Most Marred._] in all my life have I seen such a swollen and discolored
face; with one exception, and that exception died a few days later as a
result of his terrible blows in the face. I told my landlady I had been
in a fight defending a woman from her drunken husband. I telephoned my
office that I was _slightly_ indisposed. Thus emphasized so no business
associate would call.[34]
After two weeks, when my face had become somewhat presentable, I
ventured to the office still retaining only a black eye. “In my room in
the dark, I struck the edge of the eye-socket on a chair spindle.” I
doubt whether all believed me, but none proved so impolite as to ask
embarrassing questions.[35]
* * * * *
But HARVEY GREEN! I here address you in case your eyes should ever fall
on these lines. I shall remember you to my dying day as occupying third
or fourth place among the hundreds of hero-boys with whom Providence
permitted me to commune. I never [Sidenote: _Apostrophe to the Supreme
Man._] met your equal in strength and muscle. Whenever I think of you,
the words, SUPREME MAN, come into my mind. If I ever run across and
recognize you after the lapse of more than a quarter of a century, I
shall merely step up behind—where your eyes can not recognize me—and
call: “SUPREME MAN!” “SUPREME MAN!” Then, without yet seeing me, you
will recognize “Ralph” to be behind you; because no one else has
probably thought to call you “Supreme Man”; because no one else could
ever have worshipped you as I!
Poor deluded youth that you were in 1895! I almost weep whenever I
reflect what you have missed in life through your poor judgment in
robbing, and even aiming to murder, your would-be benefactor. For a few
dollars worth of trinkets and for the satisfaction of torturing
effeminacy, you turned your back on benefits to which could be
attributed a money value of at least ten thousand dollars. But I freely
forgive. Like the soldiers who crucified the world’s Savior, you did not
know what you were doing.
[Sidenote: _The Fairie Boy._]
V. Evenings at Paresis Hall.
During the last decade of the nineteenth century, the headquarters for
avocational female-impersonators of the upper and middle classes was
“Paresis Hall,” on Fourth Avenue several blocks south of Fourteenth
Street. In front was a modest bar-room; behind, a small beer-garden. The
two floors above were divided into small rooms for rent. In 1921 I
visited the site, as well as that of the “Hotel” Comfort (the two Rialto
resorts with which I was most intimately identified) in order to take
photographs for publication in this book, but found both structures
supplanted.
Paresis Hall bore almost the worst reputation of any resort of New
York’s Underworld. Preachers in New York pulpits of the decade would
thunder Philippics against the “Hall,” referring to it in bated breath
as “Sodom!” They were laboring under a fundamental misapprehension. But
even while I was an habitué, the church and the press carried on such a
war against the resort that the “not-care-a-damn” politicians who ruled
little old New York had finally to stage a spectacular raid. After this,
the resort, though continuing in business (because of political
influence), turned the cold shoulder on androgynes and tolerated the
presence of none in feminine garb.
But there existed little justification for the police’s “jumping on” the
“Hall” as a sop to puritan sentiment. Culturally and ethically, its
distinctive clientele ranked high. Their only offence—but such
[Sidenote: _Is Bisexuality the Worst of Crimes?_] a grave one as to
cause sexually full-fledged Pharisees to lift up their own rotten hands
in holy horror—was, as indicated, female-impersonation during their
evenings at the resort. A psychological and not an ethical phenomenon!
For ethically the “Hall’s” distinctive clientele were congenital
goody-goodies, incapable (by disposition) of ever inflicting the least
detriment on a single soul. They were of the type in the United States,
by every-day associates totally ignorant of the secret sexual practices
of Nature’s step-children, denominated “innocents;” and in France,
“little Jesuses” even though in that country their sexual character is
an open book, since there the sexual appetite is regarded as no more
shameworthy than the alimentary. But the “Hall’s” distinctive clientele
were bitterly hated, and finally scattered by the police, merely because
of their congenital bisexuality. The sexually full-fledged were crying
for blood (of innocents), as did the “unco’ good” in the days of
witch-burning. Bisexuals must be crushed—right or wrong! The subject
does not permit investigation! The fact that it is race suicide
justifies the denial of all mercy! Let Juggernaut’s car crush out their
lives!
