Part Five:
Angelo—Phyllis
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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 heyday 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 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. "Hisher" 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.]
In 1895, Angelo-Phyllis was a plump little body looking to be a decade younger than "his-her" thirtythree, and of decidedly brunette, Mediterranean type.
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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 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-impersonationsprees. 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, 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. 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?[1]
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 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, guttersnipes, 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 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-andout 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.[2]
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 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 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 wierdly 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 good-by 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.
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.[3] 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 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, un-earthly 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.
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 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 proteges 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 harebrained, 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 demigod? 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 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.
III. George Greenwood.[4]
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.[5]
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 un-dreamed 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.
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,
Defective copy of Michelangelo's Adam in Sistene Chapel, Rome: An Androgyne's Conception of the Ideal Adolescent
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 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 fullfledged young fellow is restless without one.
Of course I could have another hermaphrodites 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 hail; 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 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?[6] The sexually full-fledged cannot get 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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 ray heart to his memory." I would wish to confer on him immortality.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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 under-mined. 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 npardonable 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 ultrasexed 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.