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!”