could give all a first-rate treat in exchange for their wonderful
kindness. They kept good friends because I loaded them with gifts. Only
after seven years, a born criminal, who had happened to worm his way
into my gang, now and again sought to dog me home. Twice I had to sit
for an hour in the Grand Central waiting-room to get him off my trail.
Up to that time no one had broken my firm command that I should not be
tracked the moment I chose to fade away for a fortnight. For I was like
a good fairy—in the twinkling of an eye bobbing up in the midst of my
gang, gathered by appointment in the “Rabbit,” and a few hours later as
weirdly dropping out of sight. Of course I could not let any of the
gangsters find out in what part of the city I lived. At last, to put a
stop to high-handed and high-figured blackmail by this one rascal, and,
most of all, to escape murder, I was forced to say goodby forever to the
whole Bowery. Of course I did not dare let even the most trustworthy
gangster know that I was never to see him again. It pained me fearfully
to leave them in the lurch, but I could do nothing else.
I henceforth made the Rialto my stamping-ground when yielding my
bisexual body to the woman in me. And fortunately, for I thus met Roland
and the other hermaphroditoi who had likewise turned to the Rialto to
blow off now and again their ordinarily pent up, but at last
overwhelming, craze for female-impersonation.
II. Jailed for Wearing Petticoats.
[Sidenote: _Angelo—Phyllis._]
A scrape that I like to tell about, _mon cheri_, although very bitter in
the happening, is my only arrest for flaunting myself in feminine
finery. Don’t you think a jail a queer home for a wishy-washy gentleman
and art connoisseur? A softy whose swatting a fly was the worst act he
was ever guilty of, and he almost had to weep when he did that.
Ever since driven from the Bowery six years ago, I have, one evening out
of fourteen, clad in my beloved feminine finery, tried to get on the
string strange young fellows in the Rialto ladies’ parlors. My nerves
need such a lark now and again. Otherwise years ago I would have gone
crazy or killed myself.[44] In my later teens, while living in my home
town, where I had to crucify my cross-dressing and female-impersonating
instincts, I was its most melancholy being. Because I, a female soul,
was imprisoned in a male body. How dark life looked from inside my male
prison! How I pined to be free! To have my soul wholly clothed in
woman’s bone and flesh instead of man’s for the most part—the latter so
hated in my own body, but slavishly worshipped when breathing out
[Sidenote: _Regimentals Overpowering._] yells of joy in sport or the cry
to battle and the clash of arms!
One evening five years ago in the Rialto I ran across two youthful
artillerymen from Fort Q and spent the evening with them. Regimentals
have always overpowered me. Even when I was as young as ten, when an
acquaintance enlisted in the national guard, his mere donning the
regimentals brought about, in my eyes, a magic transformation. If
already handsome, the young fellow became supremely, unearthly
enchanting. If plain and unattractive in civilian dress, he grew
handsome. Blue clothing and brass buttons surely bring out whatever
charm was born in a young fellow. Furthermore, his taste for warfare,
shown by his volunteering, proves him a demigod. For I think warfare the
highest function of the real man.
Whenever I catch sight of a youthful soldier, I rivet my gaze every
second possible, even halting at the curb to look back at the wonderful
vision. I yearn to fling myself at the soldier’s feet and cry out my
worship of all his magic traits. As the vision fades away, a pang goes
through my heart that he must pass out of my life forever and I never be
able to make known to him that for the rest of my days I shall be
continuously burning incense in my heart to his memory.
O Ralphie, I am overwhelmed when I call to mind the hundreds of the
cream of physical youngmanhood with whom I have flirted, and whom I
wholeheartedly loved! I have to weep at thinking that the way the world
is made, I must be forever barred from them. In spirit, I am eternally
joined, knit, dovetailed to [Sidenote: _Eternally Dovetailed._] every
man of them, but in the flesh, must never lay eyes on the demigods
again. How I wish I could have continued to heap blessings upon them and
make their sojourn on earth happy! But I am not God! In the next world,
how I wish, as a reward for my always having tried in this to make my
associates happy, I might be placed by Providence in the position of a
sort of sub-deity to the hundreds of rough, uncultured young bachelors
whom I have made protegés in this life, in order that I might be the
means of affording each the eternity of bliss I so covet for them!...
