile ride in the late
afternoon. Right after lunch, Z remarked: “I’ll first make a trip to the
boat to pump the water out. It hasn’t been touched for a week, and you
know how the water accumulates under the engine. I won’t be gone long.”
[It was two miles from Z’s residence to the boat; twenty minutes, by
motor-cycle, to get on board. The reason given impresses me as a mere
pretext to hide his appointment on the launch and prospective
female-impersonation—because the pretext sounds just like _me_. I am one
who has been compelled to falsify much because if my associates had been
granted the truth, they would have impiously crushed me. In my
university course in ethics, I was taught that it is proper to tell a
lie if the persons deceived have no right to the truth. Always those
whom I deceived had no right, because the truth would have rendered them
insanely cruel.]
In a jovial mood [because about to meet his idol, I suspect] Z departed
on his motor-cycle at 1:30. On the way he stopped at a dealer’s—full of
laughter [Sidenote: _Probably Man-Slaughter._] here also—and filled his
cycle tank with a gallon of gasoline. [Two indications against suicide.]
At the wharf, he was seen to take oars out of his locker and row to his
power-boat anchored fifty yards out. He was next seen, by two men on a
yacht anchored fifty feet from his own, to disappear down into his
cabin. [The last declaration by any one of having seen Z before
discovered dead in his cabin.] These two men remained on the deck of
their anchored launch all the afternoon until 5:30, and both are
positive that Z did not reappear on his deck. They are equally positive
that no one came from or went to Z’s launch.
The owner of the power-boat continuously anchored on the other side of
Z’s was aboard from 2:30 until 4:30, and is positive no one approached
Z’s boat from that side. The owner of a third power-boat continuously
anchored thirty-five feet from Z’s in another direction also spent the
afternoon on board, and tells the same story. Two men [custodians and
renters of boats] busy all the afternoon around the wharf fifty yards
away saw no one go to or come from Z’s launch.
[To me the most probable solution of Z’s death is that it was neither
murder nor suicide, but accidental man-slaughter. Perhaps Z had the
habit, to satisfy his mania for female-impersonation, of taking on his
yacht as an audience young bachelors who owned launches usually anchored
near his own. Perhaps a launch, on that Sunday afternoon ideal for
yachting, was kept at anchor near Z’s because its owner had plotted to
teach Z a lesson, with the “good” intention of curing him of his habit
of female-impersonation, believing—as nearly every one does at
[Sidenote: _Torturing an Androgyne._] present because prohibited by
public opinion from learning the truth—that it is a _wilful_ bad habit.
When Z had rigged himself in feminine garb (because the female side of
his duality demanded it), one or more of the young men from one of the
anchored yachts—according to my theory—had tied ropes around him, even
around his neck, the latter merely in order to frighten him and prevent
his calling for help. The newspapers stated that only a “seaman” could
display such skill in tying ropes, and these yachtsmen were amateur
seamen. They then, late in the afternoon, after they had had their “fun”
with the pitiable androgyne, went ashore, having no thought that the
rope around the throat would tighten sufficiently to strangle Z. They
designed merely to punish him for his androgynism (1) through his being
compelled to lie helpless on the cabin floor for several hours, with a
rope tight around his neck to prevent him calling for help, and, (2)
more than that, through humiliating him before his family, who finally,
anxious over his not returning home, would visit the yacht and discover
him in his most ignominious garb and predicament.
[But Z, in his writhings to free himself from his bonds, unfortunately
tightened the rope about his neck and was fatally strangled, the young
men having departed and no one being at hand to succor him in his death
agony. Z was only one more of the many martyrs to the public’s
prohibition of the showing up of the myth that bisexuals are monsters of
depravity, deserving the crudest forms of torture and even murder. Those
guilty of Z’s death—under the theory now being propounded—were
fundamentally irresponsible. [Sidenote: _Church and Public Opinion
Guilty._] The guilt lies with the Church and public opinion, both of
which teach that no punishment is too bad for an androgyne.
[A few days after Z’s death, I wrote letters to Z’s father giving all my
theories. I desired to do all I could to avenge my brother in calamity
by bringing his assailants to justice. It would not be surprising if Z’s
father was disinclined to press matters because of shame over the son’s
being an androgyne combined with the public’s so terribly misjudging
androgynism. Z’s near neighbor, a young college graduate whom I
“pumped,” told me first that the fact at the bottom of Z’s death “was of
such nature that it could not be discussed”! I could get at the truth
only by putting repeated frank questions, since he labored under the
terrible delusion that sex is a subject beyond discussion. This college
man expressed the opinion that Z was wilfully depraved and “got all that
was coming to him.” I interviewed several others who knew the Z family
merely by sight and reputation. They all showed intense antipathy, being
of the opinion that a family’s having an androgyne relative was
sufficient cause for its ostracism.
[A personal parallel: To only one member of my own family—a brother—have
I ever confessed my addiction to female-impersonation sprees. I did it
twenty years ago, at the age of twenty-seven, because I then had enemies
at Ft. X (at the time my regular stamping-ground) who hated androgynism
so fiercely as to be capable of murdering an individual in whom the
phenomenon cropped up. I therefore explained matters to a brother: that
if ever I was found murdered, to look for my assassin among the common
[Sidenote: _Androgynes’ Relations Ashamed to Prosecute._] soldiers of
Ft. X. He replied: “Ralph, if you are ever murdered on one of your
female-impersonation sprees, the family would be too much ashamed ever
to take the first step to bring your murderer to justice!”]
At the supper hour, Z’s mother telephoned to the wharf and was informed
her son had not returned from his yacht. Fearing he had met with an
accident, she and her daughter went by automobile to the wharf, arriving
at 6:30. It was then almost dark. A boatman rowed the mother, shivering
nervously, to the launch. As Mrs. Z descended the forward hatch, her
foot struck a human body lying at the foot of the steps, face downward.
She felt the hands, which stuck out above the body, and found them cold.
“Linnie has fainted!” Mrs. Z exclaimed. She hastily lighted a lantern,
while the boatman remained at the top of the short flight of stairs,
apparently paralyzed with fear. But having a light, Mrs. Z discovered
the inert body to be clothed in a long blue dress, while the head was
covered with a black oilcloth bag. [Such covering of the head indicates
non-suicide. The man-killer covered Z’s head because, before abandoning
him with the rope around his neck, he (or they) tormented and tortured
Z. I have myself had a handkerchief thrust into my mouth to prevent an
outcry and been thereupon tortured merely because of insane loathing of
androgynism.]
Mrs. Z now exclaimed: “Why, it’s a woman! She’s been strangled, and
Linnie’s not here!”
Overcome with terror, she left the boat without further examination. Mr.
Z, when his wife greeted him with the frantic cry: “A woman has been
strangled on our yacht!” immediately visited it. He removed [Sidenote:
_Father’s Assertions Discarded._] the hood from the form on the cabin
floor, and in amazement recognized the face of his son. Around the neck
was a tightened noose of Manila rope tied with a _hangman’s_ knot. Mr. Z
is positive the knot was at the _back_ of the neck. [This position is an
indication of non-suicide. A suicide would naturally have placed the
knot in front.] Unable to loosen the knot, Mr. Z cut the rope. He
noticed that both his son’s hands were behind the back, apparently tied
with a sash cord, although he did not think to make sure _both_ were
tied. For, finding the body cold, he was convulsed with grief and
immediately left without making further examination.
The next arrivals were policemen.
The Homicide bureau contends that although there was a slip-knot around
the left hand, the right was free and Z used one or both hands to draw
the hangman’s noose about his neck. This theory presupposes that the
knot was at the throat, and discards the father’s assertion that it was
at the _back_ of the neck.
Z’s ankles were tied together with rope, as were his knees and arms. [A
queer way to commit suicide for the victim to take the greatest pains to
make people think he had been murdered! And when there were a rifle and
cartridges on board the launch! And only an hour or two before in a
jovial mood, and laying in a supply of gasoline!] A medical examiner
calculated that death had occurred between four and five P. M. The two
men on the deck of the power-boat on one side of Z’s launch had gone
ashore at 5.30, and the single man on the power-boat on the other side,
at 4.30. None had heard any cry or other sound from the Z [Sidenote:
Z’_s Woman’s Apparel_.] launch [35 to 50 feet distant and on an
ultra-still Sunday afternoon when sounds carry unusually well.] When
these witnesses went ashore, Z’s rowboat was fastened to his launch—in
the same position as when his mother arrived.
The woman’s apparel in which Z was found clad consisted of a chemise;
corset; corset-cover with rose-colored baby ribbon running through the
lace; a pair of pink bloomers with ruffles at the knees; high black
stockings fastened by garters to the corset; a pair of high laced
woman’s shoes, with French high heels; and finally, the blue-checked
gingham dress. All the apparel fitted Z well.
The clothing in which Z had left home was found on a bunk in the
cabin—excepting an overshirt, which was pinned over the porthole nearest
the launch fifty feet distant on whose deck two men spent the afternoon.
Aside from this circumstance, the police discovered no sign of disorder
in any part of the launch. They discovered no other articles or
circumstances having a bearing on the case. [Androgynes are in general
non-resistant. Z probably did not struggle against his tormentor, as I
myself have always been absolutely passive on such occasions. Any way he
probably did not even imagine that he was under any risk of death. He
probably expected to return home within an hour—as he had previously
done after dozens of female-impersonation explosions.]
But reporters, who later examined the boat, found a thick hickory club
in a drawer. [My theory is that Z was accustomed to entertain on the
boat, in the absence of any of his family, adolescents before whom he
had a craze to impersonate a mademoiselle—the [Sidenote: _Assassins of
High Morality._] common practice of the more extreme type of androgyne.
He probably entertained only one at a time. Fearing he might be attacked
by one of these perhaps doubtful characters, he kept the club for
self-defence, as well as the rifle already mentioned. The fact that he
did not attempt to avail himself of these weapons on this occasion
indicates that his assailants were young men whose high morality was
known to Z.] In a chest in an out-of-the-way place, the reporters found
a bundle of wrapping paper stained and torn. Inside was a metal
shoe-horn. [My theory is that Z stored his feminine wardrobe in this
paper and chest. The paper was probably that in which the feminine
outfit had originally been brought to the launch and was preserved for
possible use in carrying it away.]
The Z family kept a supply of beer on the yacht, but affirmed: “Linnie
hated beer and never learned to drink it.” [Very androgynesque.
Girl-boys are inclined to be puritans in every respect except
female-impersonation and coquetry.]
The only feminine article that Z wore which the family recognized was a
multi-colored silk ribbon fastened around his waist and belonging to a
sister.
The autopsy showed that death had resulted solely from strangulation.
All the ropes used in binding Z belonged to his yacht. [The reason Z was
done to death with ropes is that there naturally were many on board a
yacht and it was a _noiseless_ death. There was a loaded rifle on the
yacht. That a noiseless method was chosen indicates murder rather than
suicide. The use of ropes also indicates a yachtsman as author of the
crime—because accustomed to handling ropes. He lives and breathes
ropes.]
[Sidenote: Z _of Androgyne Physique_.]
Z was five feet four in height and weighed 145 pounds. [Short and plump
build characteristic of androgynes.] The city medical examiner noted
that the lower ribs were “retracted, possibly due to the use of
corsets.” He also noted that “the beard and moustache are scanty.”
[Meaning if not shaven close. Such scantiness is common in androgynes.]
If the murder theory is true, the assassin must have planned to murder
with great care. [It was all done on the spur of the moment, and the
death probably an accident.] He must have had an accomplice who brought
him to the boat before the murder, and took him away afterward, and he
must have known in some mysterious way that Z was going to visit the
boat that Sunday afternoon. [If Z was murdered, he had had an
appointment on the yacht with his assassin. The latter must have arrived
before the yachtsmen who spent the afternoon on the closely encircling
decks, and watched that they go ashore before himself. At dusk he could
have swum away without being seen. At that hour on a Sunday, there were
many desolate points on the nearby shore at which he could have
unobservedly emerged. But the most daring criminal would hardly have
committed a murder with several men only a few feet away on the decks of
the encircling yachts. A single shriek from the victim would have
immediately brought several men on board.]
The care with which the clothing was put on certainly seems to indicate
that Z himself put it on, every article being properly adjusted.
[The authorities, because ignorant of androgyne psychology and habits
and despising a bisexual (myself) [Sidenote: _Author’s Own Foretaste of_
Z’_s Fate_.] too much to listen to his-her theories, were on a false
scent. At the date this volume goes to press (December, 1921), the Z
mystery—as well as the X, Y, and Q—has not been cleared up by the
authorities, although none of the four is much of a problem to myself,
knowing how the world treats androgynes.
[It is a strange coincidence that about a score of years before Z was
strangled, within two miles of his yacht’s point of anchorage, in a
large patch of woods at night, I was, as an aftermath of a
female-impersonation, being roughly teased by six “young fellows.” To
cap the climax, they led me toward a tree and said they were “going to
get a rope and hang” me. Horrified, I feigned an epileptic fit to save
myself. See my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, page 208.
[While I have never believed Z a suicide, it is a possibility. A new
idol with whom he had had an appointment on the yacht that afternoon
might have shown utter disgust at Z’s revelations—as I have myself
witnessed in a confidant—and pitilessly abandoned him. This misguided
attitude might have brought on Z a sympathetic disgust with himself as
female-impersonator and cross-dresser. According to this theory, Z
wished to punish and heap indignities on his own body—just as I have
myself, in my verdant middle teens, taken a whip and chastised my own
body because lustful, homosexual thoughts had invaded my mind, while
crying out: “‘O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the
body of this death!’” Perhaps Z wished to punish his own body by
depriving it of breath while in female garb and so publish to the world
the despicableness of his own physical personality. In no other way
could Z’s spiritually minded [Sidenote: _Suicide Theory._] psyche better
revenge itself on his carnal body than to have the latter’s grossness
proclaimed on the housetops.
[In case Z was a suicide, the idol who had only a few minutes before
pitilessly scorned his advances was very likely an adolescent spending
that afternoon on one of the three nearest yachts. As I have said, the
case came to a curious abrupt ending in the papers, as if the entire
solution had become known to those immediately interested, but the
public was not let into the secret in order to shield unblameworthy
parties.