It was Nathan’s parable of the ewe lamb all over again. (Second Book of
Samuel, chapter 12.) The full-fledged had innumerable opportunities for
the satisfaction of their instincts. Androgynes had only “the Hall” with
the exception of three or four slum resorts frequented by only the
lowest class of bisexuals who had never known anything better than slum
life.
Why deprive cultured androgynes of their solitary rendezvous in the New
York metropolitan district and [Sidenote: _Homosexuals No Worse Than
Heterosexuals._] give _carte blanche_ to the thousands of similar
heterosexual resorts?
Paresis Hall was as innocuous as any sex resort. Its existence really
brought not the least detriment to any one or to the social body as a
whole. More than that: It was a necessary safety-valve to the social
body. It is not in the power of every adult to settle down for life in
the monogamous and monandrous love-nest ordained for all by our leaders
of thought. For example: The existence of Paresis Hall was due chiefly
to the fact that in about one out of every one-hundred-and-fifty
presumed males, the internal testicular secretion has failed to be of
the right consistency.
While in this book I use the resort’s popular name, androgyne habitués
always abhorred it, saying simply “the Hall.” The full nickname arose in
part because the numerous full-fledged male visitors—it was one of the
“sights” for out-of-towners who hired a guide to take them through New
York’s Underworld—thought the bisexuals, who were its main feature, must
be insane in stooping to female-impersonation. They understood “paresis”
to be the general medical term for “insanity.” The name also in part
arose because in those days even the medical profession were obsessed
with the superstition that a virile man’s association with an androgyne
induced paresis in the former, it not yet having been discovered that
this type of insanity is a rare aftermath of syphilis.
By means of an introduction of the reader to several androgyne
patrons of Paresis Hall, I aim to demonstrate that instinctive
female-impersonation has no relation to brain lesions, dementia
præcox, or other psychic disease. The prevalent diagnosis, by
physicians, [Sidenote: _Cause of Androgynism._] of androgynism as
insanity is as rational as for a male alienist to pronounce all
women insane because their psyche differs radically from his own. As
already stated, androgynism is a mere matter of arrested
development, due to imperfect internal testicular secretion, in the
natural sex differentiation that begins in the early fœtus and ends
at puberty. This arrest has for its result an adult _homo_ more or
less bisexual—a sexual intermediate, whose existence the bigotry of
the leaders of thought has hitherto prevented their recognizing.
At the university, the student is taught all about the anatomy of the
frog, but the prevalent view among the leaders of thought that
everything connected with sex is taboo has prevented even the
_professors_ of physiology from investigating androgynism, which touches
the social body so intimately. They have turned their backs because “the
subject leaves a bad taste in the mouth!”
You milk-and-water hypocrites! Is it nothing to you that innocent
androgynes are pining in prison an aggregate of thousands of years, and
being continually murdered by prudes, like Harvey Green, because you
have taught them that no punishment is too bad for so-called
“homosexuality”? For prudery is common to some ultra-criminals and to
the leaders of thought.[36] In the sight of God, you latter, when
deliberately refusing to hearken to the wailing of bitterly persecuted
[Sidenote: _Leaders of Thought Are Murderers._] androgynes, are morally
on a par with Harvey Green and the murderers of X, Y, and “Jimmie Q”,
the latter being three bisexuals whose cases are outlined at the close
of this volume.
Paresis Hall was never my own headquarters. I visited it only now and
then. I had too early become wedded to the “Hotel” Comfort. Moreover, I
wandered more widely, and in some respects flaunted my androgynism to a
greater extent, than any other female-impersonator of my day. I took
greater chances than any other, except in the appearing in public places
in feminine apparel, but was never arrested in the Rialto because always
careful never to render myself liable. Never for a moment did I forget
the possibility of being arrested. I was even hypersensitive in this
matter. A common dream was that of being arrested. But this
hypersensitiveness probably saved me, since others of my type were
continuously being arrested and sent to the penitentiary. But the
cultured androgyne is almost never caught by the police. Only those of
poor mentality.
On one of my earliest visits to Paresis Hall—about January, 1895—I
seated myself alone at one of the tables. I had only recently learned
that it was the androgyne headquarters—or “fairie” as it was called at
the time. Since Nature had consigned me to that class, I was anxious to
meet as many examples as possible. As I took my seat, I did not
recognize a single acquaintance among the several score young bloods,
soubrettes, and androgynes chatting and drinking in the beer-garden.
