evenings, and during our stay in the large cities, spent two or three a
week with beaux that I came across. I had considerable conversational
ability in four foreign languages. In Paris I generally spent my
evenings with the adolescent porters of the Gare St. Lazare, and in
Berlin with soldiers whom I met in the Tiergarten. Because of
indiscretions, I came near being arrested in Berlin and in Naples. In
only one instance in Europe was an attempt made to extort money from me,
and I yielded rather than get into trouble.
My flirtations in Europe were uneventful. I had to be far more cautious
there for fear of getting into trouble, and associate with my beaux clad
as a prosperous citizen. As they necessarily knew that I was a person of
attainments much higher than the average, I was restrained from going
far in impersonation of a young woman or a baby. I found that throughout
the large cities, fairies were as well known to the ultra-virile
adolescents as in New York, and the latter were equally susceptible to
the advances of the former.
In my unusually wide travels in America, I have never been accosted by a
pervert or an invert. But during my five months’ sojourn in Europe, I
was one evening accosted in one of the great capitals by a fairie
sixteen years of age, and in another I was accosted in a park by an
urning of twenty-six (that is, a man who craved mutual onanism). My
impression is that the inhabitants of the large cities of Europe are
more sex-mad than those of American cities of similar size. In one of
the great capitals (which I do not name out of charity) inversion and
perversion were frightful—incomparably more open, at least, than in New
York. It was my impression that there is more evanescent
homosexuality—due to lack of opportunities with the opposite sex—than in
America. Apparently the denser the population, the more widely extended
is homosexuality.
[Sidenote: _Sexual Impressions of Europe._]
In 1899 I was attracted by the German and the Dutch soldiers, but
incomparably less than by the American soldier. They did not appear to
be as powerfully built or as handsome, nor as wild and reckless. Their
uniforms impressed me as far less fascinating. I was not at all
attracted by the French soldiers, because I did not like their uniform,
particularly the red baggy trousers, and because facial hirsute
appendages are decidedly abhorrent to me. Likewise the British, Swiss,
and Italian uniforms impressed me as detracting from the masculinity of
the wearer instead of powerfully contributing to it, as the American
uniform. The German, Dutch, and particularly the American soldiers were
the only ones that came up to my idea of demigods.
On a sojourn in the Old World in 1911, I found myself admiring the
Moroccan, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian soldiers to about the same
degree as I have always admired the American. Indeed the Russians
impressed me as the most bewitching in the world, because they are the
most gigantic and the most savage-looking. I now came also to find the
British and the Italian uniforms rather attractive, but liked the French
and Swiss no better than before. In this later lengthy sojourn, I did
not once seek a beau, and had only feeble desires to do so, whereas
twelve years before I had a fierce, irresistible, obsession to be with
them as much as possible. But most of all, I was restrained by the
presence of my employer, who left me no good opportunity to seek other
company.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _First Half of Open Career Ends._]
After holding my position as private secretary during my middle twenties
for over two years, I was compelled to resign because a tradesman’s
driver who frequently delivered goods at the house of my employer
chanced to identify me while two ruffians were demanding blackmail on
the Bowery. I was denounced to the truck-driver as a ——. Several years
afterward I learned that knowledge of the incident probably never
reached my employer.
At this point in my life I wrote the present autobiography down to the
year arrived at (1899), having previously kept copious diaries.
The scene of the last six years of my open career as a fairie, still to
be described, lay in the neighborhood of—and in large part on—the
military reservations in the suburbs. Providence granted me the
fulfillment of a fond dream of years before—to be a soldiers’ mignon. I
now decided to devote exclusively to young Mars the remainder of my
youth—for with me the period of youth continued abnormally long, at
least until my early thirties. In 1899, at the age of twenty-five, I
successfully, as Jennie June, passed for twenty. At the close of my open
career, when I was thirty-one, I passed for twenty-four. As already
remarked, business associates who have not had the least suspicion of my
being an invert—chiefly because they did not know of the existence of
such people—have declared even down to my middle forties that I have not
ceased to be remarkably childlike both physically and psychically. If I
had had the physique and psychical constitution of the ordinary man, the
career I am outlining would have been impossible. But Nature has given
the fairie a physique and mentality _sui generis_.