I do not lose an opportunity to see a parade of the national guard, and
particularly of regular soldiers, marines, and blue-jackets. I do not
give a straw to see any other type of men marching. But while witnessing
warriors stalk by, I am seized with a craze to prostrate myself in the
roadway and have those fierce, pugnacious young tigers—as they tramp,
tramp, tramp!—trample upon me until dead.
The two artillerymen I met in the Rialto begged me to make an hegira out
to the barracks to give a female-impersonation before their buddies. One
afternoon I made the hour’s journey, clad as an extreme dresser of the
gentle, and at the same time hare-brained, sex.
Around five P. M., I knocked at my friends’ barracks. Being in woman’s
garb, I would not step inside, but jollied with them on the large porch.
The news spread that I was only a female-impersonator and half-a-hundred
crowded around, flirting for all they were worth. That was, _mon cheri_,
my apotheosis—far above all other adventures. I was overjoyed at hearing
at one time from half-a-hundred demigods [Sidenote: _Female-Impersonate
Intoxication._] cries of admiration and affection. For I would sacrifice
myself more for, and give more richly to, youthful common soldiers than
any other class of men.
When, after half-an-hour, the bugle sounded retreat, how overwhelming,
how unearthly, how infinite and divine, its notes! The bugle-call,
because closely associated with the clash of arms and with that type of
human who shine as demigods, always lifts me up into an unutterably
blissful female-impersonate and cross-dress intoxication. I seem to be
raised to the very zenith of the universe as THE SUPREME WOMAN, THE
FAIRIE QUEEN, and to have all the fighting men that ever lived bowing
low in worship of my feminine attributes. During the minute that the
bugle-call resounds and reverberates, I live infinitely! I live out a
whole eternity!
But to come down to earth again, Ralphie: When I went away at the supper
call, my two friends said they would meet me in a beer-garden in a
neighboring village. It was the favorite evening resort of the common
soldiers. My two friends arrived with four buddies. Of the
half-a-hundred patrons, none else, excepting several additional soldiers
of my friends’ company who happened to drop in, knew, up to the very
last, that I was only impersonating a female.
But toward eleven, some of my party had drunk a drop too much. Their
behavior became boisterous and improper. When the waiters tried to curb
them, a terrible fight started. The waiters were themselves ex-soldiers
and born fighters. Heavy glass schooners were thrown back and forth. I
had to get under a table.
After several minutes, two constables burst in and [Sidenote: _The
Woman-Man._] put all my party under arrest. I had now to ‘fess up that I
was not really a girl. My faltering words filled the constables with
disgust and hatred. This is not to be wondered at, because village
constables do not know psychology like Bowery and Rialto policemen.
The seven of us were locked up for the night. The next morning the
Justice of the peace discharged my companions with a mere reprimand
because members of the army. But he was wild to punish me for putting on
woman’s garb. He sent a constable with me to the White Plains jail,
where I was to spend thirty days, or until I could pay a hundred dollars
fine. The Justice thought I was a low-down poverty-stricken fairie from
New York’s worst slums. I did not have the brass to tell him I was
really a person of good character, a regular church attendant, well
educated, and able to pay the fine.
The jailer, however, was sorry for me. I felt safe in telling him the
worst of my secrets. I let him feel my woman’s breasts. That made him my
best friend and he helped me get into communication with my New York
lawyer. After only a second miserable night in a cell, the lawyer paid
my fine and escorted me back to the city—even in my feminine
“regimentals,” as he had forgotten to bring along one of my male
outfits.
After that scrape, I made an hegira to the barracks now and again, but
always in male garb. The whole fort marvelled at the “woman-man,” as
they called me. They always gave me a great time. Nothing would I have
liked better than to live with them in the barracks as their most
devoted slave. Because they were my farthest opposites.
[Sidenote: _Angelo—Phyllis._]
III. George Greenwood.[45]
Ralphie, I am now going to tell you about the foremost specimen of young
manhood I ever met. If a man show had been held five years ago, on the
model of the horse show, the young fellow I am going to tell you about
would have won first prize.