[If Z was a suicide, I have myself passed through a very similar
experience. (See my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, page 235.) Because
heartlessly jilted by a new idol and afraid I would, as “a monster of
depravity,” be cast out of the caravan with which I was travelling in an
uninhabited region of the Rockies, I walked away in the forest alone at
dusk a mile from camp having in mind suicide by being torn to pieces by
bears, with which the forest abounded, and several of which I saw that
night roaming within a hundred feet. Like Z, I had not left behind a
single oral or written word as to suicide. I was acting on the spur of
the moment. For several hours I experienced such depths of sorrow as not
one human out of ten thousand ever tastes. Continuously for an hour, out
of hearing of the camp, I wailed at the top of my voice over my terrible
lot in life—that of a despised, hated, and outlawed “degenerate” (as the
hypocritical nine-tenths of civilized humanity delight to call me)—and
over the possibly impending unfathomable disgrace among a party of rough
men with whom I must travel until we got back to a railroad. I
experienced a violent desire [Sidenote: _Author’s Attempt at Suicide._]
to be devoured by bears. But the All-Seeing overruled that they did not
attack me.][49]
[Sidenote: _Newspaper Accounts of Murders._]
III. College Student’s Death is Unexplained.
(The following are excerpts from a New York paper. Every few months the
press brings to light a similar death of an androgyne. All because the
world misunderstands and grossly misjudges them, as well as because
public opinion has always deprived them of the means of coming to an
understanding of themselves. Bracketed words and italics are those of
the author of THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS.)
STUDENT’S DEATH MYSTERY BAFFLING—NO KNOWN BASIS IN Q’S LIFE TO
SUGGEST MURDER OR SUICIDE THEORY
Overdone detective fiction seldom presents so many significant but
mostly inexplicable circumstances surrounding the victim of death by
violence as those developed concerning [Jimmie Q], twenty, _quiet_,
_studious_, _religious_ [earmarks of androgynism], a [North Atlantic]
college junior, popular, not morbid, a cleancut American youth, whose
body was taken from the river last Thursday night....
Q loved to roam the slums of large cities. [An earmark of cultured
androgynism. They thus roam because realizing that in their Overworld,
they are prohibited outlet for the feminine side of their duality.
They roam with day dreams of how they would like to impersonate a
female in the Underworld, where alone female-impersonators are
welcome; and finally, in many cases, they are carried away by their
mania for an actual female-impersonation spree.]... His [Sidenote:
_Female-Impersonation Obsession._] college room-mate commented on the
large number of neckties, all Q had, which the latter was taking
along. [As he _said_, for a few days’ visit to his father, which visit
did not take place. My theory is that he went to the great city, in
whose harbor his dead body was found, to spend an evening with
chance-met gangsters in the slums, as I have myself done, and he took
the many neckties as presents for them, just as I myself have carried
_neckties_ with which to shower them and thus win their goodwill. The
androgyne, of course, wishes the gangsters as an audience for his
loved impersonations. Androgynes always wish an audience of
tremendously virile “young fellows.”]
Q did not drink and _never took special interest in any woman_. But he
did like to rove about in the districts of big cities in which the
poorest classes live and work.... Whenever he was in New York, he spent
most of his time in such districts....
At the Morgue, Mr. Q identified the effects of his son. When the body
was exposed for his inspection—it appeared to have been in the water
about ten days—the father bowed his head and tearfully exclaimed: “Poor
Jimmie! How you must have suffered!”...
The fisherman who had pulled the body ashore had used a grappling
hook.... To it they attributed the incision which the [City’s] Medical
Examiner had reported to have been made by some weapon. The Medical
Examiner denounced this report and suggested that the police were
forwarding a suicide theory to escape responsibility for solution of a
crime. He declared there was evidence of hemorrhage in this wound not
producible by such an injury inflicted long after death. He further
recalled that the left arm of Q was [Sidenote: _Methods of Torture._]
dislocated at the elbow, with the arm muscles twisted—positive
indications of external violence. [I myself have been tortured by a
ruffian’s seizing me by the wrist and twisting around my arm so that I
had to shriek in agony.]
The Medical Examiner declared the absence of water in the lungs
developed by the autopsy showed beyond question that Q was dead when his
body entered the water.... He had seventy-seven cents in his pockets
when his body was found. [Evidence of robbery, considering that he was a
well-to-do youth on a visit to a great city distant from his college. My
theory is, on the basis of intimate knowledge of the practices of
androgynes, that he scraped acquaintance with one or more gangsters,
while adopting a girl’s role. Many gangsters cordially hate bisexuals.
Because of this hatred, as well as to escape prosecution after robbing
Q, the gangsters murdered him and threw his dead body into the
river—probably in the vicinity. Again the fundamental cause of the death
of another androgyne is the terribly false teaching of the Church and
public opinion as to the nature of bisexuality.]
Part Seven:
Medical Writers on Androgynism
I. What a New York Official Physician Has to Say about Fairies.
In MEDICAL LIFE of December, 1920, I had an article: _The Biological
Sport of Fairieism_. Readers completely out of touch with Underworld
life evidently thought I was telling a fairy tale. Apparently the editor
of the MEDICAL REVIEW OF REVIEWS appealed for corroboration to a
physician likely to be one of the best authorities in the United States
on my subject, Perry M. Lichtenstein, M.D., Ll.B., Physician to City
Prison, “Tombs” (New York’s principal jail), House of Detention, etc.,
all of New York City. Apparently there resulted the valuable and
interesting article, _The “Fairy” and the Lady Lover_, in MEDICAL REVIEW
OF REVIEWS of August, 1921. Its writer has enjoyed almost unparalleled
opportunities for examination of the very fairies whose existence had
been called in question. I quote a small fraction, but the whole paper
should be read by every devotee of Aesculapius. Knowledge of its
contents is very necessary for every practitioner. I use my spelling of
“fairie.” My own comments are in brackets. The REVIEW for November,
1921, contained quite a lengthy reply of mine. Dr. Lichtenstein begins
his paper:
“Does the ‘fairie’ or ‘fag’ really exist? This question has been asked
time and again. There is no doubt [Sidenote: _Does the Fairie Really
Exist?_] but that this type of degenerate is a reality. [Unprejudiced
science has not yet decided the matter of the degeneracy of the
androgyne in general, as I have already shown in detail. There exists as
much evidence that the bisexual is a super-man or genius as that he or
she is a degenerate. The truth of the matter probably is that
degenerates are no commoner per thousand among bisexuals than among the
sexually full-fledged, but that geniuses occur far oftener.] He is a
freak of nature who in every way attempts to imitate a woman. In my
official capacity I have come in contact with several hundred of such
individuals, and have in every instance felt sorry for the unfortunate
being. [Such sympathy indicates that fairies are not wilfully of that
_genre_, and should not suffer term after term in prison, as now, for
acts that do nobody harm beyond offending the æsthetic sense of the
unsophisticated. Of course, in the matter of accosting on the street,
etc., they should be treated the same as full-fledged females. But their
punishment should not be augmented because they are “homosexuals”—a word
that is a misnomer.]
“In practically every case I have found the man to be a young person of
age ranging between sixteen and thirty. [“man”!—Only a _pseudo_-man.
Really a woman whom Nature has disguised as a man; a woman with male
genitals.]... They are by no means mental defectives. Most of them have
had a good education and come from respectable families.... Since early
childhood they have been seclusive and kept close to their mother. They
are emotional and affective.... They ... imitate the female as closely
as possible. They take feminine names, use perfume and dainty [Sidenote:
_Artificial Breasts._] stationery which frequently is scented, and in
many instances they wear women’s apparel.
“Recently one of these individuals was arrested, charged with
soliciting. When he [“he-she” would be the accurate pronoun] arrived in
the city prison, he was searched, and on him were found ... artificial
busts, a wig, and a box containing powder and rouge. This young man
[“androgyne” would be the proper term] was twenty years of age. He was
beardless [evidently natural], had an effeminate voice, and a distinctly
feminine walk. He lisped and in speech closely approached a bashful
female.... He ... had graduated ... from high-school.... He ran away
from home and met some boys [“girl-boys” would be the proper term] whom
he considered good company. These young men [“androgynes” would be the
proper term] were of the same type as he.... In this way [after a
fashion, taking the place of the female of the species], [he] made
enough money to live.
“These individuals ... often occupy handsomely furnished apartments
which are paid for by men who patronize them. As a rule several ‘fags’
occupy an apartment. On one occasion ten such individuals were arrested
in a raid by the police.... I had an opportunity to observe them
closely. In every respect they resembled the female. The names they used
in calling one another were feminine.... They had a typical feminine
walk.... [Because androgyne legs are sometimes those of a woman.]
“I can distinctly recall two cases which occurred quite recently.... The
first ... was arrested for soliciting and was sent to the female prison.
This person had wonderful hair which reached to the waist, [Sidenote:
_Legal Persecution of Androgynes._] and it was not false. His face was
as smooth as a woman’s [naturally beardless evidently], his voice was
distinctly feminine, and his hands and feet were small. He wore
high-heeled shoes. In examining this person the matron insisted that he
strip. The prisoner refused, and thereupon I was notified to make an
examination.... When questioned, he stated that he preferred to dress as
a female because he found that he was effeminately inclined.... He was
sent to the workhouse, and after serving his time was released. Several
months later I learned that he had again been arrested for a similar
offence. This time he wore a wig in addition to the feminine garb.
[Because during his prior imprisonment, he had, under pressure,
consented to have his hair cut short, like a man, and promised to live
henceforth as a man—a promise hard to keep since “he” was psychicly, and
in part physically, a female.]
“The next case ... was arrested.... When taken to the female prison, he
refused to allow the matron to search him.... I was called in. I found
that the prisoner wore a wig and artificial breasts. Every bit of his
attire was feminine.... The voice and mannerisms were distinctly
effeminate....
“Many of the so-called ‘social elite’ are to be included among these
people....” [“Many” only in the aggregate. Proportionately, only about
one out of one-hundred-and fifty men. But the ratio is probably higher
among the cultured than among manual laborers. They are not at all
blameworthy, because they were born with the strongest kind of instincts
in that direction, and do not thereby harm in the least any individual
or society as a whole. They carefully keep their idiosyncrasy under
cover.]
[Sidenote: _Medical Writers on Androgynism._]
II. What One of America’s Foremost Medical Writers Has to Say about
Fairies.
Dr. Robert W. Shufeldt, author of STUDIES IN THE HUMAN FORM, has
included at least one fairie among the many human beings the results of
his physical examination of whom he has published. The following are
excerpts from his valuable and interesting article, _Biography of a
Passive Pederast_, in the October, 1917, issue of the AMERICAN JOURNAL
OF UROLOGY AND SEXOLOGY. I use my own spelling of “fairie.” My comments
are in brackets. Those interested should read the entire original
article. Particularly two photographs of the subject are given, one nude
and the other in full feminine garb.
“J. W. ... is a fairie from the slums of Brooklyn, N. Y. ...
twenty-three years of age. When fourteen ... the lobes of his ears had
been pierced ... for ear-rings, and these ornaments he commonly wears
when dressed in female attire.... He invited my attention to the fine
development of his breasts, whereas there was not the slightest evidence
of gynecomasty.... The impression was left upon my mind that he was
morphologically male in all particulars.... I became thoroughly
convinced that the man was laboring under ... a most extraordinary
delusion.... He claimed to have his menses regularly every month....
[Evidently bleeding piles.]
“In July he admitted that he had never been pregnant; while in November,
when he brought with him one of his numerous ‘husbands’ or lovers, he
claimed [Sidenote: _Yearning for Feminine Attire._] that he had been
pregnant a few years previously and been operated on in a hospital and
the conception removed ‘through his side.’... I am convinced that this
mendacity is due to his delusions.
“... While he could sing soprano well, he could not whistle ... and he
threw a stone like a girl. [Common earmarks of androgynism.]... He did
not, as he moved about ... give one the impression that there was
anything in his demeanor simulating femininity, nor did his behavior in
any way betray the remarkable manner in which his sexual life was being
lived.... Apart from his extremely meagre education, he is no fool or
dullard in other particulars.... It would seem that his trade
[professional female-impersonator and fairie] is plied chiefly for the
money there is in it.... He claims he has never been arrested or
otherwise interfered with by the police....
“... He has always been possessed of the contrary sexual instinct. He
always shunned women and girls more or less, while yearning at the same
time to assume female attire and enter into their domestic vocations....
Believing himself designed by Nature to play the very part he is playing
in life, it was truly remarkable to hear this nervous, loquacious,
foul-mouthed, and foul-minded fairie of the most degraded slums of the
multi-millioned city chatter about his experiences....
“Few writers in the field of psychiatry have enjoyed what I had next the
opportunity to observe.... The putting on of female attire by a contrary
sexed male. [The paper details the putting on of the various
articles.]... He became very talkative ... telling of some of his recent
escapades ... gesticulating as we [Sidenote: _A “Man” Transformed into a
Soubrette._] often see agitated girls do ... remarking that he was very
tired, owing to the fact that he had been ‘ironing all the forenoon.’
[Androgynes gravitate toward peculiarly feminine tasks.]... ‘What do you
think of that hat? Isn’t it a dandy? I trimmed it myself.’... He was,
without the slightest doubt, thoroughly in earnest in all he said and
did, and by no means was he playing a part.... ‘Dear me,’ he said, ‘I’ve
forgotten my ear-rings; but you won’t mind that?’ Upon my assuring him
that I liked young girls better without them, he seemed relieved and
proceeded to fit to his head a ... blonde wig.... As he had recently
shaved, his face was quite smooth, and in a twinkling he made it up
with ... pink powder, with red pomade for the lips.... ‘Ha!’ he said
[after fully transformed outwardly into a soubrette, in the style of
costume prevalent among courtesans at the date of J. W.’s appearance
before the doctor for wear in their resorts only, but in 1921 affected
for street wear by all butterflies of fashion] ‘I feel more like myself
now, and I am ready for the picture!’...”
