IV. A Stuyvesant Square Pick-up.
It is August, 1895—several weeks after Buddie McDonald had left me in the lurch, as he had his legal wife, and as he probably through life went on deserting quondam soul-mates when having no more use for them. Furthermore, during this single summer that I frequented the Rialto, I found it a barren stamping-ground for myself. Nearly all my Lotharios were of the moneyed class that go out of the city for the heated term, or at least while away their evenings at a shore resort in the suburbs. For I did not drift with solid business young men, but with those who sought an easy life. The book-makers were at Saratoga, the vaudeville artists at seaside theatres. Even professional gamblers preferred Saratoga or Long Branch during the months that fools with money to burn went to those places rather than to little old Fourteenth Street.
But in June I was fortunate in being introduced to some refined “young fellows” living near Stuyvesant Square, five minutes walk from the Rialto. Business or a slim pocketbook kept them in the city. I therefore formed the habit of staging my impersonation sprees in the Square—a park of about six acres. Within four weeks I had been introduced to several score young bloods—so many because all belonged to a neighboring club the talk of which I came to be on my advent because of my ultra-androgynism and female-impersonation. The majority liked to flirt with |An Unrivaled Hercules.| me an hour in the park as if I were a full-fledged mademoiselle. I was always clothed as a youth, although exceptionally loud, as fairies are wont. But the present work will pass over my relations with the Stuyvesant Square club-men because described in my Autobiography of an Androgyne.
In that August occurred one of the most eventful evenings of my twelve years’ career as overt female-impersonator. I had promenaded every path in the Square without running across any clubman—very unusual on a balmy evening. Therefore just before dark I seated myself next to the most attractive stranger in the park, where two thousand people were enjoying the cool of a scorching day. He looked to be twenty, was rather shabbily clad, but clean. It was not his features, but his powerful and well proportioned figure, that attracted me. His hair was red—a favorite color for neckties, but the very last I would choose for a beau’s chevelure. His face, while well formed, was close to the very worst among the more than one thousand young bachelors with whom I have coquetted. His eyebrows and lashes were blonde and barely visible. His complexion resembled a sheet of faded pink muslin—a solid color all over, not rosebud or peachlike, as the lamented Buddie McDonald’s. Particularly his cheeks were covered with pimples, common in redhaired men, so that one wonders how they shave. But because of his unapproached bone and muscular development visible even through his clothes, I did not like him a whit the less on account of his pigmentary defects.
For several months after that night, I fell in love, at first sight, with nearly every red-headed adolescent |Influence of Environment.| I ran across, particularly if his cheeks were covered with pimples.
In order to ascertain the trustworthiness, goodheartedness, and liberalmindedness of the Hercules, I first drew him out craftily by a long series of questions. Even people in my every-day world have given me the palm for inquisitiveness. I expected to put myself in the power of Hercules and needed to find out all about him. I was always ultra-wary about falling into a trap, as I already had several times in the Underworld. Androgynes are murdered every few months in New York merely because of intense hatred of effeminacy instilled by education in the breasts of full-fledged males.
I learned Hercules’ entire history—providing what he narrated was true. To my joy he told me he had been reared in a village in the Mohawk valley. Through heart-to-heart talks with hundreds of strange young bloods in New York’s Underworld I discovered that boyhood environment makes a vast difference in adult honesty and altruism. The country-bred adolescent manual-laborer is apt to be far less vile-mouthed and pugnacious, and far less likely to assault and rob one of Nature’s step-children than a young-blood product of city slums.
Only after I had been able to form a favorable judgment of Hercules’ disposition, I began to disclose, by my talk, that I was an androgyne. From my dress and mannerisms, however, any city-bred youth would have already judged my sexual status. Hercules later told me he had, but had feared saying something offensive. He said he had been impatient for me to declare myself.
Author’s Flirtations Mushy.
