4. Term misapplied.
4. Term misapplied.
Reflections in Jail.
The soldiers soon went on their way, and the constable conducted me in the direction of the lockup. He acted toward me as if I was a low criminal, while I continued to supplicate him to let me go. As we came nearer the lockup, in my highly excited condition over the fear of disgracing my family, who lived only four miles away, and the prospect that if my secret was disclosed, I could never see any of my loved ones again, I thoughtlessly declared I would not go any farther, which caused him to rap my head with his club.
I was locked up for the night. Through nervous shock, I did not sleep a wink. Only to the few is it given ever to taste such a night of misery as I passed. “I, whom all think the purest and most pious of men, being arrested!” I meditated. “I, the last one whom anybody would have expected ever to be arrested! But God’s will be done.... Am I to be the one to disgrace my family? Hitherto I have been the scholar, the litterateur, the only collegian of my father’s family, and have by my achievements in learning brought the most honor on my father’s house of all his children. I shall also be the one to bring the deepest disgrace upon it.”
Chronic Fear of Arrest.
The following morning I was sentenced to three days in the lockup. As the village of my incarceration was only four miles from my home, and I was known at least by sight to some of its inhabitants, my father evidently soon learned of my disgrace, notwithstanding that I had sought to conceal my identity. Although he never mentioned the episode, he soon began to treat me regularly with extreme bitterness, as if he wished I had never been born. I was the only one of his children to whom he manifested any such spirit, notwithstanding I was the brightest of them.
Throughout an entire decade subsequent to this episode, I had an unreasonable nervousness about arrest and about policemen. Whenever any one whose name was unfamiliar was announced as waiting to see me, my first thought and fear were that a policeman had come to arrest me. Whenever any one called me up on the telephone, I always feared that it was in connection with my forthcoming arrest.
A few days after being restored to liberty, I informed my parents of my intention to go off on another trip afoot, this time for a couple of weeks. My secret object was to mingle with this detachment of troops, whom I knew to be encamped for some weeks about two days’ easy journey on foot from my home. That just described was my first experience with soldiers, and I had become fascinated as never before. All my reveries were now to relinquish the career of a scholar and become a sutler near some fort in the wild west so that I could mingle daily with these demigods, whom I most abjectly worshipped.I was in misery because my lot in life separated me from these ferocious young men.
Soldiers Are Demigods.
I look upon a youthful professional soldier as a most wonderful being, different from all other human beings. There seems to be a sort of enchantment about him. Merely the process of enlistment, the donning of the uniform, and the acquiring of skill in handling the weapons of warfare make a demigod out of the young man, as your author looks upon it. When a newspaper item states that a trainload ofregularsoldiers passed through a certain town, I reflect with a thrill on what a wonderful burden that train bore, and experience a sense of pain that I could not be along and make known the adoration I feel. Ever since this my first encounter with regular soldiers, I have wished for omnipresence with the men of the regular army. Privates, corporals, and sergeants are men after my own heart. I was never attracted toward commissioned officers, and they have appeared to me as being less manly than the classes named. Perhaps my predilection is due to the fact that the commissioned officers are as a rule intellectual like myself. Subsequently to my reaching the age of twenty-five, regular soldiers have been practically the only young men to whom I have been strongly attracted. After that age I found it easy to relinquish coquetry with all other young men. Now (1918) when I have arrived at my middle forties, I pine alone not to be able longer—on account of my age—to mingle with regular soldiers as a mignon. As Ophelia with Othello, I love them and adore them for the dangers they have passed through, as well as those attached totheir vocation. Furthermore, in man’s natural state, fighting—next to procreating—is the pre-eminent function of the male. For this reason the war-loving man is my sexual ideal.
Music Overwhelms.
Arrived a short distance from the camp, I, for only the second time in my life, caught the thrilling notes of the bugle-call. It took all the strength out of my legs so that I felt as if I would fall to the ground. Since I began to associate with soldiers, the notes of the bugle have had an unearthly—I might say, an eternal, overwhelming—beauty. Subsequently to 1905, when my open career as a soldiers’ mignon became a thing of the past, the bugle-call has made me live that career over again in a few moments. It brings up fond memories of the many evenings spent in the long, long ago with the “mighty men of war.” It fills my soul with adoration for these “mighty men of valor,” these “mighty men of renown.” I have sometimes been seized with a babyish cooing or gasping, and have ardently wished that I were youthful again and in the arms of one of these wonderful beings.