You know that most of us hermaphroditoi have a single soul-mate. Of
course they are uncultured. Mere diamonds in the rough. For the past
four years, George Greenwood, whom you have seen with me, has been my
own soul-mate. For while I have flirted with many others, he alone has
been like an adopted son—as we older hermaphroditoi look upon our
soul-mates. At present, George is twenty-nine, and in outer
attractiveness, only a wreck of what he was when I “adopted” him.[46]
[Sidenote: _George’s Antecedents._]
I must explain, _mon cheri_, that George is not well bred. About twelve
years ago a portrait painter of my acquaintance ran across him selling
papers on Broadway. George was then only seventeen. At first sight, the
artist felt George’s unique beauty and asked him to pose. Later other
artists did George in oils and with the chisel.
He has never known who his parents were. For he was a foundling. When
discharged from the orphan asylum at fourteen, he was apprenticed to an
upholsterer. But on account of George’s quick temper and nasty tongue,
he could hold no position more than a month. When my friend ran across
him, George’s thoroughly bad record had left him only one means of
earning his bread: selling papers. But ever since his ideal physique was
discovered by my friend, George’s path through life has been strewn with
roses.
Four years ago I happened to lay eyes on George as he posed in my
friend’s studio. Right away his lines of face, head, limbs, and
body—hitherto even undreamed of—held me spell-bound and I took him into
my home. For I thought George was Michelangelo’s Adam stepped down into
flesh and blood out of the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine
chapel. Angelo’s nude figures of youthful men have alone approached
George’s ideal lines.
But he has been such a drunkard and high-liver in general that his
beauty—particularly his head and face—is now far below par. For two
years he has not been hired as a model. And he does not want to earn in
any other way. He has leaned wholly on me to keep up his life in the
Rialto as all-around sport.
[Illustration:
Defective copy of Michelangelo’s Adam in Sistine Chapel, Rome: An
Androgyne’s Conception of the Ideal Adolescent
]
[Sidenote: _Michelangelo’s Adam._]
I breathe to you, Ralphie, under pledge to keep it forever locked in the
chambers of your heart, that George’s face and figure, once driving me
beside myself, have become hideous and loathsome. How I hate his
billiard-ball head! In order to stand his presence, [Sidenote:
_Androgyne Platonic Marriage._] I have to ask him to keep his hat on.
And a man’s wig disgusts me even more than a bald pate. Three months ago
we stopped living together. I could no longer put up with his all the
time scolding and cursing me, and spitting tobacco juice and vomit on
the rugs. While we see each other now and again—because he wants a few
yellow backs—we have come to hate the very sight of one another.
Ralphie, I heartily wish I were forever rid of the brute beast! It now
comes hard, when I see nothing of the hero in him, to fork over a roll
of bills every few days. Our relations the past year have been hardly
more than a case of blackmail. I do not wholly drop him for fear of his
telling abroad how I pass now as a man and now as a woman.
Most of all I want to get out of George’s clutches because five months
ago I met a wonderful young fellow whom I plan legally to adopt. When I
took George Greenwood, I planned the same thing. But his character
proved so terrible! I am now getting on in life, _mon cheri_, and my
health is delicate. I need a close intimate in my home to wait on me
during my many sick days. It is difficult for any of us hermaphroditoi
to take a wife. One hates so to explain to a woman that after marriage,
the life must be that of brother and sister. And no woman—excepting only
the most old-maidish—would marry under these conditions. But I know one
of us hermaphroditoi—before your time, Ralphie—who did marry, after
thirty, under that arrangement, and only because he had political
ambitions, and his being known as a married man would give pause to
enemies who were backbiting him because of the indiscretions of his
youth. This hermaphroditos [Sidenote: _Androgynes Wish a Wife for
“Sons.”_] was one of the brightest of men and rose, as a result, to one
of the foremost posts in the nation. But if he had not been married, the
politicians and the voters would have turned him down. A legal marriage
surely covers a multitude of sins. But I myself have such a horror of
women that I could not live with one even as a sister.