The following conversation serves to illustrate and analyze the hero-worship of the androgyne. It is admittedly mushy. The question is whether the reader wants the mushy or the untrue. Ordinarily conversation with a sexual counterpart made me silly. All my flirtations were mushy. The following phraseology is very close to the actual except that I have semi-translated Harvey’s dialect into ordinary English. Further, the reader must educate himself to judge justly even that with which, as he reads, he does not like to identify himself or make his own sentiment. For example, two confidential, Platonic literary friends told me that my original songs published in my Autobiography of an Androgyne were “sickening.” They could not sympathize with the androgyne sentiments and therefore the songs were “shoddy.” Likewise the following conversation must be judged objectively and the reader’s verdict be based on absolute reason, not on personal bias—not on the basis of the reader’s ability to put himself in the place of the Hercules or myself. It is a conversation to be analyzed scientifically.
“Beau, see how much bigger your hands are than mine! And how horny the palms! I bet you would give a good account of yourself in a fight!”
“I’ve had lessons in pugilism. Besides I come from a strong-built family. Me father’s piano-mover and me only brother steeple-Jack. Meself has worked as riveter on sky-scrapers.”
“So you have wielded a sledge-hammer!” I exclaimed enthusiastically because of his more and more marvellous revelations.
Hero-worship.
“All day long while steel-worker’s helper on the sky-scrapers.”
“O you are such a wonderful young fellow! Wonderful alone in your being brave enough to mount the sky-scraper skeletons! And still more wonderful in possessing the muscle necessary for wielding a sledge-hammer all day! May I feel your biceps? I am anxious to have my hands on the very muscle that slung the sledge-hammer!”
“Anything at all!”
“O what a biceps! Like a tremendous boil protruding out of your arm except that it is hard as steel. Among the scores of Strong Hanses whose biceps I have been privileged to pinch, you are the muscular prodigy![[31]] You must be a terrible slugger! I pity your opponent! Only a pyramid of jelly after you got through with him! Do you know, Mr. Strong Hans, that I have fallen in love with your biceps?”
“That’s a funny thin’ ter fall in love with! But just feel me chest muscles and leg muscles.”
“They are steel!” I cried in ecstacy. “Because of your being a muscular prodigy, I am driven beside myself in hero-worship! Do you know what the word ‘worship’ means? It means that I could prostrate myself with lips to your dirty shoes, and cry out, over and over again, forever, forever, your wonderful endowments! I could forever call you Sledge-hammer Wielder! Personification of Strength! Incarnation of Power! Man of Iron! Mighty Man of Valor! Mighty Man of Renown! Heaven wills that I, a poor weakling, bow low in adoration of a muscular prodigy!”
|A Rare Find.|
“You said it! I’ve got the build of a pugilist. But it’s meself as needs ter go ter the dentist ter git me teeth filled and haven’t the price.”
“I’ll attend to that. Because you are a rare find, Mr. Strong Hans! You are one young fellow out of ten thousand. I mustn’t lose track of you. Let me tell you the plans that have been going through my head since I met you. Nature has made it impossible for me ever to marry a woman. For I am myself really a girl whom Nature has disguised as a fellow. I only dress as a fellow because the law ignorantly requires it. Nature meant that I should go through life with a husband—not a wife, as ignorant society commands. For some years it has been my dream to take to live under the same roof, as long as God leaves me in this world, a young fellow who approaches my ideal. And you do as hardly another I ever met. And I want you to live with me as my husband. When you reach twenty-five, you may also marry a physical woman, and she will keep house for us. I shall always regard your and her children as my own. God has given me much above the average brain power, and I can earn money enough to support all. You will never have a care. You need never work unless you want to. For I will be your slave. Because you possess in by far the highest degree the bodily and mental endowment that are for me a magnet. You will be paying |Full-fledged’s Instincts Equally Unæsthetic.| for all I do by merely allowing me to gaze at your marvellous build a few minutes every day.
“You—like every one else—probably think I am a very bad sort of person. But perhaps you will discover some counterbalancing good qualities. In reality my bad side is no worse than that [sexuality] of all other men. The virile call me ‘Child of the Devil!’ The pot has always liked to call the kettle black. A person always considers right and high-minded whatever he himself is inclined to, and wrong and devilish whatever others are inclined to. Because people are thus in love with themselves and their own tendencies, they will not forgive my own bad side. Not because it is in any way harmful; merely because it is so exceptional.
