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!”