In a few minutes, three short, smooth-faced young men approached and
introduced themselves as Roland [Sidenote: _Earmarks of Androgynism._]
Reeves, Manon Lescaut, and Prince Pansy—aliases, because few refined
androgynes would be so rash as to betray their legal name in the
Underworld. Not alone from their names, but also from their loud
apparel, the timbre of their voices, their frail physique, and their
feminesque mannerisms, I discerned they were androgynes. Indeed
effeminacy stuck out all over Prince Pansy. Manon Lescaut’s only
conspicuous anatomical feminesqueness was extraordinary breadth of hips.
While Reeves’ trunk and legs were not so feminine, he excelled in
womanly features, with such marine-blue eyes and pink-peony cheeks as
any beholder regretted should be wasted on a member (?) of the sterner
sex. Moreover, Reeves alone, of the two score ultra-androgynes that I at
different times met at Paresis Hall, was naturally beardless.
While Roland, Manon, and the “Prince” looked to be between twenty and
twenty-five, I later ascertained the first mentioned was thirty-seven.
As already observed, perennial youth is an earmark of ultra-androgynism.
Roland was chief speaker. The essence of his remarks was something like
the following: “Mr. Werther—or Jennie June, as doubtless you prefer to
be addressed—I have seen you at the Hotel Comfort, but you were always
engaged. A score of us have formed a little club, the CERCLE
HERMAPHRODITOS. For we need to unite for defense against the world’s
bitter persecution of bisexuals. We care to admit only extreme
types—such as like to doll themselves up in feminine finery. We
sympathize with, but do not care to be intimate with, the mild types,
some of whom you [Sidenote: _The Cercle Hermaphroditos._] see here
to-night even wearing a disgusting beard! Of course they do not wear it
out of liking. They merely consider it a lesser evil than the horrible
razor or excruciating wax mask.
“We ourselves are in the detested trousers because having only just
arrived. We keep our feminine wardrobe in lockers upstairs so that our
every-day circles can not suspect us of female-impersonation. For they
have such an irrational horror of it!”
* * * * *
On the basis of different visits to an upper room permanently rented by
the CERCLE HERMAPHRODITOS, I am going to build up a typical hour’s
conversation in order to disclose into what channels the thoughts of
ultra-androgynes run when half-a-score find themselves together. The
reason for its unnatural ring is that I omit the nine-tenths that were
prattle, retaining only the cream that I consider of scientific value.
It was about eight o’clock on an evening of April, 1895. Some of the
hermaphroditoi were still in male apparel; some changing to feminine
evening dress and busy with padding and the powder-puff; some in their
completed evening toilette ready to descend to the beer-garden below to
await a young-blood friend.
I do not recall that a single hermaphroditos was man enough to use
tobacco, or even to spit. They affected foreign languages, particularly
French. I recall one whose favorite method in beginning a conversation
was: “Mes cheris, qu’est ce que c’est que vous savez de nouvelles?”
A second: “Have you observed the new styles? Very [Sidenote: _Androgyne
Talk._] narrow skirts,[37] and very large hats. The material saved on
the skirt goes into the chapeau.”
“Nothing could be more beautiful,” Angelo—Phyllis, the most effeminate
of the hermaphroditoi, opined softly and sweetly, “than a feminine face
framed in a picture hat set sidewise, with rim reaching below the
shoulders. How I do like to stalk Fourteenth Street myself with such a
chapeau![38] How the young fellows stare and throw remarks after me! I
am glad the petite turbans are going into the rag-bag. And what low
necks and short arms the new evening dresses are showing! And the
material hardly more than cobweb! One could almost hide an up-to-date
corsage in the fist.”
“You seem, Phyllis, to be an expert on lingerie.”