The effect on me of secular music in general has been to arouse reveries of my amours and paramours. I have been an unusual lover and patron of grand opera, the soprano and alto solos having an overwhelming effect particularly (because that is the manner in which I would have wished to sing). I have often been raised into sublime heights of ecstasy, generally with a sensual tinge.
Arrived at the camp, I strolled about and was soon recognized: “Hello Pretty! Where did you come from?” Filled with bliss, and thrown into my most babyishand effeminate mood, I responded: “You adorable artilleryman, I was pining for you, and followed you here from X——.” He told me to meet him outside the camp after retreat, when he appeared with several comrades. I was in ecstasy on this first walk of my life on a country road with a party of bewitching adolescent soldiers as daylight was fast fading into darkness. In my years of subsequent association with soldiers, I found that those over twenty-five years of age were in general disinclined to talk with me. They appeared to have been already satiated with flirtation, while numerous youngsters were desirous of a frolic with me.
Milites Easiest of Conquests.
Havelock Ellis says: “The homosexual tendency appears to have flourished chiefly among warriors and warlike peoples.” In another place he says: “I have been told by medical men in India that it is specially common among the Sikhs, the finest soldier-race in India.” I have myself found adolescent professional soldiers the easiest of conquests and the most inclined of any class of men to take the virile part with me. I speak from experience in flirtation with at least two thousand different professional soldiers, only about four hundred of whom, however, went to extremes. I saw not the least tendency toward homosexuality amongst themselves, although I frequented to some extent their barracks and even their bunks. They are only capable of taking the virile part with an individual like your author. In general the common soldiers of the regular army are particularly rough, coarse-grained, vigorous, and sensual men, constituting physically the best blood of the race. As already indicated,practically all civilians who were intimate with me were of this same type, and there appears to be some connection between tremendous virility and active homosexuality. Furthermore, along with this ultra-virility of the professional common soldier, he is almost entirely shut off from the gentle sex, whereas the young civilian of the laboring classes has usually an acquaintance who gladly yields as his mistress. Of course many of the nation’s fighters have a natural distaste. As just indicated, only about one in five with whom I coquetted went to extremes, while about fifty per cent. of those who knew me by sight would never even speak to me. But the line of cleavage did not at all correspond with that between the religious or conscientious and the vicious. It was a matter as much outside the province of ethics as is vegetarianism.
Actives Are Ultravirile.
Moreover, soldiers lead comparatively idle lives, and also monotonous lives, and these two conditions add to their susceptibility to the wiles of a fairie. A bright and facile fairie is capable of furnishing them a great deal of entertainment, aside from the opportunity of exercising their fundamental impulse. With myself also,coitus was a comparatively small elementin our mutual relations. Innocent coquetry, including “taking off” the baby and the woman, occupied a far larger place.
Author’s Two-Sided Life.
My relations with a coterie of beaux, and particularly with soldiers around the camps and forts, reminded me sometimes of a play. I was, as it were, acting a part. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that another personality was in possession of me. I was conscious that I was the same “I” who was one of the leaders inscholarship at the university and who was there looked upon as a particularly innocent and pure-minded youth. I was also conscious that in the society of my beaux I was not acting as became the sensible, rational, respectable collegian of other occasions. I felt that I had temporarily relinquished my mind and body to the dictates of another spirit, that of a “baby girl”—a combination of baby and girl. It was however a spirit not alien to me. It was a spirit which had dwelt in my brain from infancy. It was a spirit that had always been called up by the sight of beautiful stalwart males of the proper age. For the work of life I realized that this spirit would not do. If I was to make a name for myself in the world, I must dethrone this baby-spirit in me. When in my study, I sought to forget this baby-spirit. I even turned against it at times with a sort of abhorrence, and asked myself how I could give way to it. Thus I lived a sort of a two-sided life. Part of the time I was a sober-minded intellectual worker. Part of the time, when under sexual excitement, even to a slight degree, I displayed the mental traits of a baby. I knew that these two states, babyhood and adult manhood, were incongruous, but to have a contented mind and to be in a mood which would render a career devoted to scholarly pursuits possible, it was necessary occasionally to follow out my feminine and babyish instincts. It should be remembered, however, that I have never developed into a full-fledged man either physically or mentally. If my business associates tell the truth, I am still in 1918 a child nearly half a century old. Childlikeness is a common characteristic of androgynes.