[Sidenote: _Year 1899—I Become Deliciæ Militum._]
For a passive invert to make captives of ultra-virile adolescents,
he must be youthful, with facial hair eradicated or clean-shaven,
of somewhat feminine physique, looks, and manners, a good
female-impersonator, and an expert coquette. Many inverts lack
these qualities that are necessary to insure a successful career
as a fairie, and the vast majority have no desires along this
line. Some inverts, as well as some females, seem to be
predestined by Nature for the profession of fille de joie.
On the other hand, the professional fairie of the lowest class of public
house could not have had the long career around the forts that I had
because the soldiers would not have tolerated the presence there of such
a depraved being. The second half of my open career was possible because
while having the coquetry and craze for venery of the depraved fairie, I
had also the refinement, outward modesty, and general rectitude which
are to be expected in an androgyne brought up as a puritan and graduated
at a university. I repeat that throughout my career as a fairie—apart
from the coquetry and venery just named—I lived up to the highest
ethical standards, and never knowingly inflicted the least detriment on
a single soul.
[Sidenote: _Paragon of Morality Outside Sexual._]
More than once before the opening of this second half of my open career,
I had thought that my period of flirtation was at an end. Particularly
on account of my age, having now entered my twenty-sixth year, I had
thought no more romantic adventures could be mine. But it turned out
that these six years, even the last of them, when I was thirty-one, were
full of adventures as romantic as I had ever had.
When I dedicated myself to the career of a soldiers’ mignon, I was well
aware that these men are particularly subject to venereal disease—and I
ultimately contracted anal and buccal venereal warts, syphilis, and
gonorrhea from them, whereas during the first half of my career, I had
had close to 700 liaisons with civilian adolescents without contracting
any disease so far as I knew. But I gladly assumed this greatly
increased risk because of the ultra-virility and general terribleness of
the class in question. This terribleness is applicable only to the
professional common soldier when the nation is at peace.
I asked an unusually attractive artilleryman whom I met on the Bowery if
I might visit him at his barracks, and one evening made the journey. I
was conducted to his squad-room, but he was not in. I found myself in
what was to me a sensual paradise containing about a dozen youthful
soldiers busy at different things. I could not think of departing even
though my friend was out. I began to talk effeminately and babyishly. I
was immediately hailed as a fairie, and shown to a seat on a bunk,
having around me the arms of two soldiers, with several others sitting
or lying on the same bunk and caressing me. It was almost the same as if
a maiden had suddenly appeared in their midst. I out-womaned woman for
their entertainment and because I was fascinated.
[Sidenote: _Debut at Fort X._]
I was so enthusiastically received that I made the decision already
described, and for the period of a little more than two years visited
this military reservation one evening a week, devoting all the rest of
my time to scholarly pursuits.
For some weeks I enjoyed the rare pleasure of association with my idols
in a squad-room or in a non-commissioned officer’s private room, and had
the run of all the other rooms, since practically everybody looked upon
me the same as on an unoffending tabby-cat that might invade their
quarters. I was even put to bed in the barracks as tenderly as a mother
puts her babe in its cradle.
I have always shrunk with horror from handling the weapons of warfare
myself, but they had a wonderful fascination for me when in the hands of
soldiers, or when seen stacked in the squad-rooms.
A typical evening in a squad-room: On my entering, the soldiers shout
goodnaturedly: “Hello Jennie, old girl!”
“Hello all you big braves!”
The rumor soon spreads to other squad-rooms that “Jennie June” is making
a visit, and a score or more soon gather about me. I always came loaded
down with cigarettes and other things that soldiers are fond of, except
intoxicants. One youthful soldier after another rolls back his sleeves
and displays tattooed figures for me to rave over: “That proves you are
completely masculine, and I worship you for having it done.” Others
double back their right arms and let me feel of their biceps: “I call
you ‘Strength!’ I call you ‘Power!’ I call you a man of iron! Mighty man
of war! Mighty man of valor! Mighty man of renown!”