“My woman friends tell me I have the best eye for color effects they
ever heard of. Millinery happens to be my business. A star actress whom
I happen to know always asks me to accompany her to the modiste’s. I
must practically pick out all her robes, as well as hats—including the
way they are to be made up. Just the sight of the artistic fabrics, as
they are unrolled by the saleswoman, is an exquisite delight. My mind
becomes crowded with emotions, and on the spur of the moment I could pen
a lyric _sur les etoffes jolies_ that any ladies’ magazine would
publish.... The [Sidenote: _A Gynander’s Fate._] stupidity of some
women! This actress has just divorced her husband and is looking around
for a new alliance. If I happened to have been born a marrying man, I
could make her my wife, although all the front-row bald-pates are crazy
after her. She has given every hint—everything except an actual
proposal. But if I did let her marry me, the morning following the
bridal night, she would apply to the court for an annulment. She does
not even suspect the existence of pseudo-men.”
Another: “It is strange how often a girl falls in love with us
women-men. I myself have had three proposals. Girls are particularly
prone to fall in love with members of their own sex disguised as men. Of
course we are really only girls ourselves whom Nature has disguised as
men. Particularly, rather mannish women fall in love with us Mollie
Coddles.”
* * * * *
Phyllis: “That reminds me of a young heiress[39] whom I knew. Perhaps
you read in the papers two years ago how a New York young woman
disappeared, and the utmost efforts of the police were not rewarded with
the least trace. She was of that mannish type. For months she was the
pest of my life. I still have a big pack of letters and poems—all
sickening—which she mailed me.
“I myself have no doubt of the fate of the poor girl. When the papers
were full of rumors and hypotheses about her, I repeatedly wrote my
theory to her father. When he ignored my letters, I gave the [Sidenote:
_Gynanders Love Androgynes._] police my theory. They likewise thought it
absurd and refused to investigate along the lines I suggested.
“When some mannish women find it impossible to marry an effeminate man,
they adopt some petite cry-baby woman as their soul-mate. The papers
stated that the last trace of Mollie Dale was her carrying away from
O’Neil’s several purchases. The latter immediately struck me as such
alone as a gallant would buy to present his lady-love. When I told the
police, they said: ‘Absurd! Who ever heard of one woman being in love
with another!’
“On leaving O’Neil’s, Mollie Dale absolutely dropped out of sight for
all time. It was as if the earth had suddenly yawned for her body and
closed again so rapidly as to be unseen by the people nearby. Or as if
she, absent-minded, had stepped into an open sewer man-hole and no one
happened at the moment to have his eyes on the spot.
“My theory, hermaphroditoi, is that Mollie went right from O’Neil’s to
her cry-baby chum’s. Probably within walking distance, because every
soul in New York was asked through the newspapers over and over again if
they had met on any public conveyance the morning of Mollie’s dropping
out of sight a young lady of her description, so detailed as to give
even the pattern of her shoes, besides her much published photographs.
Her disappearance was at the time the seven-days wonder of New York and
every one was discussing it.
“The rule with men-women[40]—as with us women-men—is [Sidenote:
_Solution of Mollie’s Disappearance._] never to breathe to any one of
their every-day circle a word about their sweethearts because of the
misunderstanding and horror evidenced by people ignorant of psychology.
As a rule the soul-mates of us better-class bisexuals belong to a much
lower social stratum. Very likely Mollie’s lived in one of the thousands
of tumbledown tenements within walking distance of O’Neil’s.
“According to my theory, hermaphroditoi—and I have seen a hundred times
more of life than the average man, and possess some sense
notwithstanding people not knowing me well set me down as only a
high-grade idiot because of my outward frivolousness and an unfortunate
infantile carriage—the cry-baby’s husband or father had only just
learned of what he, as well as ninety-nine out of every hundred men,
mistakenly regarded as the horribly corrupting influence of the poor
martyr Mollie on the hare-brained cry-baby. Ignorant that men-women are
victims of birth and that their so-called ‘depravity’ brings not the
least harm to any one, and insanely angry with Mollie into the bargain,
he that very morning bludgeoned her in his apartment. And he happened to
succeed in disposing of the corpse.
“I thought of Mollie when last week the papers told about an
unrecognizable female body, bent double, having been found in a trunk
filled with salt that for two years had rested unclaimed in the
trunk-room of the third-class Hotel X—just the type that a
tenement-dweller would select to harbor such a trunk. The murderer was
evidently a meat-packer, familiar with the processes of salting down.