I have a maiden sister, whom I could get as housekeeper, and who would
take the best of care of me. But I can not receive her into my home for
fear she might discover my bisexuality. I could not allow a servant to
live in my flat any more than my sister. For even at the age of
thirty-three, I, although half the time almost too feeble to drag myself
about, do not feel like saying goodby forever to my female-impersonation
sprees. They are still such fun; about all I have to live for! And God
has made young fellows so wonderful, so charming! I still admire their
beauty as much as I did ten years ago. And it is still so easy to get
them on the string, almost as easy as it was ten years ago. But if I am
able legally to adopt Calvin—about whom I will tell you in a minute—I
feel that I then can, having him with me always in my home, always in my
office, always travelling with me wherever I go: I then can say goodby
forever to female-impersonation sprees. For he would be to me a husband
as well as a son. He would be everything to me! I would live only in and
for him! Only to make him, his female wife, and his offspring happy! For
I would not put anything in the way of his taking a full-female wife in
addition whenever he felt like it, because a full-fledged young fellow
is restless without one.
Of course I could have another hermaphroditos [Sidenote: _Calvin
Luther._] live with me, as Ruby, Berenice, and the Duchess live
together. But it has always been my fondest dream to adopt as son a
young fellow who comes up to my ideal.
For several months I have had my ideal under my eyes every day as
stenographer in my millinery house. As “women’s men” are prone to take
for private secretary the prettiest face or “divinest” form among the
gentle sex, likewise _I_ picked out the applicant standing highest as an
Adonis. He is only twenty and possesses golden curly hair; deep-set,
marine-blue eyes; and radiant red cheeks. From his having been baptized
“Calvin Luther” you can tell what kind of parents and breeding he was
blessed with. He is thoroughly pure-minded and unspoiled, having, until
fifteen months ago, lived on a farm.
I slavishly worship the youth. The biased world would tremble at the
thought of the harm I would surely (as they fancy) do this pearl of
great price. For he is truly an angel; God’s child; very religious—a
trait so rare among the strongly virile. I have already made something
of a confidant of him in order to learn his feelings toward a woman-man.
Most young fellows with a puritan bringing up would turn the cold
shoulder. But I found Calvin Luther open to reason. He told me he has
always, as a good church member, struggled against his wanting the
gentle sex. While at business school in a small city, he earned his
board by delivering for a baker in the early morning. A natural thing
followed upon his being rarely good-looking. I barely wormed it out of
him when I was administering the third degree. He ’fessed up that a
number of servant girls where he delivered played on [Sidenote: _Prudery
and Bigotry Now Regnant._] him the trick of Potiphar’s wife on Joseph.
Twice—he ’fessed up with face as red as a beet—he did not show Joseph’s
strength of character. And I did not think the less of him.
And you, Ralphie, of course know that I would never be guilty of
anything that could bring the least harm to this adored innocent. His
health of body and mind will not be damaged a particle. I shall give him
the best educational and cultural advantages. As I have said, he will
some day marry the girl of his choice, and I shall live with the pair as
a parent. He and his children will be my heirs.
Is such an outlook for a poverty-stricken young fellow just cause for
Pharisees holding up their hands in holy horror?[47] The sexually
full-fledged cannot get [Sidenote: _Phyllis “Passes On.”_] into their
heads that we women-men are just as high-minded and conscientious as
themselves. They are continually hurling insults—calling us
“degenerates.” But my only thought is to heap blessings on those whom I
worship. I have always lived up to the maxim: Act in such a way as would
be good if universally followed. Those who through self-righteousness
condemn and crush me are a hundred times worse sinners. Perhaps some
day, _mon cheri_, the world will come to believe that the actual
presence of women-men in all communities—which Nature brings about—is a
distinct blessing to society in several ways.
* * * * *
AUTHOR’S NOTE.—Within a year of the above confessions, Angelo—Phyllis
was found dead in “his-her” apartment. The skull had been fractured with
a hammer.
Part Six:
Newspaper Accounts of Murders of Androgynes
AUTHOR’S NOTE.—These excerpts from New York dailies are presented in
order to impress upon the public that such murders of inoffensive
androgynes are a fairly common occurrence because that public has
tabooed, on the basis of prudery alone, enlightenment of the general
reader on the facts of androgynism. I withhold names of journals and
dates of issue, and cover identities, out of respect for the victims and
their families. But I assure those families that one of my present
objects is to avenge, by enlightening the public, the unmerited
assassination of their dear ones and thus prevent in the future such
martyrdom of innocents. The families have my most sincere sympathy,
particularly because I myself have several times been brought near
death’s door in the manner in which their unfortunate—but not in the
least immoral—relatives were put out of the way.