“I have the means to support you from this evening on.[[32]] I guarantee you as good a start in life as young fellow ever had. Wouldn’t you like to become a lawyer or physician? Then why not tell me your true name and address, lest I lose you? Because until I know you thoroughly, I can not reveal my own legal name and where I live. Because people misunderstand so terribly women-men like myself.”
“Harvey Green, Eagle Hotel, Third Avenue.”
“I detest ‘Harvey’ because two acquaintances of that name were such poor specimens of men. Since you are to be my own personal sledge-hammer-slinger, I change your name to ‘Tom.’ That is the most masculine of names, and because you are the most masculine of young fellows—indeed the Supreme Man—you must |Common Type of Sexual Insanity.| be decorated with it. For you appear to be even more than man. A wonderful visitant from some other world. A super-man!
“I am afraid, Tom, you may be only a dream. I am afraid you may be only an apparition with me a brief hour, then to return, like Lohengrin, to the heavenly realm where the hero is immeasurably beyond anything we have on earth.
“So from to-night on, your legal first name is ‘Tom.’ And after I have tried you out, you will take my own legal surname. But my pet name is ‘Prince Wonderful!’ Can you feel, Prince Wonderful, that you charm me as a serpent a bird that it creeps upon in order to swallow? I know I am doing something crazy in letting you swallow me; in turning my back on all my own pleasures and prospects in order that you may get more out of life. For I would rather be the instrument through which a demigod like yourself enjoys some good before my eyes than myself to enjoy it. It is crazy of me; but my instincts lead that way, and I have the will to act that way. Muscular prodigy! Sky-scraper dare-devil! Your prodigious strength and muscles cement me to you as with hoops of steel!”
We soon took a stroll of half-a-mile to the East River, to a neighborhood of gas-houses, closed factories, and store-yards. No one ventured here after dark except homeless gutter-snipes in summer to sleep. I myself would not have ventured at night anywhere near these dingy and desolate blocks except under the protection of a Strong Hans.
On female-impersonation sprees in the Rialto and Stuyvesant Square, I was always richly clad and wore jewelry. While during my year’s female-impersonation |The Ultra-Unexpected Happens.| apprenticeship on Mulberry Street my pockets were rifled every night, I had not now for nearly a year suffered the theft of even a copper. And why should I entertain even the shadow of a suspicion of “Tom” whom I wholeheartedly accepted as an unsophisticated youth recently from the Mohawk valley and to whom I had pledged the usufruct of my fairly good earning capacity to enable him to live like a nabob? For more than an hour, on the park bench, he had demonstrated himself supergenial. He had seemed so glad and so grateful over what I had promised: To lift him from the slums to an honored professional career. The story of his life did contain some inconsistencies but I realized it only too late.
As soon as we arrived in an unlighted stone-yard and there was not another soul within hearing—at least we had seen no one for the last five hundred feet—Harvey Green suddenly changed to just the opposite of his supergenial and ultra-grateful mask. Only at the moment that he had me completely at his mercy did he disclose himself as a dyed-in-the-wool criminal—a fiend who would never give a second thought to having just committed a murder.
Since I had expected to take him under my own roof and acquaint him with my every-day professional personality, I had not gone to the extremes of frivolous female-impersonation customary before young bloods who would never meet me in every-day life. I had feared I would forfeit his respect. Thus I had bidden him call me “Ralph”—not “Jennie.”
“Ralph, what a ya think when I say I’ve served time in Elmira Reformatory? I kin prove what kinder man I am! Reach your hand here and feel this terrible |A Seance with a Burglar.| scar. And then reach it here and feel this other. Ralph, I got these scars from bein’ shot while runnin’ away after havin’ made a mess of burglin’ houses in villages. For it’s better ter be shot than caught. And I didn’t dare go ter any doctor. My pal dressed the wounds the best he could, and it hurt awful—I tell you! And both times the buggers bled and bled till I close ter croaked. But luck was with me; me guts escaped the pepperin’. And after I recovered from loss of blood and after the wounds began ter heal, I was as strong and husky as you see me to-night.
