I. Angelo Angevine’s Debut as Public Female-Impersonator.
That fancy masculine name was only an alias, androgynes having a penchant for such as are musical and of exalted connotation. Further, its first element was after Michelangelo, an arch-bisexualist.
In 1895, Angelo—Phyllis divulged what I have here recorded as nearly as I can remember. As I said in the first chapter of this book, I remember only the general outlines of the originals of the monologues I give. But I have listened to numerous confessions of the sort of which I now present a sample. Where definite memory fails me, I have had recourse to my sea of general memories of the way the hermaphroditoi talked, how they looked upon life, what they did, and what befell them. I aim at a fairly full, but essentially true, portrayal of the inner history and life experience of cultured female-impersonators who were my bosom friends during my own hey-day in that avocation in the Rialto. In order to economize the reader’s attention, I present all of Angelo—Phyllis’s life-story as if confessed to me at one sitting.
In referring to Frank White it seems more natural to use the masculine alias and pronoun, but |Cross-Dressing.| the feminine with Phyllis. For the latter was conspicuously womanish: beardal growth sparse and always clean-shaven, if not eradicated; breasts as large as in some women; hips very broad; spine disproportionately long and legs correspondingly short. “His-her” body approached the feminine to a higher degree than that of any other androgyne I ever set eyes on with the possible exception of myself. Phyllis surpassed me in meagreness of beardal growth, sissie voice, feminine strut and gestures, and craze and taste for feminine finery. As a cross-dresser and female-impersonator, the bisexual now to be portrayed was one of the two or three extreme hermaphroditoi, while ranking low in erotic furor.
[In a physical male, cross-dressing is the instinctive wearing of feminine apparel, or, in default, of the loudest and fanciest male styles. In a physical female, it is similar adoption of masculine habiliments, or in default, of feminine attire and aspect approaching the masculine as nearly as possible: hair bobbed, stiff linen collar, a man’s neck scarf, and always severely plain tailor-made waist and skirt. The reader will recall such photographs of brilliantly intellectual women, particularly authoresses. Cross-dressing is generally an earmark of sexual intermediacy. It is not at all due—as bigots claim—to moral depravity, but entirely to irreproachable instinct. It is not at all due to childhood’s training, such as the stories of parents’ bringing up their boy or girl as a girl or a boy when they particularly wished a female or a male heir. Such child, as soon as he or she became old enough, would wholeheartedly rebel against such a travesty. In nearly every case, cross-dressing is due to the fact that Nature injected a psyche of the one sex into a corpus of the other. The cross-dresser is not usually conscious of the oddity of taste for apparel. His or her manner of dressing indicates what he or she considers artistic. All ultra-androgynes—such as made up the membership of the Cercle Hermaphroditos—would always, if society permitted, clothe themselves as women.]
Phyllis’s Antecedents.
In 1895, Angelo—Phyllis was a plump little body looking to be a decade younger than “his-her” thirty-three, and of decidedly brunette, Mediterranean type.
Ralphie, mon cheri, the sexual cripple now speaking was born in 1862 and brought up in a town of 50,000 within 300 miles of New York City. I did not move here until twenty. As soon as I became financially independent of father, I chose New York as the stage for my career because only in a great city can an instinctive female-impersonator give his overwhelming yearnings free rein incognito and thus keep the respect of his every-day circle.
Father was one of the leading lawyers in my home town and wanted me in his office, for he seemed blind to my being a sissie. But just because of this fate, I could not stand living in my home town. Furthermore, I had no taste for law, and pined only one year in father’s law office after leaving high-school. I was all for Art, with a capital A! Art! Art! Which taste turned me into millinery channels as soon as I began life in New York in 1882.
Excepting the years that George Greenwood was with me as “adopted son,” I have in New York lived |Not Willingly Half-and-half.| all by myself in a 5-room apartment. Thus I have been able to transform myself into a young woman and set out for a female-impersonation spree without any one getting wise.
If I had had my say at birth, Ralphie, my lot would have been that of a full-fledged woman, or, less to be wished, a virile man. Not half-and-half. But at twenty I cut out the foolishness of all the time shedding tears over my fate. Those tears were chiefly due to the world’s forbidding a bisexual’s living according to his-her nature. I could not assume the responsibilities of a man and pay court to women—an ordeal so horrible, but expected of me if I stayed in my home town. I balked at having my life forced into a masculine groove. In New York one can live as Nature demands without setting every one’s tongue wagging.