Part Eight:
Androgyne Verse
The first of the following =attempts= to penetrate into Plato’s “world
of ideas” and get at the real essence of things, and then to express
them in an ideal manner, was inspired by a chance visit to the
Whitestone station in October, 1921. Subsequently I was seized with
the desire to try out my muse in incorporating some of my other
emotions and experiences in verse. I had essayed no metrical
composition since 1905, the year of writing the last of my =Fairie
Songs=, the best of which were published in the =Autobiography of an
Androgyne=.
I understand by “poetry” the version of things seen incorporeally;
things spiritualized or with a halo around them; things as they exist
in substance, in reality, back of their superficial or phenomenal
presentation—the version of things that an individual’s subconscious
or subliminal self utters.
At present when I evolve verse, I try to lose myself to the phenomenal
world—the domain of sensation—and to let down my bucket into the well
of the subconscious, the subliminal; to peer into the eternal, the
infinite world (the domain of fundamental substance). The sensuous,
material skin or crust of this world of ideas is all that most
children of Adam can grasp. Only to poets and metaphysicians has
Nature given a rope of sufficient length that their buckets can reach
as far as the water level in the well of ideas. Nearly all poets even
of the first rank manage to flop into their buckets a few exquisite
thoughts as to eternal realities, and clothed in appropriate language,
only about once out of a score of attempts. Nineteen-twentieths of
their verse would better have been forever withheld from the public’s
eyes, since it is merely artificial, nonsense doggerel. In that
proportion of their work, these poets of the first rank show
themselves up merely as bad rhymesters.
The editor of =The Female-Impersonators= declared “the book would be
better off without” my verse, but has kindly humored my wish to
include it. The reader’s verdict may be that I, too, am merely a bad
rhymester, and thus put my work on a level with the vast bulk of the
outpourings and outdronings of our best poets.
But I, as a would-be poet, labor under the disadvantage of expressing
sentiments of an =androgyne=. Even if there should [Sidenote:
_Androgyne Verse._] really be any poetry in my own outdronings, no one
but another androgyne could recognize the fact, since it is next to
impossible for anybody to appreciate any literature unless they can
make its sentiments their own and identify themselves with one of the
characters. And the sexually full-fledged, who constitute more than
ninety-nine per cent of the reading public, are obsessed by an
irrational horror of androgynes.
I therefore beg the reader, in judging the following verse, to bear in
mind that it is not written by a _man_ about _men_, as the reader first
thinks; but about men by a _pseudo_-man; by a physical “man” who is
psychicly a woman, and even physically a woman at least thirty-three per
cent.
I have read some of Mary Baker Eddy’s verse, which her disciples place
on a level with the Psalms of David. But I think the former weak and
the latter perfect. Here again we see that to judge verse to be good,
one has to imagine it one’s own outpouring. I therefore do not expect
any sexually full-fledged person to declare of my verse (even if it
were the best ever written) anything else than that it is “far beneath
the worst doggerel. The mere thought of it is painful!”
For—I repeat—it is impossible for any one to judge poetry
objectively—only subjectively: that is, not according to the merits of
the verse, but according to whether the reader can make the sentiments
his own.
A sexually full-fledged literary confidant, who has read the first two
books of my trilogy, declared of my verse: “If you publish it, it will
cast ridicule and contempt on your whole book. In the book, you have
claimed culture, but when your readers come to this verse, they will
say that no one with the culture of a longshoreman would try to pass
off such stuff as verse even in fun, and that if you had the slightest
tincture of literary taste, you would realize this. You will go down
to posterity in ridicule, and destroy all the good your books might
otherwise do.”
But I persist in including the verse. If the quoted verdict is
correct, then I have “a screw loose” intellectually, as well as being
sexually and anatomically “a freak of Nature.” The published pieces
show the psychologist what ultra-androgyne verse is like. Besides,
possible androgyne readers may be able to appreciate this verse.
As three out of the four following “attempts” were first conceived
only in January, 1922—after =The Female-Impersonators= had gone to
press—it has been impossible that they benefit by the author’s
judgment after they have grown cold.
EMOTION[50]
(Inspired by sight of Whitestone station in 1921.)
[Illustration:
“Holy Ground”
]
[Illustration:
“Old Porte Cochere, with Memories Dear Thou Teemest!”
]
[Illustration:
The _Unreplaced_ Slats on Which the Author Communed
]
Still stands the selfsame Whitestone station,
So sombre as night’s shades fall;
At its north front do still halt trains,
While brakemen “Whitestone! Whitestone!” call.
My trysting-place in nineteen three
With warriors of the nation,
When I was frivolous and wild,
Was this old Whitestone station.
Yea, holy ground its platform is;
It makes me sigh and ponder;
In my mind’s eye those blue-clad forms
Still wait for me just yonder!
They met me at the train when I
From New York came, directed
To see and stroll about with “braves”
Of manhood unsuspected!
On balmy eves we stalked dark lanes,
No other person near us;
No other’s eye upon us gazed,
No other’s ear could hear us.
What gallant, passionate lovers they!
Considerate of my pleasure!
Uplifting to the highest bliss
That Eve on earth can measure!
Returning to the porte cochere
Of that selfsame old station,
We lingered, till the whistle blew,
In blissful conversation.
What eyesore thou, old Porte Cochere,
To every traveller seemest!
To me, howe’er, thou shelter gave;
With memories dear thou teemest!
The station’s waiting-room with seats
Extending all around it,
‘Whelms me with recollections fond,
Because unchanged I found it!
For ’twas on these rude benches there,
When winter’s winds were hurtling,
And travellers few and far between,
All evening sat we flirting.
In words our conversation lagged;
In substance it was silly!
For all I said the evening through
Was: “How I love thee, Willie!”
We every confidence but breathed,
Lest some strange ear o’erhear us;
They guessed not—travelers—what we said;
There were none very near us.
Whene’er the train I took for town,
And we “Goodnight!” repeated,
“Farewell!” o’erwhelmed me as I left
And in the coach was seated.
Once rode with me a gallant three
To College Point, first station;
To have with me five minutes more
Before farewell ovation.
How charmed was I that period brief!
Its memory ever lingers;
As we sat holding hidden hands,
I felt their horny fingers.
“Three cheers for Jennie June!” they cried,
When finally they must leave me;
“The soldiers’ friend, and sweetheart too!
Let not our parting grieve thee!”
· · · · ·
Gone are ye from my life for years,
You heroes! Wonder boys!
In memory though I hold you fast—
Forever perfect joys!
Farewell!
RECOLLECTION[51]
O thou FAIR as the sunrise on deep sea’s green surge,
While the whitecaps seem dancing all around!
FAIR as sunset from mountain’s sheer precipice’s verge,
Seen o’er maze of high ridges snowbound!
Even FAIRER than the rose, of all flowers the fairest;
Beyond Vatican’s Apollo Belvedere;
BUD MCDONALD, youth’s soul-mate, of beauty the rarest,
ADOLESCENT wert thou without peer!
First, BEAU BRUMMEL wert thou, so fussy about clothes,
O immaculate BUDDIE MCDEE!
Dirt and slovenness cat, never more than thou, loaths;
Must be brushed every hour from dust free;
Every lock of thine hair with worried care laid in place;
As a girl didst thou prink—I can vow!
But of all the young bloods of Rialto’s fast race,
Not one sweller was costumed than thou!
Beheld one the shining patent leather of thy shoe,
And both hands decorated with rings;
Marked thy wiles through which dude _hoi polloi’s_ favor doth woo,
One would say: “All from effeminacy springs!”
“Not a bit!” I must answer. For MACK, SPORT as well,
Was a crack shot with pistol and ball;
How he hunted, coldblooded, dumb beasts he did tell;
Furry creatures clubbed dead; cursed them all!
Best of all:—an ADONIS wert thou, BUD MCDEE,
With incomparable red peachlike cheeks;
Threads of eyebrows so cleancut!—in memory I see—
As o’er her eyes a soubrette alone seeks;
With thy pearls of teeth, cherry lips—beloved sir—
And as well chiselled nose as can be,
How I’ve wondered that thou and I intimates were!—
Explanation:—God gave thee to me!
I again in fond memory behold before me,
Pinkish mountain of loveliness tower;
BUDDIE’S _forma divina, au naturel_, see;
How his charms, yea unmatched, did o’erpower!
An “eyeful” his two breasts, with fine gold scraggy hair;
Graceful curves; rotund body and limb;
With his robust ribs bursting through skin O so fair,
And his deep-channeled back breathing vim!
· · · · ·
Once UNEQUALED “YOUNG FELLOW”! Six-and-twenty long years
Now have rolled by since thou wert ALL THAT!
Art to-day gibbering sot, maybe suffering jeers,
With foul trousers and torn greasy hat?
For the cup cherished thou that glad makes the sad heart.—
How I wonder! Where sleptest last night?
Is vitality wasted? In grave resting art?—
Us together soon lead, Kindly Light!
[Illustration:
“The Boy of the Piave”
(America’s Gift to Italy in 1921)
]
MEMORIES[52]
I dream to-night of the gay bright lights
Where I sought recreation;
While meek I sat at feet of profs
To gain an education:
I studied hard six dreary eves,
But when the seventh came,
Bade “au revoir” to books and grind,
And skipped to RIALTO’S game.
There where lurked pleasure’s devotees
Giant Kill-joy never came;
I met there New York’s wildest swains,
And buxoms of ill fame:
We revelled all the evening through—
Fine fellowship, I say!
I ne’er happed on politer folk
Than in RIALTO gay.
And which was I, kind sir, dost ask?
Was I a bad roué?
Or shameless demi-virgin wild,
In paint and powder gay?—
“But I was neither this nor that!”
Such answer here I set;
While youth in form, I chose to take
Diversion as soubrette.
The young bloods pardoned me—they said—
For wearing hated breeches!
“For thou art not a real male;
Thou’rt like yon winking witches
Who throng these noisy promenades
Their favors fair to sell;
And kissing thee we deem as sweet
As kissing ma’moiZelle!
“Lik’st thou that we thee sweetheart call?—
We’ll humor thy desire;
Sit on our laps while we sip wine;
Let’s flirt until we tire;
To break thy shapely corset stays,
We’ll try our best, dear Jenn;
But thou must mimic maid thy best;
For us:—the part of men!”....
To have love made by youthful swains,
To me was highest bliss;
In the bright dives where scores beheld,
No,—shrinked we not to kiss:—
Of yore in gay RIALTO’S halls
Knew folk no self-restraint;
Insane e’en sometimes acted fools!
Those dens no place for saint!....
I’m prone to-night to philosophize:—
Why did I gravitate
Toward RIALTO’S racy denizens
When moved to dissipate?
’Twas just because I sought and found,
In RIALTO’S “swell” gallants,
The opposites and complements
For whom my spirit pants....
O comrade of RIALTO’S halls
Of nineties of century past—
Should’st read these lines, some former pal,
“Jennie June” remembered hast;
Now after twenty-six years,
I hail thee with heartfelt greeting;
Beseech Benediction on thine head,
In lieu of present meeting.
FRENCH DOLL-BABY[53]
Young bloods prom’nade Fourteenth Street’s pave—
Each eve out for a lark;
Their eyes “peeled” for French doll babies;
With whom they sigh to spark;
Why admire the fraidcat babies,
Who weep easily?
The helpless crippled sex e’en _seek_!—
Hare-brained gentility!....
Cheeks a beauteous red through rouge puff;
Pink powder (pretty, pretty!!!) ‘pon nose;
One inhales as she nigh minceth,
Such soothing scent of rose!
Locks—so silklike—reach to shoulders;
Gown of “art” design;
Coquette extreme must she be sure;
All signs she doth combine.
When a young blood spieth dolly,
Cutely mincing Fourteenth Street;
Then the young blood smileth sweetly,
And, stranger e’en, doth greet:
Replies she smilingly “Good evening!”
Surely she is fly!
Too, overjoyed because of having
Bewitched a stalwart “guy.”
“Little tootsy-wootsy!” cries guy,
“Art ravishingly cute!
Thou art, yea, a pretty Pussie! Pussie, Pussie!!!
Ne’er saw I such a beaut!”
Answereth she in mellifluous voice:
“And I ‘Strong Hans’ thee call!
Thy frame so large and powerful!
Not spindling thou, yet tall!”
They acquainted barely minute,
Such confidences express!
As only hubby—hidden, secret—
Doth glad to spouse confess:
Bold gallant the French doll calls “Wifie!”
While she e’en feels that he
To her already united is—
The twain, twin souls, to be!
Reader, never heardst thou such words!
Much mush! (as “Kiddo! Kiddo!”—“Kitty! Kitty!”[54])
Passing strange the way of young blood
With French doll baby pretty!
That sexual difference existeth
Renders twain insane;
Except for Nature’s procreative plan,
These instincts—how inane!....
Holdeth French doll from “guy” a secret;
Yes, surely she can _act_!
Only after hour’s deception,
Revealeth she the fact;
When she’s found that she can trust him;
Can reveal her whim:
In burst of laughter doth disclose:
“My real, true name is ‘Jim’!”
ANNOUNCEMENT OF THIRD OF TRILOGY
The Riddle of the Underworld
Sequel to _Autobiography of an Androgyne_ and _The Female-Impersonators_
By Ralph Werther—Jennie June
Edited by
Alfred W. Herzog, Ph.B., A.M., M.D.
(Editor MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL)
To be published, in the fall of 1922, by the MEDICO-LEGAL
JOURNAL. At least 65,000 words and a dozen illustrations.
Cloth. Price three dollars, including postage within
United States. The three volumes of the TRILOGY,
(an aggregate of over 200,000 words) ordered on
the same date, eight dollars, including postage.
The AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE,
ordered on the same date with
one other of the TRILOGY, six dollars.
Price of AUTOBIOGRAPHY
alone, four dollars including
postage.
