home. [He was pay-master in his father’s factory and often had in his
possession large sums, and had to know how to defend himself from
robbers.] His rifle was found on his boat, together with cartridges, on
the day of his death. Why, if he intended suicide, did he not use his
revolver, or else the rifle that was handy at the time on the boat?
[This, to me, is conclusive evidence of murder or man-slaughter.]
Z possessed the only key to the cabin of the boat. The family say there
were originally two keys, but the duplicate was “lost” about a year ago.
[Possibly Z staged all his female-impersonation sprees on his yacht and
so gave the duplicate to an idol before whom he regularly posed, just as
I have given a trusted idol a key to enter my own apartment whenever he
felt like it.]
IN HIGH SPIRITS
On the afternoon preceding the day of his death, Z took his motor-cycle
apart in order to renew some mechanism. On his last evening alive, he
was in high spirits, setting every one of his circle laughing. So far
from being depressed, he seemed flushed with happiness at the prospect
of future success in business, having only just received a promotion.
[His unusual [Sidenote: _Androgynes Compelled to Fabricate._] happiness
on the very eve of the murder might indicate that he had just succeeded
in coming to terms with a _new_ idol, who, however, the next afternoon,
on discovering how “deeply depraved” Z was, strangled him with the rope.
I myself have several times been half-murdered under similar
circumstances. I have also been elevated into the third heaven of bliss
on receiving a favorable message from an idol.]
On the morning of the day of Z’s death, he called on a friend who was to
give a party in a few days, and assured the latter he would be present.
He then ate noon lunch with his family. It was his father’s birthday,
and Z promised to take the family out for an automobile ride in the late
afternoon. Right after lunch, Z remarked: “I’ll first make a trip to the
boat to pump the water out. It hasn’t been touched for a week, and you
know how the water accumulates under the engine. I won’t be gone long.”
[It was two miles from Z’s residence to the boat; twenty minutes, by
motor-cycle, to get on board. The reason given impresses me as a mere
pretext to hide his appointment on the launch and prospective
female-impersonation—because the pretext sounds just like _me_. I am one
who has been compelled to falsify much because if my associates had been
granted the truth, they would have impiously crushed me. In my
university course in ethics, I was taught that it is proper to tell a
lie if the persons deceived have no right to the truth. Always those
whom I deceived had no right, because the truth would have rendered them
insanely cruel.]
In a jovial mood [because about to meet his idol, I suspect] Z departed
on his motor-cycle at 1:30. On the way he stopped at a dealer’s—full of
laughter [Sidenote: _Probably Man-Slaughter._] here also—and filled his
cycle tank with a gallon of gasoline. [Two indications against suicide.]
At the wharf, he was seen to take oars out of his locker and row to his
power-boat anchored fifty yards out. He was next seen, by two men on a
yacht anchored fifty feet from his own, to disappear down into his
cabin. [The last declaration by any one of having seen Z before
discovered dead in his cabin.] These two men remained on the deck of
their anchored launch all the afternoon until 5:30, and both are
positive that Z did not reappear on his deck. They are equally positive
that no one came from or went to Z’s launch.
The owner of the power-boat continuously anchored on the other side of
Z’s was aboard from 2:30 until 4:30, and is positive no one approached
Z’s boat from that side. The owner of a third power-boat continuously
anchored thirty-five feet from Z’s in another direction also spent the
afternoon on board, and tells the same story. Two men [custodians and
renters of boats] busy all the afternoon around the wharf fifty yards
away saw no one go to or come from Z’s launch.
[To me the most probable solution of Z’s death is that it was neither
murder nor suicide, but accidental man-slaughter. Perhaps Z had the
habit, to satisfy his mania for female-impersonation, of taking on his
yacht as an audience young bachelors who owned launches usually anchored
near his own. Perhaps a launch, on that Sunday afternoon ideal for
yachting, was kept at anchor near Z’s because its owner had plotted to
teach Z a lesson, with the “good” intention of curing him of his habit
of female-impersonation, believing—as nearly every one does at
[Sidenote: _Torturing an Androgyne._] present because prohibited by
public opinion from learning the truth—that it is a _wilful_ bad habit.