“In such strange ways a continuous string of both [Sidenote: _Man’s
Prudery Causes Many Murders._] men-women and women-men are being struck
down in New York for no other reason than loathing for those born
bisexual. And public opinion forbids the publication of the facts of
bisexuality, which, if generally known, would put an end to these
mysterious murders of innocents.”
* * * * *
“Hello, Mith Nighty!” several called as one of the tallest, oldest, and
most brunette of the hermaphroditoi entered the Cercle’s dressing-room.
The androgyne who had adopted the name of a romantic woman had, during
his twenties, before becoming thick-set, been a female-impersonator on
the vaudeville stage.
“Mith Nighty!” one of the youngest hermaphroditoi shouted in a falsetto.
“Queenie and I want you to coach us in female-impersonation. Next Friday
at the Masked Ball we make our debut as public female-impersonators.”
A senior: “The world would call our hobby insanity. But the explanation
is that we were created psychic females, who yearn for the dress and
role of that sex—to feel skirts flapping about our ankles—and
nevertheless Nature has been so cruel as to incarnate our woman-souls in
the abhorred male body.”
Another: “But other than in us women-men, the male figure is infinitely
more artistic than the female. The only disgusting thing in man is the
beardal growth. I can tolerate in a beau a small moustache only, but
prefer him clean-shaven. But feminine breasts are the very badge of
beastliness! You, of course, excepted, Ralph-Jennie. The short, fat,
knock-kneed feminine legs are monstrosities! If you’ll pardon [Sidenote:
_Common Androgyne Practices._] me for saying it, Phyllis. On the other
hand, the muscles of an athlete compel the attention.”
Later it chanced that Roland Reeves and myself entered into a
soft-spoken dialogue: “Ralph, do you know any woman-man whom we ought to
get into the Cercle?”
“Four! But they do not realize anybody is wise outside the young athlete
each has selected as chum. No one but another woman-man, or a
full-fledged man who had read Krafft-Ebing,[41] would ever suspect them.
Their public conduct is always the height of propriety. One of them even
makes it a practice to boast of excesses _cum femina_—to ward off
suspicion, for he has always shunned females as one would the plague.
But on the basis of self-knowledge, we women-men easily recognize our
own kind. I need only hear the voice and glimpse the features and
figure.
“But none of the four ever visits the Underworld. They do not feel the
need. Their being so fortunate as to have secured soul-mates among their
every-day circle has proved their safety-valve. You, Roland, and I have
simply been denied by Providence a hero-confidant from among our
every-day circle. Moreover, we have been unwilling to risk betrayal to
that circle. We are not hunting for high-figured blackmail and possibly
years in prison.
“One is a university student. The college body refers to his
ultra-virile room-mate and himself as “X and wife.” But no user of the
phrase ever dreams of its real significance, not knowing of the
existence of intermediates. Of course they have heard of homosexuality,
[Sidenote: _An Androgyne Outcast._] but think only the scum of mankind
could be guilty. Impossible in the case of a high-minded intellectual!
“Here’s Plum. Plumkin, you look as if you had lost your last friend!”
The 23-year Mollie Coddle sobbed: “Everything looks dark. Two days ago I
was fired. I have hardly slept a wink since. I have hope for the future
only in the grave. Some bigot denounced me to the boss. He called me
into his private office. As this had never happened before, I guessed
the reason....”
Plum outlined his conference. I have listened to several similar
confessions. The following is a composite.
* * * * *
Plum: “I confess to being a woman-man and throw myself upon your mercy.”
Fairsea: “That confession is sufficient, and proves you an undesirable
person to have around!”
Plum: “It will be hard to find a new job, since I have been with you for
five years and must depend on your recommendation.”
Fairsea: “Knowing your nature, Plum, I could not recommend you _even to
shovel coal into a furnace_!”
Plum: “But you have steadily advanced me for five years! Why should
to-day’s discovery make any difference in your opinion of my business
ability?”
Fairsea with a sneer: “An invert ought to leave brain work for others!
He ought to exhaust himself on a farm from sunrise to sunset so that the
psychic movings would be next to non-existent. He should pass his life
in the back woods; not in a city. He has no [Sidenote: _Bigotry
Unparallelled._] right in the front ranks of civilization where his
abnormality is so out of place!”
Plum: “You mean that he should commit intellectual and social suicide in
obedience to the æsthetic sense of Pharisees?”