The author of the TRILOGY, one of the half-dozen most remarkable
bisexuals known to medical science, while living in New York City as
college student and subsequently professional “man,” had, incidentally,
a six years’ variegated experience (age nineteen to twenty-five) in the
Underworld of the metropolis. In [Sidenote: _The Riddle of the
Underworld._] the AUTOBIOGRAPHY, besides an exhaustive analysis of his
own intuitions, beliefs, courses of reasoning, emotions, penchants, and
instincts, the author merely _outlined_ his manner of life and
adventures, particularly while impersonating a female. In THE
FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS, he undertook little more, in description of
Underworld life, than to detail the experiences of cultured
ultra-androgynes.
In the RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD, the author of the TRILOGY—
GIVES the history of New York’s white-light and red-light districts
since the beginning of the nineteenth century; analyzes the causes
of vice and crime on the basis of his intimate mingling with the
Underworlders; shows why a “vicious tenth” exists in all cities,
and how the Overworld (which constitutes nine-tenths of the
population of Christian lands) should regulate the former.
DEPICTS life in New York’s poorest immigrant quarters and
tenements—_in its reality_ because he saw it as an _insider_, the
denizens of the slums and the Underworld shamefacedly veiling the
fundamental facts of their existence from charity and sociological
investigators, but admitting the author to everything because he
mingled with them as a non-intellectual and fairie.
DEPICTS life in the lowest type of slum lodging-house, once the
author’s home, and the night life in general of the Bowery at the
height of the latter’s vogue as New York’s principal red-light
street, the author at the time being one of its “_filles de
joie_.”
[Sidenote: _The Riddle of the Underworld._]
DEPICTS, lastly, in great detail, his career as female-impersonator
in New York’s slums and red-light and white-light districts and
the life of “bosom friends” of the Underworld: Young bloods sowing
their wild oats; middle-aged extreme alcoholic wrecks; extreme
drug addicts; intellectual mild androgynes during the hours when
Nature drives them to a double life in the Underworld; low-class
“fairies”; _filles de joie_ in their hey-day; wrecks of such in
their thirties; “confidence men”; gangsters, gunmen, and burglars
(whom Providence gave the author as soul-mates).
THE CLOSING VOLUME OF THE TRILOGY DEPICTING THE LIFE EXPERIENCE OF A
BISEXUAL UNIVERSITY “MAN”
INDEX
(and., abb. for androgyne or androgynism)
Abraham Myers adventure, 124
Abstinence induces melanch., 44, 72
Absurd legal superstitions, 196
Acquired or congenital, 16, 199
Actors, androgynes as, 87, 97, 100, 177, 206
Adam of Angelo, 215, 216
Adonises, 114, 236, 257, 258
“Adopted sons”, 187, 214, 257, 258
Aesthetes often effeminate, 25
Aestheticism of and., 17, 200, 224, 231
Age-group sought, 226
Age sobered me, 256
Alcoholics, 109
Aliases, choosing, 94
necessity of, 93
Ambition, author’s, 79, 83
American aborigines, 47
AM. JOURNAL OF SEXOLOGY, 266
An Adonis or a Hercules?, 258
Anatomy of author, 84, 86, 87, 91
Alexander the Great, 29, 30, 38
America’s most impious, 184
Anaphrodites, 13
“Androgyne” and “gynander” terms, 155
Androgyne expedients, 241
outcast, 159
Platonic marriage, 217
stamping grounds, 226
talk, 153
Androgynes, 15 et al.
are æsthetes, 17, 224
are goody-goodies, 51
banishment of, 42
benefactors, 36, 220, 221
compelled to fabricate, 242
(cultured), 146 ff., 158, 164 ff., 198 ff., 237 ff., 259
gifted, 36, 37, 48, 161
in war, 255
linguists, 152
loud dressers, 104, 131, 223, 225, 231
more numerous among cultured, 43, 265
nabobize menials, 193
not Sodomites, 223
not to marry, 20, 205
resourceful, 174
wish wife for “sons”, 218
Androgynes’ angelic dispo., 38
families unsuspi., 183, 239
favorites fortunate, 176, 178, 193, 208, 256, 257
one offence, 50
relatives ashamed to prosecute, 246
Androgynism, causes of: =See= Cause of and.
nationally healthful, 48
not degeneracy, 46
stigmata of: =See= Stigmata of and.
Angel to fiend, 138
Angelo—Phyllis, 153, 198 ff.
Anglo-American law unintell., 179
Apollo, 25, 26
Apostro. to lost soul-mate, 116
to the supreme man, 145
Apotheosis of an and., 211
Are androgynes supermen?, 37
Army, bobtailed from, 255
Arrest of androgynes, 150
Arrested development, 49, 149
Artificial breasts, 264, 265
Assassins of high morality, 249
Assault and battery, 141 ff., 256, 261
Associates (author’s) of Bowery, 285
childhood, 54, 59
Fourteenth Street, 118, 130, 215
Stuyvesant Square, 113, 130
Association of and., 146 ff., 232
Astigmatism (mental) of and., x
Author a repository for Underworld’s secrets, 5
robbed two hundred times, 141
Author’s attempt at suicide, 252, 253
contribution to sociology, 96
conversations with opposites, 256
flirtations mushy, 133
foretaste of Z’s fate, 251
menopause, 166, 167
third “adopted son”, 257
trilogy, 3
visage the most marred, 144
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, vii, x, xi, 3, 16, 43, 50, 59, 72, 83,
86, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 103, 122, 131, 133, 166, 228, 236, 239, 251,
252, 253, 255, 258
Aversion to feminine society, 75, 119, 183, 201, 231, 260
B. A. a fairie, 118
Bacon, Francis, 34, 35, 49
Roger, 39, 80
Badge of fairie-ism, 104
Ball games, 65, 257
Banishment of and., 42
Battery Park, 226
Beard growth of author, 84
Beardless men (natural) 19, 29, 32, 151, 264, 265
Beard scanty, 169, 199, 250
Bears, 252, 254
Beer-garden adventure, 212 ff.
Being dogged, 112, 113
Belle of the ball, 185
Benighted lawyers, 196
leaders of thought, 41
physicians, 74, 176, 204, 220
Bent for woman’s toil, 224, 227, 257, 268
Bias rules in sex domain, 163
Bible and sex instinct, 13, 14, 15, 44, 73
on homosexuality, 51, 160
Biceps unrivalled, 134
Bicycle race, six-day, 124
Bigotry (sexual), 2, 22, 23, 39, 41, 51, 52, 72, 73, 74, 80, 87, 95,
139, 147, 149, 154, 159 ff., 160, 167, 168, 180, 191, 193, 195, 197,
202, 209, 213, 220, 222, 239, 240, 245
“Biog. of Passive Pederast”, 266
“Biol. Sport of Fairieism”, 262
Blackmail, viii, 158, 163, 178 ff., 182, 185 ff., 217, 224, 257
Blarney triumphant, 125
Bobtailed from army, 255
Boon of an “adopted son”, 189
Bowery, 169, 207
a magnet, 203 ff.
assoc, of author, 284, 285
“boys”, 172, 176, 205, 207, 285
Brain, author’s, 83
Breasts (artificial), 264, 265
Bright intellects, 36, 258
Broadway Tenderloin, 104, 125, 226
Brownies, 89
Buffalo Bill’s show, 254
Bugle, 212
Burglar alarm, 225
Business career of author, 90 ff., 253, 255
Cæsar, 31, 37, 38
“Calvin Luther”, 217, 219 ff.
Caravan, 253
Carpenter, Edward, 17, 37
Castration, 16, 67
Catamite, 27
Cat in a strange garret, 172
Cause of androgynism, 18, 46, 49, 60, 70, 73, 147, 148, 149
female-impersonation, 99, 100, 101, 148
sex intensity, 78, 164, 165
Central Park, 226
Cerc. Herm., 151 ff., 200, 224
Change of life, 165, 166
Chantage: =See= Blackmail
Chevelure, feminine, 264
Chevelure of author, 85, 86
Childhood female-impersonation, 62, 66, 170
Childhood’s sex influences, 165
Childlike and womanlike, 86
Childlikeness of author, 83, 85, 88, 91
“Child of the Devil”, 136
Child sex expression, 54, 57, 59, 60, 61, 64, 78
Choosing aliases, 94
Christians’ morality, 196
Christine of Sweden, 38
Church and public opinion guilty, 245, 261
Clerical profession, 42, 43, 44, 191
Climacteric, 166
Coasting, 66
Coddled in college, 85
College course, 82
preparation, 65, 72
Common and. practices, 158
type of sexual insanity, 137
Compens. by Providence, 83, 256
Comstock, Anthony, 92
Conclus. from life exp., 73
Confessions to author, 5, 256
Confidants of every-day circle, 91, 95, 144
Congen. or acquired, 16, 199
Conscientious murderer, 235
Cont. Europe contrast, 179
Conversations, sample, 107 ff., 133 ff., 152 ff., 188 ff.
with sexual opposites, 256
Cornbury, Lord, 38
Corsets, 250
Court empl. ultra-crim., 93
Court martials, 94, 257
Cowardice of and., 67, 68, 75, 224, 225
Cowboys, 253, 254, 258
“Crime against Nature”, 195, 196
Criminal prudery, 61
ultra-, 113, 138 ff.
Crooks are boastful, 122, 123
Cross, author’s, 143
Cross-dressing, 62, 66, 67, 75, 87, 103, 104, 108, 131, 135, 152, 157,
165, 170, 199, 200, 201, 202, 209, 211, 237, 239, 240, 244, 246,
248, 250, 264, 265, 267
Cultured and., 146 ff., 158, 164 ff., 170 ff., 198 ff., 259, et al.
Cure for homosexuality, 16, 20
Curiosity, author a, 84
Dalliance, 256
Damocles, sword of, 225, 231
Dark ages, 39, 80, 93, 160, 220
Daughter of regiment, 255
Day dreams, 113, 170, 203, 259
Death experienced, 142
preferred to discl., 230
to the traitor, 128
Decline of nations, 45
Degeneracy, and. not, 46
“Degenerates”, 49, 221, 252, 263
De Joux, 17
Depilation, 32, 100, 152, 169, 185, 199
“Depraved” defined, 160
Detectives, and. as, 123,
author as, 5, 238, 284
Development, arrested, 49, 149
Disclosure to “every-day” associates, 91, 95, 144
Disposition of and., 38, 51
Diversions of girl-boys, 62, 65, 66, 68, 71, 72
Divorce, 7, 12
Does fairie exist?, 263
Dog-faced boys, 84
Dogged, 113, 208
Double life, 97, 101, 104, 118, 119
Dressing, cross: =see= Cross-dr. for a spree, 202
Dress-making of and., 68, 232
Dual personality, 92, 97, 101, 102, 112, 119
“Duchess of Austria”, 176
Early consc. of deform., 74
Earmarks of and.: =See= Stigmata
Ear-rings, 266
Effects of abstinence, 44, 72
child sex expression, 78, 164, 165
Effeminacy common in æsthetes, 25, 231
that is culpable, 47
Egotism, 163, 168
Ellis, Dr. Havelock, 37, 48, 50, 158
Elmira Reformatory, 138
Endocrinology’s testimony, 16
Enemies of truth & justice, 4
Enlistment in army, 257
Environment, infl., 132
Epworth League, 127
Erotic pleasure’s value, 72
Eternally dovetailed, 211
Eunice, 168 ff., 206
Eunuchs, 20
Europe, continental, 179
Euterpe, 184 ff.
Every-day circle of author, 85, 91 ff., 95, 102, 118, 119, 144
Experiencing death, 142
Exp. from univ., author’s, 95
Fabrication of and., 242
Fags: =See= Fairies
Fairie apprenticeship, author’s, 103
bachelor of arts, 118
does he really exist, 263
Fairieism, badge of, 104
“biological sport of”, 262
“Fairies”, 89, 109, 150, 255, 262 ff., 266 ff., et al.
Fairies best stool pigeons, 123
extreme dressers, 104, 131, 231, 268
Fairsea, Mr., 159 ff.
“Fairy and Lady Lover”, 262
“Fallen angels”, 114, 118, 205, 285
Families ignorant of bisexual members, 62, 183, 239
F’ank, 54, 59, 61
Faro, 127
Fasting, 79
Father’s assert. disc., 247
Favorites of androgynes, 7, 107 ff., 114, 130, 131, 208, 209 ff., 214
ff., 227, 232, 233, 234, 236, et al.
“Fed up” on falsehoods, 254
Fellatio, 59, 60, 64, 182, 228, 235, 236, 238, 255, 256
effects of, 99, 235, 256
Female-impersonate intoxication, 104, 106, 111, 212
Female-impersonation, 32, 46, 66, 93, 99, 100, 101, 103 ff., 131, 150,
157, 171, 177, 183 ff., 201 ff., 205 ff., 209 ff., 235, 243, 256,
261, 263, 267, et al.
cause of, 99, 100, 101, 148
in childhood, 66, 170
instinctive, 99
obsession, 260
sprees, 103 ff., 170, 175 ff., 201 ff., 207, 211 ff., 218, 240, 241,
248, 251, 255, 259
Female-impersonators, gifted, 108
popular, 107
Female with male genitals, 176
Femin. anat. of and., 64, 66
Feminesqueness of author recognized by business associates, 91
Feminine chevelure, 264
figure recognized, 87
Fire-arms, horror of, 75
First real. of abnor., 70, 73
Flagellation, 79
Flirtation, 107 ff., 130, 133 ff., 166, 207
Fort X, 245
Y 255 ff.
Fourteenth St. Rialto, 98, 104, 106, 117, 118, 130, 208, 215, 226
Fourth sex, 98
Frank White, 168 ff., 206
Freaks of nature, 84, 263, 270
French doll-baby, 91, 97, 98, 101, 102, 104, 153, 280
French leave, 197, 257
Freq. of and., 17, 18, 253
fairie-ism, 107
Frigidity of and. toward women, 226, 231, 260
Full-fledged instincts equally unæsthetic, 136
Gamblers, 114
Gambler’s antecedents, 117
Gambling a master passion, 120
Gangsters, 171 ff., 205 ff., 260, 261
Ganymede, 27
Gas-house district, 137
Genius, 36, 263
George’s antecedents, 215
Gethsemane, author’s, 77 ff.