[Sidenote: _An Evening in a Squad-Room._]
Later one who meets me for the first time asks: “Do you call yourself a
girl? In all my life I never vidi puellam cum peni!”
“I know I am only part girl. I have a girl’s mind and breasts and my
body otherwise is much like a girl’s.”
“If you don’t believe Jennie is a girl, just feel of her breasts.”
Several stick their hands into my bosom. “He’s got a girl’s breasts all
right.”
They ask me to sing, listen attentively, and then remark: “That is a
high tenor. It has an effect on the voice all right.”
“Are you and I of the same sex?” I ask, taking pleasure in our physical
and psychical contrasts.
“No, Jennie, you are a baby, and we are the big, big braves.”
My presence would inspire them to an evening of innocent frolicking, and
they would play pranks on me, for example, dancing around the room
shrieking like wild Indians, brandishing their swords, and banging them
on the floor. I would respond to their pranks in the manner they were
looking for. They thought that I had only the mental capacity of a
girl-boy weakling, as I did not compose my own songs until after more
than two years of association with them.
[Sidenote: _Hecatontandry._]
In the barracks I was always outwardly modest and frowned on decidedly
improper advances, but my venery in private soon set a minority against
me so that entrance to the barracks was forbidden. I had a craze for
hecatontandry, and achieved it. In a letter I wrote: “You know by that
act [fellatio], you and I are bound together in a new and close relation
of friendship, in a sort of wedlock. We stand henceforth forever in the
relation of husband and wife, whether you will or not. Therefore please
always remember me as more nearly related to you, more completely a part
of your life and being, than your soldier comrades.”
In summer I would linger after retreat near the gate of the fort to
watch the soldiers start out to seek their evening’s recreation. A
hundred would pass, and nearly every one call out a pleasant greeting:
“Hello sweetheart!” “Hello little wife!” I would reply: “Hello you
dare-devil!” “Hello you dark-eyed beauty!” etc.
I was occasionally robbed or blackmailed by evil-minded ones, and was
several times handed over to the police by such as misunderstood me. But
the police always refused to place me under arrest, and even acted as a
bodyguard against the very few soldiers who loathed an effeminate male
and sought to inflict pain. My conduct in public was always above
reproach, although I have been forced at night on a public road by
half-intoxicated adolescents who happened to run across me. Discovery in
the bushes by pedestrians only thirty feet away would have placed me in
peril of long imprisonment. On one occasion the two soldiers had
threatened to cut my throat if I made a sound, and they themselves did
not stir from their positions (Simul fellatio atque pædicatio).
[Sidenote: _Ethics of My Conduct._]
As to the ethics of my conduct in the vicinity of the barracks, it was
not immoral. The ordinary woman has only one lord, to whom she is bound
“until death do part.” My lot was to have practically at one time a
hundred, who were not forcibly and permanently linked up with me. There
were not the reasons for monandry and for permanency that exist in the
former case. As to race-suicide, my associates were legally bound not to
rear families. From the standpoint of their health, relations with me
were safer than with the ordinary purveyors. Furthermore, they told me
that no exhaustion supervened the next day, as in my own case. I was not
bent primarily on coition, but on social intercourse tinged with
flirtation. I never solicited. It was not necessary, as every one knew
me.
Over two years now went by of an existence rendered very delectable by
reason of association with young Mars one evening a week, all the rest
of my time, as usual, being devoted to scholarly pursuits. I was then
called upon to say good-by—as I feared, forever—to my much coveted
position of pet of a fort, which I was in large measure. Spermatorrhea,
from which I had suffered acutely since the age of sixteen, had come to
a crisis. For the past two years, while looking to be in good health, I
had suffered intensely from mental and physical prostration, due almost
entirely to ejaculations during sleep but in small part to nervous shock
following fellatio.
