I. Debut as Adult Female-Impersonator.
Ralph, I was ushered into this mundane sphere in the year of our Lord 1854. I was a lucky dog to be brought up on the upper West Side a few blocks from Central Park [New York City]. As a diminutive urchin, I dolled myself up in feminine habiliments at every opportunity. Eunice was my favorite playmate. I opined her appellation the most melodious that ever impinged upon my eardrums and regretted it was not mine personally. Whenever I flaunted myself in skirts, I adopted it.
In my early teens, father escorted me to a physician that the latter might query me concerning my feminine predilections and ridicule me out of same. Simultaneously father, through severe castigation, imposed a finis to female-impersonation in my own clique. I therefore commenced, during periods of special obsession to be a puella, the practice of perambulating the slums, first by daylight, and later after the shades of night had fallen. During these insensate peregrinations, there would swarm through my mind visions of flirtations with the ruffians around my age that I encountered. These “huskies” riveted my gaze. They fascinated me. But not until the fifth or sixth |The Pugilists’ Haven.| peregrination could I screw up courage to insinuate myself into the confidence of one of these magical intelligences.
I chanced for the first time to run across a Bowery bar-room, the “Pugilists’ Haven,” which, I had read in the papers, was the rendezvous of prize-fighters, gamblers, and gunmen [the most desperate type of gangster who will murder for pay]. The press advocated its obliteration. Curious that just because of this reputation, I was immediately insane to enter. For it was unholy ground. I reflected: “In this lowest of dives, they may accept me as a puella, although superficially a boy.” Because all early influences, Ralph, had made me opine that taking the part of a girl was the very lowest thing a boy could descend to. I further pondered: “Between the luxurious mansion of pater familias and this dingy dive, give me the latter! For here alone I might be able to pass as a puella. In my own cultured, Christian circle, female-impersonation is castigated. But would not the attitude of the offscouring of our mundane sphere—the Pugilists’ Haven gunmen—be different?”
And how crazy I was to insinuate myself with the adolescent gunmen, whom I had only read about! The very supposition of their presence just within that latticed door attracted me as a potent magnet snatches steel filings to itself. I passed and repassed the dive, continuously imagining what would transpire if I should penetrate this unholy of unholies, and having delectable visions of every species of flirtation with the demigods who made the saloon their rendezvous.
I finally emboldened myself to thrust aside a leaf of the latticed portal. It was my first appearance inside |“A Cat in a Strange Garret.”| a saloon, and I never had tasted any intoxicant. In my diffidence and ignorance of the proper course to pursue, I subsided into the first vacant fauteuil. For, on one side, against the wall, were rude, wooden fauteuils, almost all occupied by middle-aged cherry-nosed individuals. Extending the full length of the other side was a bar crowded with fast-looking younger men, each with a glass before him. Doubtless because of my verdancy, several commenced eyeing me, making remarks, and laughing. The nearest bar-tender immediately inquired: “Doll-baby, what’ll yer have ter drink?”
“Nothing.”
“Jackass! Every bloke dat comes inter dis here joint has ter take somethink!”
“Then give me a glass of beer,” I replied hardly above a whisper. In my embarrassment, I imbibed the beverage almost at a swallow. That gave all the witnesses hysterics. They assured me: “We only sip it!” They addressed me as “Siss!” “Pet!” “Fairie!” I did not immediately perceive the significance of the last appellation. I was encircled. Particularly two sailors ingratiated themselves. They requested me to purchase “schnapps” for them because impecunious. I provided glass after glass, for they were bewitchingly gallant. All the other individuals were kidding me: “The doll-baby likes the blue-jackets, sure Mike!” “Sailor-boy, take off your suit and make it a present to her!” “How I wish I was one of Uncle Sam’s boys and I’d git steeped in schnapps too!” I was mortified by such observations, and as soon as the sailor-boys invited me, departed under their escort.
I hired a chamber at a third-class hotel nearby. |A Transformation Not Bargained For.| I gave them funds to secure another. For we did not desire that the clerk perceive that we were all to occupy the identic room. We pretended the sailors and I were unacquainted....
They finished by inserting a handkerchief into my buccal cavity, tying a strip of the bed linen over it, binding my hands behind my back, and fastening my lower extremities to the bed springs so that I could not even kick. They then departed with my wallet and outer clothing.
After an hour of helplessness, I discovered that the partition to the adjacent chamber was scarcely more than cardboard. Because I perceived sounds of the entrance of an individual. I could even hear his breathing. I discerned the words: “How I wish I had three hundred dollars!”
I commenced a continuous jouncing up and down. The uninterrupted tintinnabulation of the springs attracted the individual’s attention and he addressed me. I could respond only with a low gurgling. The clerk soon liberated me. I had to confess everything. But he manifested sympathy and donated a nickel for carfare.
One blue-jacket was of about my own measurements. Evidently he intended to desert. For he had abandoned his uniform. I was compelled to attire myself therein and boarded a car for my domicile.
My house-key had remained in my appropriated habiliments. How to enter was my problem. If I rang, my arrival at midnight costumed as a sailor would disclose everything. I hoped the butler had neglected to secure the covering of the coal-hole in front of the basement windows.
Androgynes Resourceful.
Every one had retired. Able to raise the covering, I dropped to the coal-pile. I discovered that the door at the head of the cellar stairs was also fortunately unsecured. With trepidation and in absolute silence, I ascended, in stocking feet, to my chamber and devoutly thanked Providence for restoration to my family without a hair injured.
I had only recently purchased the appropriated habiliments. The subsequent day I visited the same establishment and succeeded in securing an exact duplicate so that my family would not observe the disappearance of the original.
Frank—Eunice.