Acting Out a Drama.
I was not alone in acting a part when with a coterie of beaux, but they also did in conducting themselves toward me as if I were a girl. While strolling with soldiers through the fields and woods, I would demand assistance over places of the slightest difficulty, and some of them were marvellously solicitous under the circumstances. They instinctively yearned to be the protector of some weak female, and being deprived of practically all female company, they spent their instinctive gallantry on me. This was to me a rare pleasure.
In our drama, it was bliss to me to be the star, the center of attraction, the only representative of the gentle sex present, while there might be around me half a score of large, powerful young bloods. In my every-day sphere, I have been exceedingly shy, but as “Jennie June” I have impersonated a baby girl before a hundred soldiers at a time without being in the least embarrassed. I would fret after the manner of a baby and sob just for the pleasure of having them soothe and pet me. I would pretend to faint away just for the pleasure of being caught in their arms and held there. When in the country, I sometimes feigned unwillingness to go with them, and forced them to carry me, with hands, arms, and whole body hanging limp. This was also a rare pleasure. Sometimes they would scare me in fun in order to bring from me a shrill feminine shriek—when I felt sure no officers or civilians were near. Indeed while in their company, I exaggerated cowardice, babyishness, and femininity in general.
Cast Out of a Camp.
On this visit of 1894 with the soldiers, most of them treated me well. Some even allowed me to call in their tents, and shared their meals with me. But others, who had been brought up to believe that a fairie must be a monster of wickedness, and were disinclined to learn through association with me that I was a paragon of morality apart from coquetry and venery, were bitterly opposed to my presence in the camp and sought to injure me. But I was treated so well by so many that I made myself too free. I was of course guilty of no immodesty or ultra-babyishness within the boundaries of the camp.
The increasing opposition culminated one afternoon. I had asked an acquaintance if I could take a nap in his bunk, and as a joke, he installed me in the bunk of an enemy. As a result I was ordered off the camp-ground. I had to traverse a lane lined with tents, in front of which their occupants were eating supper. As I passed, with head bowed in humiliation, the majority were laughing at me, while the malevolent called out the appropriate vulgar epithet, and threw scraps of food and cups of coffee into my face. I was wishing the earth might open and swallow me up. This experience led me to leave for home immediately.
As only a few weeks now remained before my return to New York to begin my senior year, I passed them without being tormented by unsatisfied instincts. On my return, I had no intention to seek my Mulberry Street friends, partly because of the events at our leave-taking in May, and partly because of the cooling of my fascination after four months’ separation. I decided not to frequent theoutlying fort where my soldier friends had returned because of the inconvenience of going thither. I believed I could find associates within a half hour’s journey from where I myself resided. I had decided to try my luck in the 14th Street theatre district, which was at that time a favorite promenade of fairies.
Year 1894—I Become a High-Class Fairie.
One evening I clad myself so as to present the most attractive appearance possible: a blue suit, with box plaited, belted coat (Norfolk style); dark red necktie; white gloves; and patent-leather shoes. As a high-class fairie, I sought to dress in a distinctive manner, so as to be more readily recognized by my prey. Therefore unusually large neck bows and white gloves. Fairies are inclined to be loud in their dress. The excessive wearing of gloves and the wearing of a red necktie are almost universal with high-class fairies. Once a blackmailer to whom I would not hand out the three dollars demanded made good his threat to turn me over to a policeman, who took my red tie as conclusive evidence that I was a fairie. Of a fairie who was arrested for accosting on the street, I have heard it said: “He got thirty days for wearing a red tie.”
On my first visit to the theatre district named, I promenaded up and down for about an hour, afraid to accost any adolescent. Finally one accosted me: “How’s business?”
“How do you know my business?” I replied with a smile.
“Oh, I know all right. Didn’t you get many tonight?”
“I was only looking for you. I cannot express howbeautiful you appear to me. Please excuse me for being so outspoken.”
The “Other Side” of a Senior’s Life.
“Oh, there’s no harm done.”