When Z had rigged himself in feminine garb (because the female side of
his duality demanded it), one or more of the young men from one of the
anchored yachts—according to my theory—had tied ropes around him, even
around his neck, the latter merely in order to frighten him and prevent
his calling for help. The newspapers stated that only a “seaman” could
display such skill in tying ropes, and these yachtsmen were amateur
seamen. They then, late in the afternoon, after they had had their “fun”
with the pitiable androgyne, went ashore, having no thought that the
rope around the throat would tighten sufficiently to strangle Z. They
designed merely to punish him for his androgynism (1) through his being
compelled to lie helpless on the cabin floor for several hours, with a
rope tight around his neck to prevent him calling for help, and, (2)
more than that, through humiliating him before his family, who finally,
anxious over his not returning home, would visit the yacht and discover
him in his most ignominious garb and predicament.
[But Z, in his writhings to free himself from his bonds, unfortunately
tightened the rope about his neck and was fatally strangled, the young
men having departed and no one being at hand to succor him in his death
agony. Z was only one more of the many martyrs to the public’s
prohibition of the showing up of the myth that bisexuals are monsters of
depravity, deserving the crudest forms of torture and even murder. Those
guilty of Z’s death—under the theory now being propounded—were
fundamentally irresponsible. [Sidenote: _Church and Public Opinion
Guilty._] The guilt lies with the Church and public opinion, both of
which teach that no punishment is too bad for an androgyne.
[A few days after Z’s death, I wrote letters to Z’s father giving all my
theories. I desired to do all I could to avenge my brother in calamity
by bringing his assailants to justice. It would not be surprising if Z’s
father was disinclined to press matters because of shame over the son’s
being an androgyne combined with the public’s so terribly misjudging
androgynism. Z’s near neighbor, a young college graduate whom I
“pumped,” told me first that the fact at the bottom of Z’s death “was of
such nature that it could not be discussed”! I could get at the truth
only by putting repeated frank questions, since he labored under the
terrible delusion that sex is a subject beyond discussion. This college
man expressed the opinion that Z was wilfully depraved and “got all that
was coming to him.” I interviewed several others who knew the Z family
merely by sight and reputation. They all showed intense antipathy, being
of the opinion that a family’s having an androgyne relative was
sufficient cause for its ostracism.
[A personal parallel: To only one member of my own family—a brother—have
I ever confessed my addiction to female-impersonation sprees. I did it
twenty years ago, at the age of twenty-seven, because I then had enemies
at Ft. X (at the time my regular stamping-ground) who hated androgynism
so fiercely as to be capable of murdering an individual in whom the
phenomenon cropped up. I therefore explained matters to a brother: that
if ever I was found murdered, to look for my assassin among the common
[Sidenote: _Androgynes’ Relations Ashamed to Prosecute._] soldiers of
Ft. X. He replied: “Ralph, if you are ever murdered on one of your
female-impersonation sprees, the family would be too much ashamed ever
to take the first step to bring your murderer to justice!”]
At the supper hour, Z’s mother telephoned to the wharf and was informed
her son had not returned from his yacht. Fearing he had met with an
accident, she and her daughter went by automobile to the wharf, arriving
at 6:30. It was then almost dark. A boatman rowed the mother, shivering
nervously, to the launch. As Mrs. Z descended the forward hatch, her
foot struck a human body lying at the foot of the steps, face downward.
She felt the hands, which stuck out above the body, and found them cold.
“Linnie has fainted!” Mrs. Z exclaimed. She hastily lighted a lantern,
while the boatman remained at the top of the short flight of stairs,
apparently paralyzed with fear. But having a light, Mrs. Z discovered
the inert body to be clothed in a long blue dress, while the head was
covered with a black oilcloth bag. [Such covering of the head indicates
non-suicide. The man-killer covered Z’s head because, before abandoning
him with the rope around his neck, he (or they) tormented and tortured
Z. I have myself had a handkerchief thrust into my mouth to prevent an
outcry and been thereupon tortured merely because of insane loathing of
androgynism.]