Each of the first three murders was apparently the work of some prude
not at all criminally minded, but feeling himself the mandatory of
society in ridding the world of “a monster of deepdyed depravity,”
according as he was taught by church and synagogue. The hare-brained
prude had been prohibited by public opinion from learning the truth that
_androgynism is_ [Sidenote: _Androgynes Not Sodomites._] _solely a
matter of abnormal psychology and anatomy, and not at all immorality_.
The term which best calls up the sensations of revulsion of such a
murderer is “sodomite.” To its highly malodorous and fundamentally false
connotation and application can be traced every year, in every corner of
Christendom (particularly puritan), murders of inoffensive androgynes.
The author’s comments are in brackets.
I. Two Murder Mysteries Which, Strangely Alike in Many Ways, Baffled All
Efforts to Solve.
(Much condensed, and slightly edited for diction, by author of THE
FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS, from article in a New York daily.)
VICTIMS WERE TWO ELDERLY BACHELORS OF MEANS, LIVING IN THE SAME
SECTION OF CITY—X AND Y WERE BOTH FOND OF PERSONAL ADORNMENT AND
DISPLAY AND BOTH HABITUALLY CHOSE YOUNG MEN AS ASSOCIATES—EACH WAS
SLAIN IN HIS OWN APARTMENT—ONLY TWENTY-NINE DAYS SEPARATED THE TWO
MURDERS—MANY CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TWO CRIMES BORE CURIOUS
RESEMBLANCE
Consideration of recent terrible crimes in New York which have halted
agents of justice at dead walls of mystery must bring to mind the X-Y
murders of a little more than a year ago. They were committed within
five weeks, the scenes within a few blocks on fashionable Murray Hill.
In both, extraordinary interest was stirred by the maniacal savagery
unleashed. The settings of the [Sidenote: _Androgynes Art
Connoisseurs._] crimes were alike bizarre. The characters of both
victims were most peculiar, yet alike. And the men had been friends.
[Androgynes, in all large cities, form little cliques like the Cercle
Hermaphroditos.]
X was a bachelor of fifty-six, an electrical expert, an art connoisseur,
and collector of jewels and weapons. Though in more than comfortable
financial circumstances, he resided entirely alone, doing his own
housework [common manner of life of androgynes] in a 6-room flat on the
ground-floor of the Q Apartments. [I know one androgyne who purposely
chose a ground-floor apartment in a house without hall-boy so he could
go and come in his disguise with less chance of encountering other
tenants.] He had made it his home for ten years. [This proves his
outward decency, as well, as liberality to blackmailers.] The artistic
luxury of its furnishings was striking. The walls were galleries of fine
old prints, original oils, and copies of masters, and displayed a
strange collection of swords, sabres, and barbarian spears. [Well-to-do
androgynes possess the most highly ornamented homes of any class of
society. While congenitally too “yellow” themselves to handle the
weapons of warfare, such are generally sexual fetishes with them, being
symbols of the highest function of the true man.]
[Sidenote: _Live under Sword of Damocles._]
In this handsome, lonely abode, the detectives made a discovery of
significance: X had lived in extraordinary fear of the lawless invasion
of his rooms. [Cultured androgynes, realizing how bitterly they are
hated by prudes, live constantly under the sword of Damocles. Every
night they fall asleep in the fear of being murdered. They are
uncommonly careful in locking themselves in. The author tries his locks
twice before retiring. While a child, he, every night before getting
into bed, looked to see whether there was not a murderer under it.
Androgynes are extreme cowards.] For he had used his expertness with
delicate electrical devices to set his rooms with a maze of traps for
any person who might try to enter it by force or stealth. Doors,
windows, etc., were invisibly strung with delicate wires. With the
controlling alarm device set, scarcely an article might be touched
without the ringing of sharp bells of warning.
But that thieves were those of whom he lived in dread was contradicted
by other facts. X, far from being a recluse, frequented hotels and cafes
and was prone to make chance acquaintances, especially of young men,
while going about extravagantly bejewelled and habitually carrying a
large roll of bills which it was a pet vanity to display.