“You are the most beautiful and best dressed fellow I have seen this evening. Won’t you please,please, take me as your valet and slave? I will serve you for nothing.”
He happened to be living in a furnished-room house in the neighborhood. Arrived in his room, he treated me with marvellous gallantry, as if I had been a queen. For several weeks, I spent an evening in his company. He introduced me to his companions, they to theirs in turn, and before long I numbered among my acquaintances scores of the habitues of the gambling halls and other dens of vice of this quarter of the city, and associated with them in these places, though fellatio and coquetry were my own only departures from a most puritanical life. Such an environment was it that fate had in store for the innocent stripling of a few years ago who had chosen for himself the self-abnegating career of a foreign missionary.
Outside of this one evening each week in which I gave free rein to my “baby girl” proclivities, however, I continued to be a most industrious collegian, even winning prizes because of my excelling all others in some branches. My every-day circle had no suspicion of the double life I was leading. Whenever returning home after an evening passed as a fairie, I took the most extreme precautions that I should not be followed, and of course concealed from all who knew me as “Jennie June” that I was a person of more than a common-school education.
Depilation.
All classes of sporting men—young actors, professional gamblers, racetrack bookmakers, and adolescents of some means and without occupation other than to sip continually of all the gross pleasures of life—constituted the associates of “Jennie June” during the following year and a half. I read in the newspaper several times that one of my paramours held a world’s record in one branch of sport. I found that very few of this moneyed, sporting class cared to go beyond joking with me and teasing me, and none beyond the age of twenty-five ever went to extremes. In this neighborhood at that time female filles de joie were numerous, and the sporting men were more than satiated. The fairie’s success is inversely proportional to unmarried adolescents’ opportunities with the gentle sex.
About the beginning of my 14th Street career as a high-class fairie, I removed all the growth of hair on my body and limbs by means of a safety razor so that they were as glabrous as statuary. I considered that I thus beautified my body. The operation had to be repeated about once every two months. I would let the hair on the face grow for a full week, remaining in my room continuously the final two days, Saturday and Sunday, because of my untidy appearance. I would then pull it all out by the roots through the application of depilatory wax. For two or three weeks subsequently my face would be as devoid of hair as any woman’s, when the new growth would reach the surface of the skin. After another week’s growth, it was necessary to repeat the operation. I had hoped that the repeated violence to the hair-cells woulddestroy their functioning and I would be permanently rid of facial hair, my most detested mark of the male, but there was no appreciable effect. I also feared the repeated operation might occasion a malignant growth, but I was ready to take every risk.
Other High-Class Fairies.
About the age of seventeen, I was horrified at the first appearance of hair on my face. For several months I refused to shave, but pulled the hairs out when they became long enough to grasp between the fleshy part of the thumb and the blade of a dull knife. I was again horrified when my father presented me with a safety razor. Fortunately for me, this invention shortly preceded my arrival at puberty, my horror of it being far less than of the old-fashioned kind.
During this period of my career, I learned that fairies are maintained in some public houses of the better class, and met several of these refined professionals, who resembled myself both physically and psychically. They commonly have plates substituted for their front teeth. Even I took this expedient under consideration. It was suggested to me to become an inmate of such a house, but I could make the career of a fille de joie only a side issue. I gave first place to the intellectual and others of the highest aims of life. My sister courtesans, both male and female, thought only of the sensual, and had adopted their occupation as a gainful one, whereas I sought merely the satisfaction of strong instincts, which unsatisfied would make practically impossible the higher life I regularly lived.
Experience with Venereal Disease.
During this period I knowingly encountered the firstcase of gonorrhea in a companion. Until eleven years later, when I contracted syphilis, I had an unreasonable horror of venereal disease because of what I had heard in personal purity lectures to students. Nevertheless I was ready to take every risk for the satisfaction of my craving. For my entire open career of twelve years as a fairie—for I did not happen to contract syphilis until its very close—I conceived that in buccal syphilis, the buccal cavity is completely filled with burning, excruciatingly painful ulcers, and no solid nourishment can be taken. A lay confidant almost at the beginning of my fairie days had told me he had seen such a case in a hospital—probably fabricating in order to scare me away from the indulgence of my proclivities. When I finally did contract buccal syphilis I found it not even one-thousandth as serious as it had been represented to me. (See events of 1905.) I always rinsed the buccal cavity as soon as possible subsequently to fellatio, and always kept my system entirely free from alcohol and other narcotics. Throughout my twelve years’ association with young men who drank habitually, I always totally abstained from and abhorred alcoholic beverages. So far as I know, I did not contract gonorrhea until 1917, after twenty-four years of promiscuity with the exception of several periods of abstinence or of monandry each of several months duration.