Girl-boy diversions, 62, 65, 66, 68, 71, 72
reasons for suicide, 68
God will avenge androgynes, 52
God-intoxicated youth, 70, 73, 76, 77, 79, 143
Gœthe, 93
Goody-good. of and., 51, 180
a “fille de joie”, 204
transformed, 204
Grabowsky, Dr., 17
Grand Central, 206, 208
Union, 129
Great cy. desir., 200, 201, 203
delusion, the, 168
Greeks, 27, 47, 48, 162
Guest murders, 227, 229, 234, 250
Gun-men, 171
Gynanders, 98, 154 ff., 199
love androgynes, 154, 155
Gynander’s fate, 154 ff.
Hacked to death, 228
Half-and-half as to sex, 15, 19, 22, 201, 205, 209
Hanging and., 251
Hangman’s noose, 247
Hare-brained sex, 211, 280
Harmlessness of and. and inversion, viii, 28, 42, 50, 147, 161, 192,
209, 220, 221, 236, 263
Harvey Green, 131 ff., 144, 149
Health of author, 99, 235
Hercules, 236, 257, 258
an unrivalled, 131 ff.
Hermaphrodites, 21
psychic, 19
Hermaphroditoi, 151 ff., 164 ff.
Hermaphroditos, 27
Cercle, 151 ff., 200, 224
Hero-worship, 134
Herzog, Dr. A. W., i, vii ff.
Hirschfeld, Dr. M., 18
Homocide Bureau, 247
Homos. at climacteric, 166
Bible on, 44, 51, 160
(chronic) congenital, ix, 16, 20, 46
cure for, 16, 20
“Homosexuals” a misnomer, 254
no worse than hetero., 148
Hon., author’s bosom friend, 85
Hotel Comfort, 109
Hotel X, 156
Housekp. of and., 201, 226, 257
How milk on 14th St., 126
Howard, Dr. W. L., 27, 37
Hypocrites, 11, 115. =See= also Pharis.
Immoral. novelty in N. Y., 194
Imprisonment of and., 81, 149, 191 ff., 209, 213, 263 ff.
Incognito necessary, 200
Indian country, 258
Industry of author, 255
Infantilism, 38, 61, 84, 88, 90, 156
Infatuation, 187
Inherited lechery, 56
In high spirits, 241, 242
Inquis. author, 122, 132, 150, 167
Instinct. female-imp., 99
Intellect of author, 82, 83
androgynes, 36, 83, 263, 267
Intellectual aristocrat browbeaten by pleb., 195
Intoxication, female-impersonate, 104, 106, 111, 212
Irresponsibility of and., 163
Is bisex. worst crime?, 147
“I want to die!”, 69
Javerts, 197
“Jennie June”, origin, 93
Jennie Lind, 94
Jesus, 15
Jilted, 115, 138, 251, 252, 254
Joseph (of Egypt), 220
JOURNAL OF SEXOLOGY, 37, 110
Kant, 14
Keep tots sexually clean, 60
Key stolen, 142
Knit souls, 122, 123, 210
Krafft-Ebing, Dr., 15, 158
Lake Ontario, 117
Law, Ang.-Amer., unintell., 179
Law clerk, 92
Laws, change of, viii, 1
Lawyers, benighted, 196
Leader of a Bowery gang, 207
Leaders of th’t benight., 41
ignore evidence, 162
murderers, 150, 209, 245, 261
Lecturer on sexo., author, 256
Legal adoption, 217, 218
persecution of androgynes, 1, 93, 143, 161, 162, 179, 196, 213, 265
superstitions, 196
Leland, Chas. G., 37
Lichtenstein, Dr. P. M., 16, 262
Life-story told sweeth., 256
Lind, Earl, 92, 94, 95
Loathing of androgynes, 228, 238, 242, 245, 246, 251, 253 ff., 261
a murder motive, 157, 232
Lohengrin, 137
Lotharios, 107 ff., 118, 130
Love letters, author’s, 95
LOVE’S COMING-OF-AGE, 17, 37, 48
Lumbering camps, 253
Madison Sq., 226
Garden, 124, 254
Male figure more artistic, 157
qual. that knit fem., 258
Man and woman in one body, 112
ashamed of his nature, 168
not rational, 39 ff., 163
-slaughter, 243
transf. into soubr., 268
woman, & infant in one, 88
Man’s prudery almost fatal, 80
causes many murders, 157
Mandatory of society, 222, 233, 235, 238
Manner of life of and., 200, 224, 257, 264
“Manon Lescaut”, 151
Many fem.-imp. expl., 240
Mardi gras, 184
Marriage covers sins, 218
of and., 20, 29, 31, 217
Marry, androgynes not to, 20, 205
Martin, 118
Masked ball, 157, 182 ff.
Match-heads eaten, 255
Maternal instincts, 177
McDonald, B., 116, 119 if., 275
Medical exam., 250, 260, 261
superstition, 20
MEDICAL LIFE, 262
MEDICAL REV. OF REVIEWS, 262
MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL, vii ff., 4
Melancholia of and., 44, 62, 67, 68, 69, 72, 73, 74, 76 ff., 80, 101,
103, 104, 195, 201, 202, 209, 239, 252, 254
Menopause, 166
of author, 166, 167
Men-women: =See= Gynanders.
Methodists, 117, 193
Method of robbery, 140 ff.
Michelangelo, 32, 37, 38, 161, 215, 216
Mildly androgynous, 18, 151
virile, 11, 220, 221
Military prison, 257
Millinery of and., 200, 268
Miners, 253
Misanthrope, making a, 192
Missionary work of author, xi, 1, 2, 81, 167, 245
Mistresses, 253
“Mith Nighty”, 157
Modesty of girl-boys, 64, 68
Mohawk valley, 132, 138
Moll, Dr. A., 17
Mollie Dale, 155 ff.
Monandry not for and., 182
“Monsters”, 1, 42, 180, 191, 222, 233, 238, 244, 252, 254
“Monte Carlo”, 120, 126 ff.
Morality of and., 49, 51, 180, 222
of Christians, 196
Morgue, 260
Moron, 83, 90
Most and. ultra-relig., 43
shelt., 2
went to bad, 55
Mr. Skirt, 186 ff.
Mulberry St., 103, 138
Murder motive in loathing of and., 157, 232
Murdered by a guest, 227, 229, 234, 250
Murderer (consc.), 235, 249
mand. of soc., 222, 233, 235, 238
Murd. and. not necessary, 254
Murders of and., viii, 1, 142, 149, 157, 162, 208, 221 ff., 227, 231,
235, 237 ff., 254, 256, 259 ff.
Muscles of author, 84
My life’s motto, 77
tempta. hardly eq., 78
Myers, Abraham, 121, 124 ff.
Nabob. by and., 236, 256, 257
Names of and., 93, 100, 101, 151, 157, 176, 219
Nathan’s parable, 147
Nations, decline of, 45
Natural monogamy, 12
polygamy, 10
Nature indic. rear. as girl, 65
to be blamed, 163
Nature’s nobleman, 254
Neckties, 104, 260
New York Harbor, 237
Beau Brummel, 115 ff.
Newton, Isaac, 14
No alcohol, no ven. dis., 110
Non-congenital homos., ix
Non-resist. of and., 206, 241, 248
Non-segregation, 161
Not cause decl. nat., 47
Not willingly half-and-h., 201
Now man, now woman, 3, 190
Nursing by and., 255
Nymph. (psy.), 60, 169, 257
Obed. to Nat. gave peace, 101
Occupations of and., 16, 43
Onanism, 12, 83
Onanists (mutual), 20
One offence of and., 50
Opposites attract, 258
Outcast and., 159
Outlook on life at 11, 67
Over-conscientiousness, 71, 220
Parents killed by offs., 254
take time for children!, 165
Parents’ duty, 60, 61
Paresis, 148
Hall, 146 ff., 181
“Pass. pederast, biog. of”, 266
Pathics, 60
Paul (author’s soul-mate), 118
Paul, St., 14
Pederasty (active), 20
(passive), 20, 266
Pedro, 126 ff.
Perennial youth of and., 91, 151, 228, 255
Persecution of and., 149, 180, 193, 197, 244, 246, 251, 261
Personality (dual), 92, 97, 101, 102, 112, 119
Petits-jesus, 51, 147
Phariseeism of public, 4, 11, 23, 159 ff., 181, 193, 252
Phyllis, 153, 198 ff.
antecedents, 200
finds herself, 206, 207
passes on, 221
Physicians
dicta, 16, 49, 74, 143, 149, 204, 220 ff.
narrowminded, 144
Physique of author, 84, 89, 108
Plato, 27, 29, 37, 161
Plat. mar. of and., 166, 217, 239
Plum, 159 ff.
Plumpness of and., 20
Policeman, 213, 247, 260
Portrait painter, 215
Potiphar’s wife, 220
Poultry bisexuality, 24
Predest. of aut. to career, 79, 80
Present soc. rules inadeq., 57
Prince Pansy, 151
Prodigy (muscular), 134 ff.
Professional life of author, 90 ff., 253, 255
Promisc. and., 182, 235, 255
Prostitutes, 253
Provid. compens. aut., 58, 256
praised, 73, 113, 143
Prudery, 40, 61, 220, 228, 238, 245, 256
murders, 149, 225, 227, 235, 245, 253
Pseudo-hermaphrodites, 21
Psyche, author’s, 89
Psych. effem., degrees, 240
hermaphrodites, 19, 239
Psychop. individuality, 238
Public opinion guilty, 245
Publicity would remove a world of woe, 197
Pug Heaven, 175 ff.
Pugilists’ Haven, 171 ff.
Punishments for and., 144
Puritanism of and., 45, 106, 118, 249
Pussie (origin of name), 94
Q Apartments, 224
Q’s murder, 3, 259 ff.
“Rabbit”, 205 ff.
Race suicide, 49, 161, 196
“Ralph Werther”, origin, 93, 94
Raphael, 33, 49, 93, 161
Rare find, 135
Rebellion, War of, 255
Recogn., mutual, of and., 158
Recogn. after 16 yrs., 255
Regimentals overpowering, 210
Rejec. from Chr. ministry, 80
Relat. ashamed prosec., 246
Religiosity of and., 43, 73, 143, 191
Religious prodigy, author was, 70, 73, 76, 77, 79, 143
Reporters, 248
Resourceful and., 176, 181
Reticence, sex, 167, 168, 222, 239, 245, 259
Reubs, 119 ff.
Rialto: =See= Fourteenth St.
RIDDLE OF UNDERWORLD, 4, 59, 98, 103, 114, 118, 123, 204
Robbers’ vic. 200 times, 141
Robbery, 140, 173, 176, 230, 232, 234, 256, 261
Rockies, 252, 253, 258
Roland Reeves, 150 ff., 158 ff., 164, 208
Ropes, 249
Sadder but wiser “Reub”, 129
Sailors, 172 ff., 230, 240, 249
Saint Paul’s sex teachings, 14
School days (author’s), 63, 82
Seance with a burglar, 139
Secret guest, 231
Segregation of and., 161
Sex bigotry: =See= Bigotry
doctrine of Bible, 13, 14, 15, 44, 73
domain ruled by bias, 163
expression in childhood, 54, 57, 59, 60, 61, 64, 78
fourth, 98
influences of childhood, 165
instinct’s decline, 165
intensity, cause of, 78, 164, 165
scale, 22
Sexology tabooed: =See= Reticence
Sexual insanity, 137
precocity, 64
the worst crippling, 2
Shakespeare-author, 34, 37, 38
problem, 35
Shame of and.’s rel., 245, 246
Shufeldt, Dr. R. W., 82, 89, 110, 266
Sikhs, 48
Simul. life as 3 persons, 92
Sing Sing, 196, 202
Skeleton of author, 84
Social elite, 265
Sociology, aut’s contr., 96
Socrates, 28, 37, 161
Sodomites, 45, 146, 223, 238
Softness of and., 66, 84 ff., 254, 255
Soldiers, 11, 30, 31, 47, 79, 87, 104, 210, 226, 233, 255 ff.
“Soldiers’ Friend”, 89
Solut. of gyn. disapp., 156
Sons (“adopted”), 187, 214, 257, 258
Songs of fairie, 133, 269
Soprano voice of and., 267
Soul-mate of author (lifelong in dreamland), 54
Spencer, Herbert, 14
Spermatorrhea, 83
Spiritual auto. of author, 73
“Squirrel”, 207
Stamping grounds of and., 226
Stigmata of and., 19, 100, 151, 199, 231, 250, 255, 259, 264, 265, 267
Strangling of and., 232 ff., 237 ff., 242, 249
Struggling to save reason, 143
Stuyvesant Sq., 113, 130 ff.
Suetonius, 37
Suicide of and., viii, 1, 62, 68, 74, 195, 209, 237 ff., 251 ff., 254,
255, 260
Super-men
are and.?, 37
Supreme man, 136, 145
woman, 212
Susa, 114
Talk of and., 153 ff.
Temperance only salv., 59
Tenderloin (Broadway), 104, 125, 226
Testicular secretion, 16, 149
Things not what seem, 119
Throwing act of and., 65, 67, 267
Tobacco, 152
“Tombs” (N. Y. City), 194 ff., 262
Tony Neddo, 186 ff., 193, 197
Torture of and., method, 244, 261. =See also under= Persecution.
Tracy, 126 ff.
Transform, not bargained, 173
Tremend. vir., 7, 107, 122, 221
attitude toward and., 172, 176, 186 ff., 201, 206, 221, 235, 253, 256
Trilogy (author’s), 3
Trusted murderer, 234
26th to 32d yrs. of aut., 89 ff.
Two handwritings, 95
Ulrichs, K. H., 38
Ultra-androgynous, 19
crim. court employee, 93
unexpected happens, 138
virile, 9
Underworld’s sec. confi. aut., 5
Union Square, 226
University and., 103 ff., 118, 158, 180
author expelled from, 95
“Urning” term, 38
Value of erotic pleasure, 72
Village fairie, 71
Virile: =See= Tremend. v. & ultra-v.