Mrs. Z now exclaimed: “Why, it’s a woman! She’s been strangled, and
Linnie’s not here!”
Overcome with terror, she left the boat without further examination. Mr.
Z, when his wife greeted him with the frantic cry: “A woman has been
strangled on our yacht!” immediately visited it. He removed [Sidenote:
_Father’s Assertions Discarded._] the hood from the form on the cabin
floor, and in amazement recognized the face of his son. Around the neck
was a tightened noose of Manila rope tied with a _hangman’s_ knot. Mr. Z
is positive the knot was at the _back_ of the neck. [This position is an
indication of non-suicide. A suicide would naturally have placed the
knot in front.] Unable to loosen the knot, Mr. Z cut the rope. He
noticed that both his son’s hands were behind the back, apparently tied
with a sash cord, although he did not think to make sure _both_ were
tied. For, finding the body cold, he was convulsed with grief and
immediately left without making further examination.
The next arrivals were policemen.
The Homicide bureau contends that although there was a slip-knot around
the left hand, the right was free and Z used one or both hands to draw
the hangman’s noose about his neck. This theory presupposes that the
knot was at the throat, and discards the father’s assertion that it was
at the _back_ of the neck.
Z’s ankles were tied together with rope, as were his knees and arms. [A
queer way to commit suicide for the victim to take the greatest pains to
make people think he had been murdered! And when there were a rifle and
cartridges on board the launch! And only an hour or two before in a
jovial mood, and laying in a supply of gasoline!] A medical examiner
calculated that death had occurred between four and five P. M. The two
men on the deck of the power-boat on one side of Z’s launch had gone
ashore at 5.30, and the single man on the power-boat on the other side,
at 4.30. None had heard any cry or other sound from the Z [Sidenote:
Z’_s Woman’s Apparel_.] launch [35 to 50 feet distant and on an
ultra-still Sunday afternoon when sounds carry unusually well.] When
these witnesses went ashore, Z’s rowboat was fastened to his launch—in
the same position as when his mother arrived.
The woman’s apparel in which Z was found clad consisted of a chemise;
corset; corset-cover with rose-colored baby ribbon running through the
lace; a pair of pink bloomers with ruffles at the knees; high black
stockings fastened by garters to the corset; a pair of high laced
woman’s shoes, with French high heels; and finally, the blue-checked
gingham dress. All the apparel fitted Z well.
The clothing in which Z had left home was found on a bunk in the
cabin—excepting an overshirt, which was pinned over the porthole nearest
the launch fifty feet distant on whose deck two men spent the afternoon.
Aside from this circumstance, the police discovered no sign of disorder
in any part of the launch. They discovered no other articles or
circumstances having a bearing on the case. [Androgynes are in general
non-resistant. Z probably did not struggle against his tormentor, as I
myself have always been absolutely passive on such occasions. Any way he
probably did not even imagine that he was under any risk of death. He
probably expected to return home within an hour—as he had previously
done after dozens of female-impersonation explosions.]
But reporters, who later examined the boat, found a thick hickory club
in a drawer. [My theory is that Z was accustomed to entertain on the
boat, in the absence of any of his family, adolescents before whom he
had a craze to impersonate a mademoiselle—the [Sidenote: _Assassins of
High Morality._] common practice of the more extreme type of androgyne.
He probably entertained only one at a time. Fearing he might be attacked
by one of these perhaps doubtful characters, he kept the club for
self-defence, as well as the rifle already mentioned. The fact that he
did not attempt to avail himself of these weapons on this occasion
indicates that his assailants were young men whose high morality was
known to Z.] In a chest in an out-of-the-way place, the reporters found
a bundle of wrapping paper stained and torn. Inside was a metal
shoe-horn. [My theory is that Z stored his feminine wardrobe in this
paper and chest. The paper was probably that in which the feminine
outfit had originally been brought to the launch and was preserved for
possible use in carrying it away.]
The Z family kept a supply of beer on the yacht, but affirmed: “Linnie
hated beer and never learned to drink it.” [Very androgynesque.