In the ninth year of promiscuity, several long slender venereal warts grew downward from the inside of the upper lip, not visible on the exterior, but troubling me somewhat in articulation. A surgeon excised them and they never returned. In the twelfth year, a large wart appeared justoutside the sphincter anus and disappeared without any treatment about twenty months later. I have here indicated all my personal experience with venereal diseases.
Anatomical Peculiarities, Etc., Encountered.
In my approximately sixteen hundred intimacies with about eight hundred different companions, I found only about three cases of venereal warts, and about the same number of cases of chancre. Only one confessed to having gonorrhea, and I myself detected it by the discharge on only one other. Young men suffering from syphilis or gonorrhea in membro virili who have a conscience are not likely to permit fellatio. I have, however, encountered the superstition that if a man afflicted with venereal disease can secure fellatio, the malady is imbibed out of the system.
I encountered only four or five monorchids, about five cases of pronounced varicocele, and about five bad cases of phimosis. Slight phimosis was often encountered. I would never have gone to extremes with a monorchid or with one suffering from a bad phimosis if I could have avoided disappointing him or hurting his feelings; and even regretted being thrown with one with only slight phimosis. I was attracted only ad glandem magnam atque de more nudatam. I never encountered a case of hypospade, of epispade, or of noticeably short frenum. Only about four were absolutely incapable of orgasm in my presence, while perhaps two dozen out of the eight hundred found it dilatory or incomplete. With myself orgasm was practically always prompt and complete, but was disagreeable. About a dozen cum orgasmo perfecto non potuerunt ejaculari. Alii duodecim habuerunt tresejaculationes in semihora.
Manner of Life of a High-Class Fairie.
Solum circiter triginta voluerunt duo aut tres eadem nocte, atque nemo plus.In ninety-five per cent. of cases, incubuimus solum from twenty to thirty minutes. I never took the initiative in parting, although I was generally quite reconciled. Even in the less than five per cent. of cases where we passed the night in the same house, I nearly always—because of my inability to fall asleep otherwise—occupied a separate bed except for one hour after retiring and another hour prior to rising.
To return to the events of my Fourteenth Street days, I would sometimes, in the public parlors of the houses of assignation in that vicinity, be a member of a jolly party of adolescents and filles de joie. Everybody would be exceedingly kind and courteous to me, and in general displayed toward one another the most extreme politeness. I have never been in a more charming circle, and would experience the highest earthly bliss. The young men would hold me on their laps and fondle me before the eyes of all, even of strange parties of patrons who were simultaneously occupying the large parlors or drinking saloons. I feared some member of these other parties might recognize me. Occasionally we repaired to a private chamber. In my fairie apprenticeship and during my career around the military posts, I was the financier. But during the present period, that function fell entirely to my associates.
On other occasions, my associates were boisterous and outrageously indecent in their conduct toward me in thepublic parlors. The following are quotations from my journal: “I have to weep when I reflect that I, a scholar, a litterateur, and a philosopher, am so often made the sport and laughing-stock of the immoral and godless crowd which assembles in the parlor of the X—— Hotel. To think of my acting like a simpleton, and being looked upon as a simpleton by those greatly inferior to me in mental ability!”
Conflict of My Two Lives.
“I am satiated with sensual pleasure. It is the vanity of vanities. Good deeds done our fellow men are the best investment in life. I pray God to send forth laborers into His harvest, and to let me be one. When I see the multitude of young people wandering astray, as sheep without a shepherd, the words of scripture ring through my ears, ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people!’ Sometimes I seem to have a clairvoyant vision into the future, and behold myself, finally saved from animality, commissioned by the great I AM to be a proclaimer of the blessed Gospel of peace and good will among men.”
One evening a strange adolescent accosted me on the street: “You are a fairie, aren’t you?”
“What makes you think so?”
“No one but a fairie would stare at a fellow like you do. Don’t you want to take a walk with me over to the East River?” [Where the streets were entirely deserted at night.]