Virility confers bravery, 255
Visage aut. most marred, 144
Visit to Ft. Y in 1921, 255
Voice of author, 86, 111
Walt Whitman, 30, 36, 37, 255
War and and., 30, 32, 87, 255
Warning to and., 206
Whistling, 267
Wilde, Oscar, 18, 28, 49
Witch-burning, 41
Weapons a fetish, 224
Wee girl-boy’s outlook, 62
“Werther”, origin, 93
Why androgynes are hated, 45
an Underworld, 6
Wig, 202, 217, 265, 268
Wiles of and., 158, 181, 239, 240, 241, 251
Womanlike, author, 86, 87
Woman-man, the, 213
Woman-soul, 253
Woman’s toil, bent, 227, 257, 268
World War, 255
Wyoming, 254
“X and wife”, 158
X offenceless, 236
X’s murder, 223 ff.
Xenophon, 29
Y offenceless, 236
Y’s murder, 231 ff.
Yearning for feminine attire, 267. =See also= Cross-dressing.
Z of and. physique, 250
Z’s fate, aut’s foretaste, 251
murder, 237 ff.
woman’s apparel, 248
-----
Footnote 1:
Continental European civilizations are, on this subject, a
half-century ahead of Anglo-American.
Footnote 2:
See Part VI, chapter III.
Footnote 3:
A physician of wide experience who read the above before publication
argued that in the United States, only five per cent are mildly
virile. I stand unconvinced that my proportion is in error. The
proportion surely differs with racial types and environment. The
physician has always lived in New York City and practiced among
liberal-minded, non-church, pleasure-loving people of Teutonic or
Latin parentage. My own every-day associates, particularly in the
village where I was brought up and which I still frequently visit,
have been, almost entirely, ultra-puritan Anglo-Saxons. When I
maintained their sexual temperance, the physician declared them
hypocrites, whose secret practice is the same as “worldlings.” I have
been intimately acquainted with hundreds of these male puritan
church-devotees, and am convinced they are hypocrites solely in
supposing their sexual moderation due to their own superior morals.
Sex has naturally small place in their lives.
Footnote 4:
Do not confuse with anaphrodites the excessively rare men who are
attracted by female beauty and manners, marry, but then desire merely
Platonic relations. Such are rather cases of impotence. The genuine
anaphrodite never even courts a woman.
Footnote 5:
The author has always preferred to read biography to fiction. If his
life is spared, he will write an extensive work on the sexuality of
noted men and women. An unusually large proportion of geniuses have
been either anaphrodites or androgynes. For example, Sir Isaac Newton
and Immanuel Kant appear to have been anaphrodites.
Footnote 6:
I take no stock in the theory advanced by some medical writers that
androgynism (generally termed male sexual inversion) is acquired and
not congenital. The exceptional method of sexual expression can be
=acquired= only by individuals congenitally on the very borderline
between androgynes on the one hand and anaphrodites or mildly virile
on the other. The latest proponent of the “acquired” theory, Dr. P. M.
Lichtenstein, in the August, 1921, issue of MEDICAL REVIEW OF REVIEWS,
suggests that masturbation in boyhood may produce in adulthood a
fairie or ultra-androgyne. In my physical prime, I was a fairie of
extreme type. I never masturbated as a child or as an adult because of
acute horror. My own pudenda never had any part in my sexual ardor—any
more than had my vermiform appendix.
Dr. Lichtenstein’s suggestion of the correction by parents of feminine
predilections in small boys is futile. Those feminesque traits, when
congenital, as I believe they always are in ultra-androgynes, can not
be suppressed. Likewise his advice that the adolescent girl-boy seek
the company of the gentle sex as a cure is as futile. In my teens, I
forced myself to it, but it had not the least curative value.
=Note Added in Galley=: I just came across a scrap of a recent NEW
YORK WORLD Sunday magazine, containing “=Glands That Govern Our
Lives=”, name of author missing. I quote: “The not uncommon phenomena
of the smooth-faced man with a feminine voice and a figure resembling
that of a woman, and of the deep-voiced, hairy-faced masculine woman,
are produced by abnormalities in the development of these glands.”
Only in the third decade of the twentieth century is the comparatively
new branch of medical science, =endocrinology= (the study of glands,
particularly the ductless) coming forward to maintain the
irresponsibility of “homosexualists” for their idiosyncrasy. It has
also only just been brought into the limelight that the testicles are
invigorating (as well as masculinizing) to the individual possessing
them and the prime reason for man’s being physically stronger than
woman. I myself, for several years after castration at the age of
twenty-seven, observed a marked diminution in my stamina. (For
details, see my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE.) My own testicles were
abnormal judged by the fact that I, though always having intense
horror of self-manustupration, suffered from acute spermatorrhea from
the incidence of puberty up to castration, while I was totally devoid
of the propensity natural to full-fledged adult males for emptying the
seminal vesicles.
Footnote 7:
Other authorities make them more numerous. I quote from =Love’s
Coming-of-Age=, page 125: “Dr. Grabowsky ... quotes figures ... as
high as one man in every 22, while Dr. Albert Moll (=Die Contraere
Sexual-Empfindung=, chapter 3) gives estimates varying from one in
every 50 to as low as one in every 500. These figures apply to such as
are exclusively of the said nature [excluding the psychic
hermaphrodites. Including the latter] the estimates must be greatly
higher.... Some late statistical inquiries (See =Statistische
Untersuchungen=, Dr. M. Hirschfeld, Leipzig, 1904) yield 1.5 to 2 per
cent as a probable ratio.”
I myself have fixed upon the median of ratios I have read, as well as
the frequency that has occurred to me as a result of a half-century’s
unusually intimate mingling with all social types in many nations,
having possessed, at the time I lived in the foreign nations, some
speaking ability in seven foreign languages. But the frequency is
greater than I have given in the text rather than less. But the
extreme German estimates are too high for the United States. It is my
conclusion from intimate intercourse with the natives in many
countries that the frequency of bisexuality per thousand is
proportional to the density of population. Nature puts a break on
over-population by increasing the proportion of sterile bisexuals.
When a population is regularly underfed, the number of bisexuals born
appears to increase. But that is not the only factor. Another law is
that when a consanguineous multifamily (a group of families)
multiplies with exceptional rapidity, bisexuals are born in that
family even though the food supply is undiminished. The author
believes the latter to be the reason he himself was born bisexual. It
was because the generic womb (i.e., those of my grandmothers for
several generations) had been overtaxed.
The ratio is probably much higher among the cultured—particularly art
devotees—than among the “hoi polloi.”
Footnote 8:
See later chapter: THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THE HERMAPHRODITOI IN
GENERAL.
Footnote 9:
Bisexuality occurs also in animals and birds, but far less frequently
than among humans. Perhaps this difference is due to the fact that the
human male and female differ much less in respect to secondary sexual
determinants than do most birds and animals. Several times in my life
I have come across a newspaper item such as the following. I inquired
of a poulterer, who informed me that he has had numerous hens that
crowed and possessed secondary male determinants.
CROWS AND LAYS EGG. IS IT COCK OR HEN?
Copyright by =Press Publishing Co=. (NEW YORK WORLD), 1921
(=Special cable despatch to the WORLD=)
LONDON, Dec. 9.—A Buff Orpington cock at a poultry show in the
agricultural hall at Islington has laid an egg. This bird began its
career with all the attributes of a sure-enough hen. It laid eggs and
cackled over them in time-honored fashion. Its head, plumage, and
habits were all hen-like.
As it grew, its conformation underwent a subtle change. It began to
grow a cock’s comb, sprouted a cock’s tail, developed spurs and crowed
on appropriate occasions—but continued to lay eggs. When its owner
exhibited it as a “cock-hen” and claimed despite its male affiliation,
that it produced eggs, all the poultry fanciers derisively nicknamed
it “Bluff Orpington.”
One doubter offered to pay one hundred pounds if the bird laid an egg.
It was watched day and night for the coming of the marvel, and
yesterday duly presented its watchers with an excellent egg....
Physiologists are dumbfounded.
Footnote 10:
“Catamite” is the Latin, as well as modern, corruption of the vocable
“Ganymede.” For the relation between Jupiter and Ganymede, see Dr. Wm.
Lee Howard’s =Pederasty vs. Prostitution= in =Journal of the American
Medical Association=, May 15, 1897. Also Plato’s =Phædo=. Greek
literature in general is suffused with pederasty. I read Greek six years
in “prep” and university. My observation is that androgyne scholars have
a penchant for that language and drift into teaching it. Prior to the
twentieth century, the Greek and Latin masterpieces—in all “preps” and
colleges read unexpurgated because the sexually full-fledged have not
generally understood the homosexual descriptions—were the only
publications affording androgynes an inkling of the secrets of their sex
life.
Footnote 11:
For twenty-five years, the author has combed the medical press for
information on androgynism. This chapter is the [Sidenote: _Are
Androgynes Super-men?_] fruit. I made no notes, never expecting to
publish the results. At the present writing, I lack the necessary month
for research to the end of making a complete list of my sources. For
Socrates, see Plato’s Symposium and Phædo, Xenophon’s Symposium, and
Haller’s Die Rede des Sokrates in Platon’s Symposium. For Plato, see his
Dialogues, particularly the Symposium; Grote’s Plato; Ellis’s Sexual
Inversion, page 229; The Sexuality of Plato in Journal of Urology and
Sexology, 1916, page 201. For Cæsar, see Dr. Wm. Lee Howard’s Pederasty
vs. Prostitution in Journal of the American Medical Association, May 15,
1897, and Suetonius’ Lives of the Cæsars, written about A. D. 120. The
latter work is a revelation of the pederasty with which the best Roman
society was honeycombed. I believe conditions are about the same to-day
in all civilizations above the barbarous, although in Christian nations
one has not been permitted to publish the facts. They are really not
horrible, nor portentous of ruin for society; merely imagined to be so.
They are not really conducive to the detriment of society, and have
existed practically as now throughout history. It is all because Nature
has created the phenomenon of androgynism, really beneficent to society,
but sorely misjudged by writers grossly ignorant of the phenomenon. Its
final investigation in the twentieth century can do no hurt; only a
world of good.
For Michelangelo, see his Sonnets and his biography by J. A. Symonds.
For the Shakespeare-Author, see his Sonnets and Oscar Wilde’s The
Portrait of Mr. W. H., published in Blackwood’s in 1889, as well as that
same article expanded in a monograph published by Mitchell Kennerly in
1921. For Whitman, see his Leaves of Grass and Drumtaps.
Mrs. Havelock Ellis, in her New Horizons in Love and Life, says:
“Inversion [sexual] and genius have a sort of affinity. They certainly
both tend to belong to the neurotic group.” [R. W’s comment: As a rule
both androgynes and gynanders, but particularly the former, are bundles
of nerves.]
The valuable popular exposition of the philosophy of sex, Edward
Carpenter’s Love’s Coming-of-Age (published by Boni and Liveright) did
not come to my attention until after THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS was
written. The following are excerpts from the chapter, The Intermediate
Sex, the bracketed words being my own: Page 124: “Charles G. Leland
(“Hans Breitmann”) in his book, The Alternate Sex (1904), insists much
on the frequent combination of the characteristics of both sexes in
remarkable men and women, and has a chapter on “The Female Mind in Man,”
and another on “The Male Intellect in Woman.” [I once read the statement
in a medical journal, name not recalled: “Homosexualists are
particularly common among authors.”]
Page 139: “The instinctive artistic nature of the male of this class
[urnings or androgynes], his sensitive spirit, his [Sidenote:
_Androgynes’ Angelic Disposition._] wavelike emotional temperament,
combined with hardihood of intellect and body ... may be said to give
them ... through their double nature, command of life in all its phases,
and a certain freemasonry of the secrets of the two sexes which may well
favor their function as reconcilers [of the full-fledged males with the
full-fledged females] and interpreters [of human nature, particularly
from the standpoint of sex]. Certainly it is remarkable that some of the
world’s greatest leaders and artists have been dowered either wholly or
in part with the Uranian temperament [that is, either ultra-androgynes
or ultra-gynanders or else psychic hermaphrodites]—as in the cases of
Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar,
or, among women, Christine of Sweden, Sappho the poetess, and others.”
It is noteworthy that tremendously virile males—who alone, as a rule,
have been intimate with the extreme type of androgyne—have named him
“fairie” in English-speaking countries and “petit-jesus” (Little Jesus)
in France, largely because of his having, innate, the disposition of an
angel; while the most common scientific term for androgynes in general
has been “urning”, from Greek ouranos, meaning “heavenly being.” The
originator of the term “urning”, however, was himself a bisexual, K. H.
Ulrichs, an Austrian, the originator, about 1880, of the scientific
study of sexual intermediates, and author of several published papers on
the theme.
A lesser historic character than those listed in my text, Lord Cornbury,
cousin of Queen Anne and colonial governor of New York, had the fad of
attiring himself in feminine finery for a stroll on the capital city’s
principal promenade. One of the most prominent judges (now deceased) of
the Atlantic coast was declared to me, by a citizen of his own town, to
be a psychic hermaphrodite. An official once high up in the government
at Washington was declared to me, by a citizen of his native place, to
be an androgyne. One of the greatest factors in world politics to-day is
merely a grown-up infant and an androgyne, though at the same time a
genius.
Footnote 12:
A confidant who read these paragraphs commented in substance:
“‘Physician, heal thyself!’ Your book shows that you yourself are
governed by instinct and prejudice. ‘Those that live in glass houses
should not throw stones.’ Therefore omit these paragraphs.”
If I am governed by instinct and prejudice, I am conscious of being
ruled only by reason. Perhaps those who advocate the suppression of
intermediates without investigation equally feel they are governed by
pure reason. Granted that both they and myself are ruled by instinct and
prejudice and that it is impossible for mankind to exercise pure reason,
nevertheless intermediates should finally have their day in court. They
number 700,000 in continental United States alone, including some of the
brightest minds and most useful members of society.
Footnote 13:
My own case indicates that Nature creates androgynes and gynanders as a
brake on too rapid multiplication. Both paternal and maternal stock have
averaged eight children to a marriage. It seems that Nature wishes to
preserve to as many of her children as possible the joys of courtship.
