II. Jailed for Wearing Petticoats.
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 |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 |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 |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 |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.
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]]
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.
Defective copy of Michelangelo’s Adam in Sistine Chapel, Rome: An Androgyne’s Conception of the Ideal Adolescent
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, |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 |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 |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 |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 |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 |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.