Girl-boys are inclined to be puritans in every respect except
female-impersonation and coquetry.]
The only feminine article that Z wore which the family recognized was a
multi-colored silk ribbon fastened around his waist and belonging to a
sister.
The autopsy showed that death had resulted solely from strangulation.
All the ropes used in binding Z belonged to his yacht. [The reason Z was
done to death with ropes is that there naturally were many on board a
yacht and it was a _noiseless_ death. There was a loaded rifle on the
yacht. That a noiseless method was chosen indicates murder rather than
suicide. The use of ropes also indicates a yachtsman as author of the
crime—because accustomed to handling ropes. He lives and breathes
ropes.]
[Sidenote: Z _of Androgyne Physique_.]
Z was five feet four in height and weighed 145 pounds. [Short and plump
build characteristic of androgynes.] The city medical examiner noted
that the lower ribs were “retracted, possibly due to the use of
corsets.” He also noted that “the beard and moustache are scanty.”
[Meaning if not shaven close. Such scantiness is common in androgynes.]
If the murder theory is true, the assassin must have planned to murder
with great care. [It was all done on the spur of the moment, and the
death probably an accident.] He must have had an accomplice who brought
him to the boat before the murder, and took him away afterward, and he
must have known in some mysterious way that Z was going to visit the
boat that Sunday afternoon. [If Z was murdered, he had had an
appointment on the yacht with his assassin. The latter must have arrived
before the yachtsmen who spent the afternoon on the closely encircling
decks, and watched that they go ashore before himself. At dusk he could
have swum away without being seen. At that hour on a Sunday, there were
many desolate points on the nearby shore at which he could have
unobservedly emerged. But the most daring criminal would hardly have
committed a murder with several men only a few feet away on the decks of
the encircling yachts. A single shriek from the victim would have
immediately brought several men on board.]
The care with which the clothing was put on certainly seems to indicate
that Z himself put it on, every article being properly adjusted.
[The authorities, because ignorant of androgyne psychology and habits
and despising a bisexual (myself) [Sidenote: _Author’s Own Foretaste of_
Z’_s Fate_.] too much to listen to his-her theories, were on a false
scent. At the date this volume goes to press (December, 1921), the Z
mystery—as well as the X, Y, and Q—has not been cleared up by the
authorities, although none of the four is much of a problem to myself,
knowing how the world treats androgynes.
[It is a strange coincidence that about a score of years before Z was
strangled, within two miles of his yacht’s point of anchorage, in a
large patch of woods at night, I was, as an aftermath of a
female-impersonation, being roughly teased by six “young fellows.” To
cap the climax, they led me toward a tree and said they were “going to
get a rope and hang” me. Horrified, I feigned an epileptic fit to save
myself. See my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, page 208.
[While I have never believed Z a suicide, it is a possibility. A new
idol with whom he had had an appointment on the yacht that afternoon
might have shown utter disgust at Z’s revelations—as I have myself
witnessed in a confidant—and pitilessly abandoned him. This misguided
attitude might have brought on Z a sympathetic disgust with himself as
female-impersonator and cross-dresser. According to this theory, Z
wished to punish and heap indignities on his own body—just as I have
myself, in my verdant middle teens, taken a whip and chastised my own
body because lustful, homosexual thoughts had invaded my mind, while
crying out: “‘O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the
body of this death!’” Perhaps Z wished to punish his own body by
depriving it of breath while in female garb and so publish to the world
the despicableness of his own physical personality. In no other way
could Z’s spiritually minded [Sidenote: _Suicide Theory._] psyche better
revenge itself on his carnal body than to have the latter’s grossness
proclaimed on the housetops.
[In case Z was a suicide, the idol who had only a few minutes before
pitilessly scorned his advances was very likely an adolescent spending
that afternoon on one of the three nearest yachts. As I have said, the
case came to a curious abrupt ending in the papers, as if the entire
solution had become known to those immediately interested, but the
public was not let into the secret in order to shield unblameworthy
parties.