Often, instead of making cold anaphrodites or female icebergs out of the
men and women not needed to perpetuate the race, she brings into the
world androgynes or gynanders—as a rule, sterile.
Footnote 14:
I wrote this paragraph, so much like that quoted (at close of preceding
chapter) from Carpenter’s =Love’s Coming of Age=, before I had heard of
the existence of the book named.
Footnote 15:
For me it was extreme temperance, considering my natural sexual ardor.
For most people it would have been gross intemperance. Extreme
temperance might be defined as the denial of six-sevenths of one’s
strong fleshly desires. That is what it was with me. Professional
fairies commonly indulge more than ten times as often per year as I did.
But as a result, they go early to the grave.
Footnote 16:
Fellatio.
Footnote 17:
Particularly during my teens, I have worried and grieved a thousand
times as much as the average individual. I say for the solace of fellow
melancholiacs who retain their reason that at my present age of
forty-seven, I show not the least sign of thinning or whitening hair.
But this may be due to my being an ultra-androgyne, a subspecies blessed
with perennial youth. Strangely also in my own case intense grief
(except the agonies in my Garden of Gethsemane, for which see close of
this chapter) has seemed to put physical strength into my usually weak
body. I feel also that it sharpens my wits and adds to my wisdom and
literary ability. “There’s not an ill wind but blows some good.”
At the age of forty-seven my conviction is that great sorrows, after the
lapse of a score of years, are recognized to have been blessings in
disguise. My life experience has demonstrated that “there is a
Providence that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.” My life
experience has demonstrated that the biblical teachings about human life
are in general true, and that either the Christian or Jewish religion is
practically necessary to save from despair and suicide men and women
foreordained to drain the cup of anguish to the dregs. My personal faith
in Christian doctrine, and my habit, instilled in infancy, of “taking
everything to God in prayer,” have saved me from suicide a thousand
times and made the deepest of sorrows tolerable.
The upshot of my very exceptional life experience is: (1) “Praise God
from whom all blessings flow;” and (2) Even pain, sorrow, and death are
blessings in disguise. The heart of the universe is beneficent.
As I have had an unusual religious experience, one of the numerous books
I plan to write, if my life is spared, will be entitled: MY SPIRITUAL
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. I have made many discoveries in religion and ethics which
I long to proclaim to the world. As already stated, I have always been
ultra-religious and a deep student of the Bible. Another book I plan to
write will be entitled: THE BIBLE AND THE SEXUAL INSTINCT. In the latter
I will seek to demolish the Church’s chief stumbling block. As already
stated, I was cut out for a preacher.
Footnote 18:
After my conversion at fifteen, I fought against my sexual attraction
toward schoolmates as few others have struggled against the ruling
passion. I was no longer a coquette, although desiring as much as ever
to be such. My passion for loud apparel, however, was not suppressed
since I did not recognize in it any sin.
Footnote 19:
I had in mind possible predestination to be a fille de joie—the career
which haunted me, off and on, every year of my life after my second,
even years before I heard of the existence of such filles. I had already
had an intensive five years career (third to seventh years). Another
foreshadowing (that of my actual career from my twenty-sixth to fortieth
years) was a common dream, from about my ninth to fourteenth years, of
being chased through streets and fields by youthful soldiers, who would
finally catch me, and great terror would result. The dream occurred so
often that in my waking hours I resolved, the next time I had that
dream, to tell the soldier boldly: “I am not afraid of you, because this
is only a dream!” Repeatedly in my dreams did I tell that to the soldier
who had grabbed me, but he replied (as I dreamt): “You are mistaken.
This is not a dream. It is the real thing!” And then I would become as
terrified as ever. My dream would always end a second or two after being
grabbed, and generally I would wake up as if from a night-mare.
Footnote 20:
Anglo-Saxon leaders of thought have hitherto been of the opinion that
the domain of sex is “=terra interdicta=,” just as those of Roger
Bacon’s time (priests and monks exclusively) would have believed it
sacrilege to use a telescope or microscope—“to see what God meant man
should never see.” Roger, although having invented these instruments,
did not dare tell his generation because the leaders of thought would
have burnt him alive for invading =terra interdicta=.
Footnote 21:
However, as described in detail in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, the
congenital extraordinarily keen edge on my intellect was progressively
and permanently dulled from the age of sixteen to twenty-three by
emissions during sleep twice a week. It is necessary to add that I
always had acute horror of self-abuse.
Footnote 22:
An adult who never surpasses the mentality of a child of twelve.
Footnote 23:
One of my three confidants achieved the highest success in life of any
student in college with me—one of the highest political offices in the
United States. Down to forty, I confided my homosexual adventures,
although after we graduated, our personal relations were never closer
than shaking hands. Within two years of his =honorable= name’s appearing
in absolutely every newspaper of the Union, he permitted me to receive
mail addressed to one of my aliases (used only by those who knew I was
an androgyne) in his care. At the time I did not realize the favor I was
asking—the risk to his reputation that he unselfishly took. Ungrounded
scandals sometimes arise when a full-fledged man does favors for an
androgyne.
Footnote 24:
Some androgynes of a less extreme type, however, tolerate militarics. I
know of two who served in the World War—because they wanted, every day
and hour, to be surrounded by adored young Mars. But if they ever got to
the front, they would probably malinger. I know of another androgyne who
was so afraid of being drafted that he took a hatchet and chopped off
two fingers of his right hand. In the World War, I was subject to draft
under the latest law. I had planned to escape by claiming that I was not
a man, the law specifying that sex alone as liable.
Footnote 25:
Non-mushy specimens are given in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE. Its
editor killed the mushy.
Footnote 26:
Substitute for the real name of the pseudo-hotel.
Footnote 27:
Decades ago I read in a newspaper this imperfectly remembered lyric.
Name of poet not published.
Footnote 28:
I was dogged only three times in my many years of leading a double life:
(1) Several Stuyvesant Square club-men succeeded, unbeknown to me, in
boarding the same elevated train. I discovered them only after I had
descended to the street. My refusal to proceed to my lodgings so
incensed them that they disfigured my face with blows. (2) I was dogged
again by several other Stuyvesant Square club-men. I discovered them
before I boarded the train. Again my refusal to proceed angered them to
giving me a beating. [They beat me because they had been taught that
androgynes are monsters of depravity. All were around twenty years old.]
(3) I was dogged in 1918 by a ruffian of twenty-two, with whom I had
talked confidentially, but finally forsook because my usual test had
shown him untrustworthy. He followed me for more than a mile, although I
turned several corners suddenly and stood in a doorway and watched. But
he had reckoned on my doing just that, and in some mysterious way
guarded against my discovering him. He was evidently a super-crafty
criminal. On straight stretches of street, I looked back half-a-dozen
times, but saw nothing of him. (Because he had always taken the opposite
side of the street and kept such a distance behind I could not recognize
him, while his own eyesight carried further than mine.) When I arrived
at my goal (fortunately this time an amusement resort and not my home),
he gave me one of the surprises of my life by coming up to me. I fled
from him in irrational terror.
Footnote 29:
Note.—See “Recollection” in Part VIII.
Footnote 30:
Martin and Paul are depicted in THE RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD.
Footnote 31:
In the summer of 1921 I twice saw moving pictures of Jack Dempsey
arching his naked biceps. I was thirty feet away and his size was
magnified at least twice. I carefully watched for comparison with Harvey
Green. The protuberance was not equal to Harvey’s, who was far from
being approached by any of the scores of sluggers whose biceps I have
pinched. I can never forget Harvey’s mountains of biceps.
Footnote 32:
I had graduated more than a year before and was earning a good salary
during this summer vacation between my first and second post-graduate
years.
Footnote 33:
On one spree, when I left the key in my pocket, it had been stolen out
of meanness, necessitating the embarrassment, and risk of suspicion, of
having to ring at midnight for admission.
Footnote 34:
In a later catastrophe, one did call. I was compelled to tell the truth,
but he proved sympathetic and respected my confidences. He subsequently
asked his physician about homosexuality and was informed it was deepest
moral depravity and merited no sympathy. He himself happened to be one
of the most broadminded of men. He remarked that physicians as a class
are narrowminded since most have not taken a liberal-arts course.
Footnote 35:
In a later scrape, after being laid up for a week, I ventured to my
large publishing office with practically no skin on my nose, that member
having a week before been badly smashed. My physician had furnished me
with the explanation that he had applied a mustard plaster for a cold
and the nose resulted! But the better joke was that simultaneously
another university-trained androgyne working in the same room was
limping around with a crutch. He said he had been thrown off a horse,
but I never doubted he had been crippled by some sexually full-fledged
brute as a punishment for his androgynism.
Footnote 36:
Prudery is one of the foremost earmarks of anaphrodites and the mildly
virile, to which classes nearly all the leaders of thought belong. The
trait is completely absent from the more virile, as well as androgynes.
Some of the more virile, as Harvey Green, are prudes =only as to
homosexuality= because taught that fellators ought to be killed.
Footnote 37:
In the last decade of the nineteenth century also, there existed a
feminine craze for skirts as narrow as a pant-leg. “Merry Widow” hats
also had their day then. But in 1921 for the first time in Christendom,
respectable women have been crazy to display their bare breasts, bare
arms, and next-to-nude legs in the crowded streets. Respectable women
have to-day adopted for street wear the garb, for exclusive brothel
wear, of =filles de joie= of a quarter of a century ago.
Footnote 38:
See “=French Doll-Baby=” in Part VIII.
Footnote 39:
This anecdote deals with only one of a number of similar occurrences in
New York. Gynanders, as well as androgynes, are doomed to suffer murder
at the hands of hare-brained prudes because of the false teaching of the
leaders of thought.
Footnote 40:
The scientific names “androgyne” and “gynander” evidence a blunder of
their coiner. The order of their components is the reverse of their
English colloquial equivalents.
Footnote 41:
Havelock Ellis’s works on sex—the foremost in the English language—had
not yet been published in 1895.
Footnote 42:
In the year of writing (1921) sight-seeing busses feature the Bowery at
night. Years ago that formerly quaintest of New York’s streets lost most
of its character as red-light and amusement center for New York’s
manual-laborer foreign stock. For a brief history of New York’s
bright-light districts since 1800, see the author’s RIDDLE OF THE
UNDERWORLD, in its Table of Contents.
Footnote 43:
A warning to any unsophisticated androgyne who may be moved to an
impersonation spree in a red-light district. It is necessary to go slow
and be ultra-cautious. Numerous androgynes have been murdered by
gangsters. Frank—Eunice, Angelo—Phyllis, and myself were exceptionally
fortunate. Every time an androgyne puts himself in the power of a
stranger gangster, it is at the risk of murder. Several times I myself
have been half-murdered. A poverty-stricken aspect and concealment of
one’s culture constitute the best protection. By no means show fight if
assaulted.
Footnote 44:
Just the day I retyped the above (Jan. 24, 1921) I read how a girl-boy
of eighteen committed suicide in New York City by jumping from a
thirty-five foot bridge upon railroad tracks. Adolescent androgynes are
continually putting an end to their lives because bitterly persecuted
merely on account of their bisexuality and most unfeelingly told by
their closest associates that they are deeply depraved, and because
prohibited by the leaders of thought from acquiring scientific knowledge
of their idiosyncrasy.
Footnote 45:
The reader might omit this chapter because thinking it not a propos. It
is given because describing an actual episode in the life of the sexual
cripple being depicted. It also paints the type of fast young bachelor
after whom the cultured ultra-androgynes of New York commonly “run.” To
avoid any chance of a suit for slander, I merely substitute the real
name of one of my own half-dozen New York favorites—the half-dozen who
will live forever in the sanctum sanctorum of my memory—that one
favorite who physically much resembled Phyllis’s “adopted son,” but
whose character was ideal. The real George Greenwood—of immaculate
beauty and charm, and unsurpassed friendliness to a sexual cripple like
myself. In the words of Phyllis, I am “continuously burning incense in
my heart to his memory.” I would wish to confer on him immortality.
Footnote 46:
At the time I knew him slightly, he was very bald and possessed a rather
“passe” countenance. He was nearly six feet tall, perfectly
proportioned, and had a negroid complexion, charcoal eyes, and the
blackest of curly hair—that is, what was left of it. He was apparently
of Spanish extraction. Only when he had his hat on was he still of
entrancing appearance.
Footnote 47:
In the July, 1921, number of a prominent American medical journal, I saw
a tirade against androgynes, whom its author declared merited no mercy,
but ought to be crushed as a social menace. The invective proved merely
that its physician-author clings to the sexual ethics of the Dark Ages,
and at the same time belongs to the mildly virile type. That type lacks
a superfluity of sexual vigor. It is inconceivable that a young man of
that type should be intimate with an androgyne except for a rich
reward—which has occurred when the individual androgyne was cut off from
all access to the ultra-sexed, toward whom alone he gravitates. The
mildly virile young man shudders violently at the very thought and is
confident—=a priori=, as it is only a traditional phantasy—that his
=vita sexualis=, health, and morals would be seriously undermined. I
concede, however, that such might be the case with the mildly virile
because possessing only a modicum of sexual vigor (perhaps, for example,
merely enough for relations with his lawful wife once a fortnight or so)
and because tending to be overconscientious. I concede that the mildly
virile’s morals would be damaged, simply because he fancies such
relations the unpardonable sin. If once in his youth overcome by the
offer of a “bonanza,” he would ever afterwards regret the experience and
feel deep guilt. As I myself in my youthful verdancy, he would cry out a
thousand times: “‘O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from
the body of this death!’” And because of his meagre sexual energy, he
might possibly feel ill effects physically. But that by no means proves
that the ultra-sexed would also feel them. And morally, the latter look
upon the experience as entirely natural and sinless—the same as the
eating of a piece of mince pie. Instead of ever regretting it, they look
back with satisfaction that they had the experience.
Mildly virile writers on sex forget that there exist tens of thousands
of men of far superior sexual energy. While they themselves, for
example, may care for the services of their legal wife as seldom as
twice a month, the tremendously virile “fellow” is not satisfied with
less than an opportunity every night, and is at the same time “the
husband of all women.” In my opinion, Philippics against the androgyne
have their basis only in prudery and bigotry.