[Sidenote: _Driven to a Stripling._]
Neurasthenia now confined me for six months to the village home of my
parents. The “procreative” instinct gave me no rest, just as a drug
fiend has none when denied his anodyne. Night after night I roamed the
streets in the factory section. On two occasions I was successful. On a
third I was crazed by enforced abstinence for over a month. I
encountered a youth just under puberty. I clandestinely ascertained that
he did not know me, did not attend the same church, and was employed in
a part of the village where he was not likely to run across me. I was a
shoemaker, just arrived in the village looking for work. I was lonely
and languishing for company. A burden was oppressing me and I needed a
confidant. Would he be my confidant? Would he promise to keep strictly
to himself what I was about to tell? Had he heard of hermaphrodites?[5]
I was one.
Footnote 5:
As this term is commonly a part of the vocabulary of laboring men, I
sometimes used it in reference to myself, as they would not have
understood the proper term. I am of course not an hermaphrodite in the
present signification of that term.
I found that to permit fellatio was decidedly against his tastes, and
plead earnestly that he would show me compassion, at the same time
offering money. His final answer was: “I was not brought up that way. I
would never permit it. I am a Christian.”
Fearing he would raise an alarm, and I would be arrested and my family
disgraced, I sprinted away. After a few seconds I looked back to see
whether I was followed. My terror produced the hallucination of a mob. I
sprinted around corner after corner and did not rest until some distance
outside the village, where I found a hiding place and moaned and
complained to my Creator over my lot.
[Sidenote: _Spermatorrhea._]
I was now afraid to show myself in the village, and unutterably downcast
at being the victim of an obsession which led me to commit what are
commonly regarded as revolting crimes. From this consideration, and also
because of the wrecking of my health through emissions during sleep, I
decided on immediate castration. Minor motives were that I would prefer
to possess one less mark of the male, and that I thought the facial hair
cells would cease to function and I thus be rid of my most detested and
most troublesome badge of masculinity.
From the age of seventeen to nineteen, on the day following an
ejaculation during sleep, I would be feeble, very forgetful, and would
stammer. From nineteen on, after I had begun to yield to instinct, the
ill effects were much less marked until during my twenty-eighth year—the
point of time at which this autobiography has arrived—when my eyes were
dim for one or two days following, my hearing was somewhat disarranged,
and my heart abnormal in its action. During this period of eleven years,
various remedies prescribed by physicians were without effect. I
happened to be a globe-trotter, and thereby discovered that travelling,
particularly sea voyages, much diminished the ejaculations. It is
necessary here to remind the reader that both solitary and mutual
onanism were always entirely unknown to me, and that in my sexual life,
my pudenda were practically non-existent.
[Sidenote: _Castrated at Twenty-Seven._]
Castration, by removing the exhausting effects of emissions, gave me a
new lease on life. I also believe it saved to me my sight and hearing.
But with the testicles I lost a very large part of my physical strength.
I was a semi-invalid for five years following. For example, the upper
limit of my afternoon walks declined from ten to three miles. But my
debility did not affect my looks or interfere seriously with the
practice of my profession. If, on days when I felt tolerably vigorous, I
stirred about uncommonly, I would be prostrated for from two to seven
days following. It appeared as if the muscular waste was not eliminated
from the blood as before castration, but remained in my system as a
poison, rendering me dazed, taking the edge off my intellect, and
enervating my body. I could spare my mental faculties for use in my
profession only by leading a very quiet life, slow and limited in
physical movement.
But beginning about five years after castration and continuing for ten
years, I was physically as vigorous as before. Apparently my system
found some other way of accomplishing the alteration in the blood
usually the work of the testicles. Simultaneously with this return of my
strength, the increase in adipose tissue following castration in large
part disappeared. For ten years I remained in this physical condition,
when suddenly, within about six weeks, adipose tissue rapidly increased
and has rendered my figure for two years, down to the date of writing
(1918), that “of a fat frau in the last stages of pregnancy,” to quote
the words of business associates. I simultaneously returned to the low
degree of physical strength obtaining immediately after castration.