I was unconscious of sex until my fourteenth year. Up to that age, I went to pay school. My dozen schoolmates—including four sisters—were all of the goody-goody type. No one ever tried to seduce me.
From fourteen to eighteen I went to public high-school. Several boys hugged and kissed me now and then. While I liked this, I shrunk away for shame. Now for the first time I felt sorry I was a boy. I stole a sister’s discarded garb, from corset to hat, which I kept under lock and key in my room and put on now and again in order to strut before a full-length mirror and feast my eyes on myself as female-impersonator. Because of shame, I never told a soul.
So counter to the fate of most hermaphroditoi, I was a virgin until the beginning of my female-impersonation |Dressing for a Spree.| sprees. Because in high-school, morbid bashfulness kept me from becoming well acquainted with a single boy. Down to twenty I lived as sheltered a life as any girl. I had really never been under any kind of temptation.
Ralphie, mon cheri, I can never forget the entire day spent in getting together my woman’s wardrobe on arrival in New York. I went to a ladies’ store in the Ghetto. I lacked the cheek to buy feminine finery uptown. I gave the Russian Jewess the usual hoax of amateur theatricals. And women are so dense as to believe it! She helped hugely to the end of my being able to turn myself into a stunning soubrette.
An evening or two later, in my flat, I dressed for my first spree. I touched up eyebrows with a stick of charcoal and cheeks with rouge; applied padding where needed, laced on a corset, and adjusted a soubrette’s wig. Lastly I put on my art gown, pinned on a picture hat, threw an opera cloak about me, and was ready to set out.
On my sprees I have always been careful to avoid a clue to my identity. No one would have ever learned who I really am even if I had been sent to Sing Sing. Since the world thinks female-impersonation utterly disgraceful, I had to spare my family all risk. Furthermore, they themselves would disown me if they ever learned of my mania for cross-dressing and female-impersonation.
It is bitter to be so misjudged! And people balk at being set right! While I get much joy out of life, I often feel crushed to earth when seeing how I am scorned, and now and again weep a full hour. When, |The Bowery a Magnet.| in the pride of their manly vigor, the virile throw at me a glance full of hatred or of ridicule, I feel like killing myself!
I always closed my hall-door noiselessly and used the stairs. The elevator boy might have recognized me in my disguise. If, on the several flights, I heard an approaching footstep, I would slink for a moment to a dark corner of the spacious hall. Reaching the street, I had my regular hiding place for my key and a yellow back. It was most necessary to be able to let myself in on my late return, when the street door was locked, instead of ringing up the janitor.
On my first spree, Ralphie—as on all for several years—I boarded an elevated train and alighted at a Bowery station. Several times in later years, I spied acquaintances of my every-day world either on the train or on the Bowery. I always gave them a wide berth, although having a great advantage in means of recognition.
And why, on my very first spree, did I seek the Bowery, Ralphie? Because only a few weeks before, in my home town, I had seen a comic opera staged on that avenue, its keynote the oft repeated refrain:
“The Bowery! The Bowery!
There they say such things!
And they do such things!
The Bowery! The Bowery!
I’ll never go there any more!”
So I was dead crazy to bring to pass there the female-impersonation sprees of which I, for several years, had had merely waking dreams in my home town. Such realization was why I moved to New York. |The Goody-Goody Transformed.| It was, mon cheri, all because I wanted to live within half-an-hour’s journey of the enchanting old Bowery!
On my first spree, I made my way up and down the crowded sidewalks for an hour, staring with all my eyes at the brilliantly lighted fronts of beer gardens, the many gaudily dressed girls strutting up and down all alone, but, most of all, the sporty-looking youthful laboring men seeking their evening’s fun. How longingly and beseechingly I gazed into the latter’s eyes! A hundred times I had accosting words on the end of my tongue. I but barely lacked the brass for utterance, notwithstanding that in my every-day life I had always been morbidly bashful. How I wished I were acquainted with at least one of these powerfully built—and, to me at least, bewitchingly handsome—foreign-looking young fellows!