On the way he inquired my real name, occupation, residence, and all about me, and feigned a friendly interest. I of course gave false answers. Arrived in the desertedregion, he allowed me to incriminate myself for a single second. Then he seized me violently and exclaimed: “I was just laying for fellows like you. You have been lying to me. You don’t live down on the Bowery, and you are no tailor. I know you! I have seen you uptown! Now I have evidence against you! That is all I was after! I am a detective, and you are under arrest!”
Adventure with Reputed Detective.
“What have I done to you that you should treat me like this? I did not accost you! You accosted me! Have mercy on me, a poor unfortunate, and let me go!”
As we walked along, I, unexpectedly to him, wrenched myself from his grip and escaped. A kind Providence made me unusually fleet of foot, and many times in my subsequent career, I outran a persecutor. The young man may have been fabricating, but detectives have been actually sent out by the authorities to entrap inverts. The author knows of a case where the invert was induced by the detective to incriminate himself where he could be photographed in the act, and as a result spent several years in state’s prison.
On another warm evening, I was skylarking with several high-class adolescents in the deserted region in question. A gang of youthful dockrats surprised us, and we fled in a panic. I happened to be captured. Having perceived that I was an invert, they at first conducted themselves in what was to me the most pleasing manner and then robbed me.
One of my associates on a summer evening conducted me to Stuyvesant Square, a few blocks from my usual haunts, and introduced me to his circle of friends, who in goodweather spent part of nearly every evening on the park benches. All these adolescents were members of a young men’s club in the neighborhood, with about three score members of which I soon became acquainted. Morally and religiously, these young men stood higher than any other class that I ever associated with as “Jennie June.” No virile young men in New York City stand higher than they, being of the best “Y. M. C. A. type.” In summer, for about ten years subsequently, I occasionally called on my many friends some of whom were almost sure to be seated in this small park during part of a pleasant evening. I saw some successively reach puberty, young manhood, marriage, and fatherhood.
Debut in Stuyvesant Square.
The majority of this superior class of young men treated me kindly, but only about one in eight ever went to extremes, and these never more than six times individually. A considerable proportion of those who knew me to be a fairie, however, thought I must therefore be a monster of wickedness, and of the many different sets of adolescents with whom I associated as “Jennie June,” only one other inflicted on me as much suffering as did this Stuyvesant Square group. An extenuating circumstance is that I could not let them know that I was a person of strong religious and moral convictions, and habitually led a respectable life. I was always entirely inoffensive, merely coquetting with those to whom I had been introduced. My influence on their lives was not at all bad. I even encouraged them to live the higher Christian life, as about one-half were church members, and practically all, regular attendants on its services.
Persecution by High-Class Adolescents.
Some of their number who looked upon a fairie as necessarily a monster of wickedness—for why otherwise would the law place upon his sexual conduct a penalty of ten years in state’s prison?—gave me several severe thrashings, so that I always visited the Square in great fear, but took the risk for the affection that I had for those who were glad to have me talk and coquet with them.
The following was my extreme suffering at their hands: I happened to be one evening seated alone on a park bench. Several of my enemies discovered and surrounded me. Very much frightened I attempted to leave, but they would not permit it. They stuck pins into me, inflicted slight burns with lighted matches, and pinched me unmercifully, particularly the penis. There were policemen within hailing distance, but I was told I would be arrested if I called for help. I was entirely innocent, but the police would have believed the false testimony against me of a half-dozen accusers. When satisfied with wreaking their vengeance, they turned me over to a policeman with charges, but he simply ordered me out of the park. Seemingly the higher the standard of morality of adolescents as at present trained, the greater the physical violence that they inflict on fairies. One lecturer to students on personal purity whom I heard counselled his adolescent hearers to give a blow in the face to any associate who ever suggested homosexuality.
Anti-Invert Laws Worse Than Useless.