[If Z was a suicide, I have myself passed through a very similar
experience. (See my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, page 235.) Because
heartlessly jilted by a new idol and afraid I would, as “a monster of
depravity,” be cast out of the caravan with which I was travelling in an
uninhabited region of the Rockies, I walked away in the forest alone at
dusk a mile from camp having in mind suicide by being torn to pieces by
bears, with which the forest abounded, and several of which I saw that
night roaming within a hundred feet. Like Z, I had not left behind a
single oral or written word as to suicide. I was acting on the spur of
the moment. For several hours I experienced such depths of sorrow as not
one human out of ten thousand ever tastes. Continuously for an hour, out
of hearing of the camp, I wailed at the top of my voice over my terrible
lot in life—that of a despised, hated, and outlawed “degenerate” (as the
hypocritical nine-tenths of civilized humanity delight to call me)—and
over the possibly impending unfathomable disgrace among a party of rough
men with whom I must travel until we got back to a railroad. I
experienced a violent desire [Sidenote: _Author’s Attempt at Suicide._]
to be devoured by bears. But the All-Seeing overruled that they did not
attack me.][49]
[Sidenote: _Newspaper Accounts of Murders._]
III. College Student’s Death is Unexplained.
(The following are excerpts from a New York paper. Every few months the
press brings to light a similar death of an androgyne. All because the
world misunderstands and grossly misjudges them, as well as because
public opinion has always deprived them of the means of coming to an
understanding of themselves. Bracketed words and italics are those of
the author of THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS.)
STUDENT’S DEATH MYSTERY BAFFLING—NO KNOWN BASIS IN Q’S LIFE TO
SUGGEST MURDER OR SUICIDE THEORY
Overdone detective fiction seldom presents so many significant but
mostly inexplicable circumstances surrounding the victim of death by
violence as those developed concerning [Jimmie Q], twenty, _quiet_,
_studious_, _religious_ [earmarks of androgynism], a [North Atlantic]
college junior, popular, not morbid, a cleancut American youth, whose
body was taken from the river last Thursday night....
Q loved to roam the slums of large cities. [An earmark of cultured
androgynism. They thus roam because realizing that in their Overworld,
they are prohibited outlet for the feminine side of their duality.
They roam with day dreams of how they would like to impersonate a
female in the Underworld, where alone female-impersonators are
welcome; and finally, in many cases, they are carried away by their
mania for an actual female-impersonation spree.]... His [Sidenote:
_Female-Impersonation Obsession._] college room-mate commented on the
large number of neckties, all Q had, which the latter was taking
along. [As he _said_, for a few days’ visit to his father, which visit
did not take place. My theory is that he went to the great city, in
whose harbor his dead body was found, to spend an evening with
chance-met gangsters in the slums, as I have myself done, and he took
the many neckties as presents for them, just as I myself have carried
_neckties_ with which to shower them and thus win their goodwill. The
androgyne, of course, wishes the gangsters as an audience for his
loved impersonations. Androgynes always wish an audience of
tremendously virile “young fellows.”]
Q did not drink and _never took special interest in any woman_. But he
did like to rove about in the districts of big cities in which the
poorest classes live and work.... Whenever he was in New York, he spent
most of his time in such districts....
At the Morgue, Mr. Q identified the effects of his son. When the body
was exposed for his inspection—it appeared to have been in the water
about ten days—the father bowed his head and tearfully exclaimed: “Poor
Jimmie! How you must have suffered!”...
The fisherman who had pulled the body ashore had used a grappling
hook.... To it they attributed the incision which the [City’s] Medical
Examiner had reported to have been made by some weapon. The Medical
Examiner denounced this report and suggested that the police were
forwarding a suicide theory to escape responsibility for solution of a
crime. He declared there was evidence of hemorrhage in this wound not
producible by such an injury inflicted long after death. He further
recalled that the left arm of Q was [Sidenote: _Methods of Torture._]
dislocated at the elbow, with the arm muscles twisted—positive
indications of external violence. [I myself have been tortured by a
ruffian’s seizing me by the wrist and twisting around my arm so that I
had to shriek in agony.]