Who, mon cheri, that knew me as a goody-goody boy in my home town, always going to Bible school twice on Lord’s day, and not merely once as nearly all children of pious parents, would have foretold that some day I would be tapping the sidewalks of America’s greatest red-light district as a common strumpet?[[42]]
Doctors claim to understand such as me a priori and are too squeamish to investigate. They would say I am insane. I have never shown any sign of a diseased brain, nor has there been any taint of insanity |The “Rabbit.”| in my family. Ours, mon cheri, is simply the case of half-and-half as to sex. The only taint in my family is that father is somewhat womanish: falsetto voice, sissie mannerisms, and never any mind for things thoroughly masculine. He ought never to have married to perpetuate, and probably strengthen, his own mild sexual intermediacy.
As I walked the Bowery on that first spree, I was puzzling my mind as to which of the brightly lighted dance-halls or the dark and fearsome dives—through whose doors I saw pass only sailors, gutter-snipes, and slovenly gangsters—would be the best stage for my virgin effort at female-impersonation. At last I slipped into the least prosperous-looking and, to the stranger, most uninviting, dance-hall, the notorious “Rabbit.” And why the “Rabbit”? Because it looked to be the most crime-inviting of all the dance-halls. I had stood and watched as there passed in and out the most criminal-faced of the Bowery boys: coal-heavers, dock-rats, and fierce-and-cruel-stalking gunmen—not to speak of the poor, deluded “fallen angels.”
I dropped into a chair. Almost in less time than I can tell it, four youthful coal-heavers came up grinning: “Hello Bright Eyes!”
Those three words were the most soulful, the most infatuating, that had ever fallen on my ears. I was also delighted because so lucky as to take in, right off, some of the many bewitching Bowery boys I had stared at that night, and cement them to myself. I smiled back: “Hello!”
For the next few hours, I was in hitherto undreamed-of bliss because of being wooed by all four in |Phyllis Finds “Herself.”| their delightfully wild and rough way. Ever since my later teens, I have always yearned to be treated by young fellows as a girl, and on my female-impersonation sprees now and again, I have had such yearnings fully met. On that debut at the “Rabbit,” I was for the first time in my life with sexual counterparts before whom I could be myself because they did not know who I was. And they treated me as their sexual opposite. They danced with me in turn. Only after four hours, I had to own up that I was not an out-and-out female. But that knowledge seemed to count for nothing with these lovesick coal-heavers.
Already two hours before, I had felt that I had had more than enough flirtation for one night. All my efforts to get away, however, were useless. At two A. M., the “Rabbit’s” doors were locked. I had to allow one of my beaux to escort me somewhere: to the Grand Central waiting-room, for there I would be safe. I now warned my beau that if he did not leave me, I would sit there for a week. But it took him two more hours to give up all hope of my yielding to his goodhearted pleas.[[43]]
Five minutes after he left, I sought the street. I turned half-a-dozen corners, lurking a minute around each to see if the coast was clear. I then boarded a car. I slowly dragged myself up the three flights of |Leader of a Bowery Gang.| stairs and noiselessly let myself into my flat. Tired out, I threw myself on the bed only half undressed and slept until noon.
But, mon cheri, I had now found myself. For seven years afterward, I sought the “Rabbit” or the “Squirrel” once every other week, giving the rest of my time to business or self-culture. One evening out of fourteen was all I could spare for the female side of my being. But the balance of my waking hours were filled with blissful thoughts of my flirtations—memories which will last as long as I. These sprees have been to me the first thing in life. I would have given up anything else for them. When now and again something has blocked my fortnightly spree, I would be the most melancholy person in New York.
On the Bowery, I always went with the same gang of about a dozen savages. If any one took a look at me, Ralphie—so soft-spoken, so chicken-hearted, so wishy-washy—they wouldn’t set me down as leader of a Bowery gang, would they? But that’s just what I once was. All the members of my gang were of foreign parentage, sturdy, possessed of well chiselled features, and tolerably clean. I found nothing disgusting about them. None had had more than three years’ schooling, or the least training in morality or religion. Nevertheless they were not a bad lot; far from being as evil-minded as the upper class would judge from the outside. None was more than twenty-five while a member of my gang, and none bright enough to earn his bread at an occupation of higher grade than coal-heaver.
The average age remained low because one after another settled down in marriage, having brought to |Androgynes’ Favorites Fortunate.| an end his sowing of wild oats, and some budding gangster took his place with me.
On my fortnightly hegiras, I was well supplied with money so that I 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.