I wish here to emphasize the fact that there would be no risk of the spread of homosexual practices through the removal of the legal penalties attached to them and the consequent removal, at least in large part, of the practiceof our best adolescents in beating up and torturing androgynes because the latter are outlaws. Almost exclusively, those addicted by birth to these relations—regarded by the normal males as highly unaesthetic—and largely irresponsible for their conduct, can alone occasion these so-called “crimes.” What is the use then of laws against practices really harmless to society and to the adolescent—while perhaps harmful to the invert to the same degree that marital relations are harmful to a wife and mother—and occasioned alone by those who are driven by an innate impulse, often uncontrollable? The law does not imprison deaf-mutes for being born with abnormal inner ears, and why should it imprison members of this other congenitally defective class? The invert asks only for the same standing before the law accorded all other men. But as law and custom always make special exemptions for the congenitally defective, perhaps it would be right to show special mercy to the invert.
One evening at the close of about eighteen months of my avocation as a Fourteenth Street “street-walker,” I was promenading up and down. Now and then some habitue of the district would recognize me, stop, and flirt for a few minutes. Finally I encountered a party of six adolescents. Four had never met me previously, yet all talked in a most free and unrestrained, as well as indecent manner. After a while, one proposed that I accompany him to his room.
“I am afraid those other fellows will follow us and hurt me.”
Farewell Night to Fourteenth Street.
“They are all friends of yours.”
“I am not so sure about that. You know some fellows hate a fairie, and some of those boys appear very heartless. You saw how rough they were to me right on the street! If they should try to hurt me, would you fight for me?”
“Of course.”
“How could you alone fight against five fellows?”
“Well, I would do the best I could, and depend on you to help me.”
“Don’t think of depending on me. You know a girl can’t fight. All a girl can do when fellows fight is to look on.”
“You could at least scream, couldn’t you?”
“Yes, I could scream.”
“Well, you do the screaming, and I’ll do the fighting.”
A few minutes after we arrived in the young man’s quarters in a furnished-room house, the other five burst in. They proved to be as heartless a gang as I had ever met, although belonging to the prosperous class of society.Micturiverunt super meis vestibus atque me coegerunt facere rem mihi horribilissimam (balneum ani cum lingua, non aliter quam meretrices faciunt). Me coegerunt recipere tres eodem tempore, fellatio, pædicatio, atque manustupratio. Ultimum mihi imperatum cum adolescens non potuit facere inter femora eodem tempore.Later one who had difficulty in achieving the desired results mecoegit ad fellationem unam semihoramcontinuously, repeatedly punching me in the head and face because I did not do better by him. Again for a half hour continuously mecoegerunt ut supinum cubem atque usi erunt ore meo sicuti cunno, sic me strangulantes horribiliter. Cum priapus concurreret meas dentes,they would punch me in the face, atque mandabant ut desisterem eos mordere.
One of the Worst Assaults.
This was one of my three very worst experiences of sexual abuse. The physical suffering and discomfort were extreme, but I was so fascinated by the savagery and the beauty of my tormentors that I experienced a species of mental satisfaction, being willing to suffer death if only I could contribute to their pleasure. During my career I had numerous experiences, but much less trying, along this same line. A fairie is often thus treated by cruel, lecherous adolescents, since they know he is an outlaw and can not bring them to justice.
Their lechery finally satiated, one of them stuck a handkerchief into my mouth, and said: “Do you know you are worse than a hog? You d—— fairie, going around to corrupt young fellows! We will teach you to keep away from Fourteenth Street hereafter!” Another cried: “You’ve got to let me have first whack at him!”
I was conducted to a dark, deserted street, where one of them rained violent blows in my face, while I did nothing except to seek to protect my features as much as possible with my hands. Finally it occurred to me to feign unconsciousness—my first adoption of this ruse—when they all hurried away.
Only through the special mercy of an overruling Providence I was saved from permanent injury that night, and on several other subsequent nights of my career as a fairie. During my Mulberry Street career I never received theleast blow, and during my years of association with hundreds of soldiers of four forts, I never received a blow deserving of mention. But I was seriously assaulted three times by soldiers of a fifth fort, several times by Stuyvesant Square acquaintances, several times by acquaintances of my Bowery period, and only the one time just described, by Fourteenth Street acquaintances. A certain class of adolescents, regarding the conduct of a fairie as the depth of depravity, yearn to lay violent hands on him.
Serious Assaults.