Footnote 48:
See note beginning bottom page 254.
Footnote 49:
I had fully described this adventure in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN
ANDROGYNE, but the details were cut out by its editor. I append them
here because tending to show that the sparser the population of a
district, the greater the repugnance of civilized young roues to
androgynism and the rarer is the latter phenomenon per thousand males.
In other words: My conclusion from extensive travel and intimate
mingling, as an ultra-androgyne, with native adolescent roues in every
corner of the United States and Europe is that among civilized nations,
the frequency of male bisexuals per thousand inhabitants and their
tolerance by the full-fledged are in general in direct proportion to the
density of population.
I, a woman-soul, but reputedly a young man, was delegated to write up an
unusual affair transpiring in a Rocky Mountain wilderness. I was in a
caravan with fifty men of the roughest type, cowboys, miners, etc. All
were bachelors or grass-widowers. Day in and day out, they hardly talked
of anything but prostitutes, some of whom enlivened every mining or
lumbering camp of any permanence, although their rates were seven times
city prices and they laid away fortunes. Some of the decidedly lucky
prospectors, as well as occasional city-ites on hunting trips, were
always accompanied by their mistresses—the city-ites doubtless glad to
get away from “friend wife” for a few weeks.
I found the adolescent cowboys and miners of the Rockies the most
prejudiced against effeminate males of any of the hundreds of circles of
adolescent roues with which I have mingled as a girl-boy. The first
hour, when I had not compromised myself in any way, they began to heap
up insults, particularly taking pains to refer to me within my hearing
by the obscene term most often used by roughs for a girl-boy. (My own
age was then thirty-three, but my friends told me I looked to be only
twenty-five. I still possessed the “small-boy” aspect common among
ultra-androgynes.) I feared my forced sojourn with those who so despised
effeminacy would be intolerable.
But my plan to win their respect succeeded. I exhibited my credentials
as representative of a journal of national reputation. They never again
insulted me and I even became popular. The more sensual began to resort
to terms of endearment and embraces. But, while fascinated by these
attentions, I distrusted them to the extent of not disclosing my secret
desires. I knew that prudes occasionally murder bisexuals in cities. In
the wilds of the Rockies these same prudes (only so far as concerns
homosexuality) could so easily push me over a [Sidenote: _Murdering
Androgynes Not Now Necessary._] precipice after tempting me to a stroll,
and no one ever learn my fate. The tradition is wide spread that
bisexuals must be murdered. Perhaps the practice of murdering is akin to
that prevalent among some savage tribes of children killing their
parents as soon as the latter become too feeble to hunt and work. It was
racial economy to put out of the way those who could not contribute
their share to the food supply, as well as those impotent to procreate
children. But as civilized man no longer finds it necessary to the
continued life of the nation to knock in the head all citizens as they
reach the age of sixty, equally there is now no call for murdering (or
even chastising) individuals incapable of generation.
But sleeping in the same tent and continuously having to listen to
confessions of their amorous adventures, I became wrought up as rarely
in my life. Therefore after a week of continuous Platonic association
with the cowboy who seemed naturally the most high-minded and
trustworthy, I invited him for an evening’s stroll in the forest
primæval. He had been brought up on a Wyoming ranch, never been inside
of a church, never heard a word read out of the Bible, and could not
read nor write. He asserted he had once been a rough rider in Buffalo
Bill’s show, and my test of his descriptions of the surroundings of
Madison Square Garden in New York evidenced his truthfulness. I
worshipped the very soil on which this “Nature’s nobleman” trod. For he
was, in addition, the handsomest adolescent in the caravan. On our
stroll I confessed myself an “hermaphrodite,” using that inaccurate term
because it is known to every rough (though by them always pronounced
incorrectly). He would not have understood “androgyne.” Since he was
only a servant in the caravan, I offered a large bill. But much to my
surprise and almost to my death, he abruptly jilted me with an
unparalleled display of horror. But he promised to keep the incident
locked in a chamber of his brain, and events proved him true blue. My
desolate stroll in the bear-infested wilderness followed immediately.
If these cowboys and miners, as well as all other men, instead of having
been, from boyhood, fed on the most crime-provoking of falsehoods,
namely, that homosexuals (so called, though psychicly and often in part
physically belonging to the opposite sex) are monsters of depravity for
whom no punishment is too severe, had been taught that these sexual
cripples merit only compassion, I would myself have been spared those
hours of excruciating anguish in the forest, and hundreds of youthful
androgynes would not have committed suicide.
=Note to page 240.=—This comment so developed that I was compelled to
make it a footnote. The assignment to shore duty might indicate that Z’s
immediate superiors might have noticed that he was of soft disposition,
an earmark of [Sidenote: _Visit to Fort “Y” in 1921._] androgynism. An
androgyne acquaintance, though perfectly sound physically, was rejected
in the World War draft merely on account of his softspokenness and
generally “soft” mannerisms. Another young androgyne acquaintance
enlisted in the Hospital Corps during the war so as to be able to pass
all his time among idols. Moreover, androgynes long to serve as nurses
to wounded virile young men, as did Walt Whitman during the American War
of the Rebellion. Androgynes make the best nurses of youthful warriors
because they slavishly adore them. From an eyewitness I heard of a third
androgyne who was drafted in the World War and “bobtailed” out of the
army because discovered to be addicted to fellatio. From another
eyewitness I heard of a fourth androgyne who was similarly “bobtailed”,
and as a result of the indignities heaped upon him at the time,
immediately committed suicide. Of course those who heaped up the
indignities thought the sexual cripple wilfully depraved. From still
another eyewitness I heard of another drafted androgyne who, on the eve
of his first battle in France, ate the heads off matches so as to assure
getting back into the hospital while his virile “buddies” were valiantly
“going over the top.” Virility confers bravery.
At the date of writing, I still “pal” only with regular soldiers, but am
instinctively such an industrious worker that I go into any kind of
fellowship only about once a fortnight. I still look upon youthful
regular soldiers as magic demigods to whom I wish to enslave myself. Two
days before the present writing, I happened to take a walk to Fort Y,
which played a large part in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, and
which, from 1902 to 1905, I visited, in the role of female-impersonator,
one evening out of fourteen, and where I was acquainted with practically
every one of the four hundred men not above the grade of sergeant. That
of two days ago was only my second trip there in the past sixteen years.
Because it is inconveniently located for a visit. After sixteen years, I
happened to be recognized by one soldier who had stuck to that post and
risen to the rank of sergeant. He told me there were still only about
four at the fort who served there when I had the honor to be “the
daughter of the regiment.” He expressed his amazement at my being so
well preserved, saying I look twenty years younger than I am. He told me
that only four or five fairies had run after the men of that fort in the
past sixteen years. That small number is due to the remoteness of Fort Y
from the city. At two other forts formerly frequented by me as a
female-impersonator which are right in the city, androgyne cultivators
of the common soldiers are numerous. A man serving at one of these forts
told me that common soldiers often speak with one another about their
“fairies.” Whenever any one of the former appears with a new watch,
ring, etc., a common query of his “buddies” is: “Did your fairie give it
to [Sidenote: _Author’s Conversations with Opposites._] you?” Seven out
of ten common soldiers appear exceedingly glad to have a prosperous
young androgyne in their midst, particularly because he showers them
with gifts and entertainment. Only one out of ten is such a prude as to
walk away from the circle of which I have hundreds of times had the
privilege of being the star. Some of these prudes would murder an
androgyne but for fear of being punished.
Because of this remoteness of Fort Y, however, I had found there, during
the hey-day of my career as female-impersonator, a specially hearty
welcome and specially rich pickings.
(See “=Emotion=” in Part VIII.)
The sergeant I met two days ago—as common soldiers in general—was very
much interested to hear the experiences of an androgyne as I narrated my
life-story for the sixteen years since I talked with him. I habitually
tell soldier associates the complete story of my life, and all who stay
in the circle to listen appear very glad for the chat. Of course I never
use any indecent language, although dealing frankly with sex questions.
I am a lecturer on sexology to them. Moreover, within three minutes
after becoming acquainted with a common soldier, I sometimes ask him, if
he is beyond twenty-five, if he is married. For I do not care to chat
with married men. I also commonly ask why he never married. I ask him to
enlighten me as to his feelings toward the gentle sex, and as to what
transpires when he and a girl are out for an evening’s stroll on a rural
road. They are very frank in telling me their outlook on life. If there
is no opportunity for assault and robbery (A large proportion of the
uncultured thinking the first thing of robbing a stranger androgyne, if
not of “beating him up”) I have, to strange young soldiers, confessed
myself an androgyne within three minutes after we exchanged our first
words, because their learning that fact proves, in general, the
strongest kind of a drawing card.
The sergeant of two days ago wanted to make a date with me. I absolutely
turned my back on such a proposition, chiefly on account of the dread of
the physical and mental debility always supervening the following day.
He urged me to resume my visits to Fort Y, to flaunt myself before all
the soldiers as female-impersonator, as sixteen years before. I replied
that I was now too old and too feeble. While sixteen years before I
never left the vicinity of the post without dalliance with intimates,
two days ago I did not entertain the least idea of, and hardly any wish
for, such relations. Age has sobered me. “Intimates” I just wrote—some
of whom, however, I had never laid eyes on until three minutes before.
Providence gave me this wealth of one kind to counterbalance the almost
unparalleled anguish I have been called upon to suffer because of my
fate of being a sorely persecuted androgyne.
[Sidenote: _Author’s Third “Adopted Son.”_]
Lest I should be misjudged (the reader will any way judge me the warmest
body that ever breathed, as intimates have told me) I further confess
that during the year ending March, 1921, I visited at another fort about
once a fortnight a 20-year-old private whom I planned to adopt (not
legally) as son to live with me the rest of my life. I previously looked
over, at ball games at the post, the entire common-soldier personnel of
several hundred in order to pick out one of the three or four
handsomest. Even at my first visit, one or two of the privates with whom
I exchanged words evidently took me for an androgyne looking for a
sweetheart, and did their best to be “the lucky dog.” But I passed the
poor fellows by until I could get intimately acquainted with one of the
three or four pre-eminent Adonises. I later ascertained that the one
selected—greatly to his joy and to the envy of numerous
“buddies”—excelled in disposition and character as much as in good
looks. I also learned he had been brought up in the back woods and had
never attended school a single day, although he had learned to read and
write a little after entering the army. After I had known him intimately
for nine months, his enlistment expired. Only now I disclosed my true
name and station and took him to live in my own home, where I had been
all by myself, doing my own housework like a woman. Although I had
loaded him with gifts, this my “third adopted son” took French leave
after only three days’ residence with me. His “buddies” told me he had
gone away to marry the girl with whom I had known he had been
corresponding.
Having lost him, I immediately started in to cultivate at the same
barracks its pre-eminent Adonis, and almost its pre-eminent Hercules,
with a view to his non-legal adoption to live with me as son the rest of
my life after a nine-months apprenticeship during which he would not
know my real name, station in life, or place of residence. It is easy to
conceal these things from common soldiers. They are not inquisitive.
They believe my misrepresentations of myself—necessary because
androgynes are the favorite victims of blackmailers. But after a month,
this latest favorite committed theft and I never saw him again. His
“buddies” told me that he had stolen two blankets, “=government
property=,” and was therefore sentenced to two years in military prison.
If I am correctly informed, court martials often impose on an enlisted
man caught in a misdemeanor a prison sentence several times as lengthy
as would a civil court. I take this opportunity to enter a plea for
better treatment of common soldiers, who have been my “pals” for a
quarter of a century—particularly for punishments by court martial no
more severe than by civil courts. Sometimes I have thought that when an
uneducated young man enlists to defend his country as a common soldier,
he thereby forfeits all rights of citizenship and all privileges
guaranteed by the [Sidenote: _An Adonis or a Hercules?_] American
constitution. The cowboys of the Rockies have mingled with common
soldiers because of the numerous forts scattered throughout the “Indian
country.” I asked one with whom I was well acquainted why he did not
serve a few years in the army. His words were: “Do you think I want to
be a slave?” But the lot of the common soldier has steadily improved
during my association with him, excepting during our war with Germany.
In 1921, he is better treated by his officers than ever before.
The context of this footnote moves me to reflect: Do I prefer an Adonis
or a Hercules? I incline to the latter slightly. My first “adopted son”
(for nine years, as described in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE) was
an almost unmatched Hercules and at the same time an almost unmatched
Adonis. He was one young man out of ten thousand. My second “adopted
son” (for only a half-year, as described in same work) was neither a
Hercules nor an Adonis. Not more than one out of twenty adolescents can
qualify under either of these physically superior types, and I must
confess that these types are very much lacking in mental acumen. Bright
intellects nearly always go hand in hand with poor physical development.
My second “adopted son” (while only tolerably good-looking) commanded my
adoration because of his beautiful disposition and extreme passion for
myself. My third prospective “adopted son” was a pre-eminent Adonis, and
a fair Hercules.
There exist other attractive qualities in males that knit females to
them. The chief is intellectual brilliance. That to me has always been,
sexually considered, decidedly detractive—because I am myself of the
intellectual type. As a rule, only opposites attract.
Footnote 50:
Attempt at poetical expression of experiences described in prose on page
255 following.
Footnote 51:
For prose description of the personality that I have here attempted to
depict poetically, see page 114 following.
Footnote 52:
See page 103 following.
Footnote 53:
See =THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS=, page 153. Second stanza is a free
translation from Beranger. For original, see =AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN
ANDROGYNE=, page viii.
Footnote 54:
Seemingly natural language of “pup love”, the girl repeating the former
a hundred times in five minutes, and the adolescent the latter. Both
also cry these words simultaneously while gazing into each other’s eyes.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. P. 21, changed “because never permitted to learn of their existence”
to “because they were never permitted to learn of their existence”.
2. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
3. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The female-impersonators : A sequel to the autobiography of an androgyne and an account of some of the author's experiences during his six years' career as instinctive female-impersonator in new york's underworld; together with the life stories of androgyne associates and an outline of his subsequently acquired knowledge of kindred phenomena of human character and psychology" ***
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