[Sidenote: _Effects of Castration._]
The following is my weight, stripped, at various ages; 20–25, 110
pounds; at castration at 27, 128; 29–32, 143; 32–42, 133; two years
following (1916–1918), 160. After castration it required two years to
rise gradually from 128 to 143. My obesity is entirely due to
castration, as slenderness is universal in my family.
After castration, ejaculations during sleep gradually declined in
frequency, but continued, with the emission of a sticky fluid of the
appearance of semen, for about nine months. But dreams of
ejaculations—that is, a sort of pseudo-ejaculations—occurred about once
a fortnight for several years, and about once in three months as late as
fourteen years after castration. I would be dreaming of fellatio, and
seemed to feel the muscular contractions that take place during
ejaculation. Awakening in alarm, it seemed that I must find some fluid,
but did not.
Even up to more than three years after castration, I occasionally during
fellatio experienced the spasm, when I could distinctly feel the
contractions ductus ejaculatorii, as if to push along the semen,
although nothing would exude. At those times I would utter a spasmodic
groan.
Fourteen years after castration, when I had not experienced an emission
for six years, I was with a companion who held the palm for amativeness
among all that I had known. Amplexus ejus fervidi induxerunt in me
emissionem copiosam. I immediately dismissed him because of my extreme
exhaustion, and expected to be prostrated the following day, as before
castration, but found myself with vigor of mind and body unimpaired.
[Sidenote: _Craze for Fellatio Diminishes._]
Down to seventeen years after castration, there has been no effect on my
facial hair. Possibly it has thinned and made more tenuous the hair on
trunk and limbs. The consequent deposit of adipose tissue has increased
the prominence of my breasts, but before castration these were almost as
large as in some women. The operation greatly increased the deleterious
effect of fellatio on my health. One indulgence a week was more
detrimental than a score a week during my “low-class fairie” period. If
I had now been as intemperate as then, I believe I would have become
violently insane.
Not until two years after castration was there perceptible a diminution
in my craze for fellatio. It was probably the result of the operation,
but possibly due to satiety or to age (my thirtieth year). What probably
contributed most to my moderation after reaching the age of thirty was
the greatly increased deleterious effect of fellatio. I shrank from the
penalty of from two to five days of semi-prostration placed by Nature on
a half hour’s fellatio. On the other hand, amplexus sine fellatione had
no ill effects.
As to the effect of castration on my mental faculties, I am of the
opinion—seventeen years after the operation—that there has been no
effect either good or bad. I am convinced, however, that the congenital
unusually sharp edge of my intellect has been very much dulled
permanently by the years of excessive emissions during sleep. But I am
_not_ convinced that my career as a fairie has contributed. Subsequently
to the age of twenty-three I have been a very poor listener, unable to
focus my attention, particularly on conversation. Much goes into one ear
and out the other notwithstanding my best efforts at attention. It is a
species of mental deafness. I hear the words distinctly but cannot grasp
their significance. The only other considerable diminution of my
youthful keenness of mind is my slowness since passing the age of
twenty-five in unravelling a problem, and in arriving at a decision on
any matter. For example, as a student, I could see through a
mathematical problem almost as “quick as a flash.” More and more as I
have grown older I am very dense in mathematical reasoning.
[Sidenote: _Effect on Mental Faculties._]
To sum up seventeen years after castration—I have always been of the
opinion that it was the only thing to have done. But on account of even
the slight risk attached to the operation, and particularly the
resultant diminution of physical vigor, I would not advise that other
inverts be castrated unless they suffer seriously from spermatorrhea.
* * * * *
On my trip to New York in order to be castrated, I had my first
opportunity in five months to go on a female-impersonation spree. On the
Bowery I met two youthful artillerymen. On our parting they gave me
their names and invited me to call at their barracks, which, to obviate
notoriety, I will refer to as “Ft. Y.” I will likewise hereafter refer
to my first military stamping ground as “Ft. X.”
[Sidenote: _Sample Letter._]
Two months after castration I resumed my vocation and residence in New
York, and my first care was to dispatch the following:
O my adored artilleryman,