I was compelled immediately after the assault described to have my wounds dressed by a physician. On subsequently arriving in my room, I followed my universal custom after a return from a female-impersonation spree: that is, the first thing I did was to fall on my knees and thank the Omnipresent, All-pervading Spirit, that I had been permitted to see home again and resume for a season the ordinary course of my life as a scholar. But after retiring, I could not sleep, but tossed about all night in a half-waking delirium. Every moment it seemed as if I would become a raving maniac. I moaned repeatedly, and called upon God to show mercy and deliver me from my mental agony.
Is it just that inoffensive inverts should be subjected to such outrages, and have no redress? A confidant, with whom I discussed proceedings against these conscienceless young men, gave it as his opinion that the court would immediately turn around and make me—who, if I must say it myself, have always been unusually conscientious notwithstanding my sensuality—the defendant against themost serious charges. (This practically happened in 1905.) What other class of men is treated thus by the law and public opinion?
Incognito Adventures Practically Inevitable.
The reader may reply: “If they don’t want to suffer in this way, let them stay home and keep away from people who deal thus with them.” But inverts often have to follow their own nature, although they have striven hard to act according to the nature of the majority of men. With the present organization of society, and the present extreme scorn manifested toward victims of inversion, it is only natural, and almost necessary, if inverts desire to preserve the respect of their every-day circles, that they should visit incognito some section of a great city remote from their own. Suppose in a war between two tribes of red men, a brave is captured, consigned to adopt the dress and occupation of a squaw, and is in every way treated as a squaw. Would this unnatural life be to the brave’s tastes? Would he be blamed if he sought to escape where he could live according to his masculine inclinations? No more is the passive invert to be blamed for escaping occasionally where he can live according to his quasi-feminine instincts.
The remedy lies in the dissemination of just and correct views of inversion, the removal of the deepseated but ill founded prejudice against individuals thus marked by Nature which is regnant in all classes of society, and the repeal of the unjustified laws against inverts, which more than anything else account for the unthinking man’s persecution of these stepchildren of Nature. Then like the red-man androgyne, his cultured counterpart can, withoutlosing his economic and social position, choose a mate from among his every-day circle. As long as he is outwardly modest and chaste, he should receive only commiseration and condonation for his homosexuality.
Period of Monandry.
For a week following the assault described, my terribly disfigured face confined me to my room. When somewhat healed, I was compelled to give my every-day circle a false explanation. For several weeks I felt only hatred for all adolescent libertines. At the end of that period I chanced to witness a youthful artilleryman reeling around a ferry waiting-room. Fascinated, I entered into conversation, told him I was an invert, and requested quasi-permanent monandry. His exact words were: “With all my heart.”
I began to frequent one evening a week the fort where he was stationed, but we disclosed to no one that I was other than an ordinary young man. I was, moreover, so fascinated with him that I did not seriously consider flirtation with his comrades. We exchanged numerous passionate love letters—my first essay in this field. I was also now inspired to compose my first amatory ballads, which were in praise of my “Man behind the guns,” and transmitted to him.
Our intimacy continued for several months, until, having become an outcast and penniless, I was unable to make him presents, and he consequently became negligent in keeping his appointments.
During this year 1896, I read Krafft-Ebing’s “Psychopathia Sexualis,” besides a number of articles on inversion which had been published in American and European journals.I availed myself of the library of the New York Academy of Medicine. Some years later I read there Havelock Ellis’s “Sexual Inversion.”
My Twenty-Third Year.
This autobiography has now reached my twenty-third year. I had received my baccalaureate degree with honors, and was in my second year of graduate study. I had not really degenerated morally or religiously. For the entire year ending at the date at which I had now arrived, the aggregate time devoted to female-impersonation and coquetry was approximately one hundred hours, as compared with about twenty-one hundred devoted to my studies and two hundred and fifty to the worship of my Creator and religious culture. Surely I was not to be tabooed as a moral leper. While the average church member, through lack of understanding of the conditions surrounding my life, would have branded me as a hypocrite, I sincerely believed and lived up to the fundamental truths of the Christian religion.
I still enjoyed an unblemished reputation. I associated with all my beaux, including my soldier friend, incognito. Always on returning home after an evening passed as “Jennie June,” I took precautions that I was not followed.
The wreck of my happy and highly successful student-career was now brought about by a physician whom I had consulted in hope of a cure for my inversion, but not one of the two gentlemen already named. He happened to number the president of the university among his friends, and whispered to him that I ought not to be continued as a student. I was immediately expelled.