“But just to-night I happened ter be broke. I was just loafin’ in the park waitin’ for a sissie like you, Ralph, ter walk inter me trap, so I could git hold of some dough.”
“Harvey,” I could only stammer, being next to speechless because of surprise and terror, “I am stunned at what you say. I never believed you could so deceive me. Can I say nothing to bring you to your senses? Don’t you realize you have ten thousand times more to gain by being my friend?”
“Ralph, didn’t yez ever hear a bird in hand’s worth two in bush? Besides I could never be friend ter feller of your nature, Ralph! My hand’s agin’ you, Ralph! Because I’ve a criminal record, Ralph, every man’s hand’s agin’ me. And my hand’s agin’ every man. I’m a man without any heart. I’d as soon put a bullet through a bloke as look at him.
“No, Ralph, the burglar’s life I’ve chosen kin alone afford the excitement I need. Up me sleeve, I didn’t take the least stock in all your soft soap as we sat in the park. Your pet names and promises mean nothin’ ter me at all! You sure must take me for a softy in |Method of Robbery.| me promisin’ ter live with a feller like yourself! You’re now goin’ ter have a taste of what use I have for that kind of feller! Hand out your money! Hand out your money!”
As he spoke, he clutched a shoulder with one hand and clenched the other in my face. I handed over my wallet.
“Here! I’ll relieve yez of that watch and chain.... And off with that ring!... Now take off every stitch so I kin see if you’ve any concealed bills.”
Neighborhood Where Harvey Green Thought He “Finished” Jennie June
“You’re welcome to all I have on me, Harvey, and I love you too much to prosecute. Only please, please, let me depart unharmed! I forgive everything! If only you will let me depart unharmed, I will immediately |Author Robbed Two Hundred Times.| take you around to my room and put into your hand a hundred dollars I have locked in my desk.”
“I could n’t do that. It’d be too risky.”
While we argued, I undressed meekly and in unspeakable terror. I realized I might be experiencing my last five minutes of life. I took as much time as possible in the hope that a watchman might chance along. But why a watchman in a store-yard of paving stones?
“I guess now I’ve got everythin’ of value, though not as much as expected. You sneak, why didn’t yez have more bills onter your carcass?”
On female-impersonation sprees in Stuyvesant Square, I carried less than ten dollars. But judging from my rich attire and not knowing I had set out from home just for such a spree, Harvey must doubtless have thought I had on me a big roll. The present is only one of the most remarkable of about two hundred adventures I have had with robbers, the thievishly inclined regularly preying on androgynes because knowing the latter are themselves outlaws and thus unable to complain to the police.
Incensed over the disappointing size of his haul, Harvey continued: “And now, you sneak, I’ve got yez at me mercy! There’s not a man within hearin’! Shut your d— throat, or you’ll be worse off yet! Hold down your hands from in front of your mug! Hold down your hands! You bastard! You cannibal! Your nature’s so disgustin’ that every rightminded man would agree your face oughter be used as a butcher’s choppin’ block! And it’s me own great joy ter do the job!”
Only about so much of the fiend’s ranting was I able |Experiencing Death.| to catch. After I had received several sledge-hammer blows in the face, fallen to the ground, been kicked and stamped upon, I entirely lost consciousness. Even while I still heard his ranting, I hardly noticed any pain. I merely thought I was dying. I was fully reconciled, and prayed: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!”
The next thing of which I was conscious was violent retching—due to internal injuries. In his youthful verdancy, the fiend had probably thought he had finished me. But Providence overruled, as in a number of subsequent similar assaults when I was snatched from the very jaws of death, whereas every few months I see in the papers that some less fortunate androgyne has not lived to tell the tale.
I was at first puzzled as to whether I was waking up on the earthly plane or in another world. Until I fully recovered my senses, I lay inert. Then I slowly dressed and limped away, having to rest on the curb every five hundred feet. I searched out a street fountain to bathe my bloodstained face and try to counteract the swelling and discoloration. For, most of all, I feared arousing the suspicions of my every-day circle.
I then boarded a car for home, begging my fare. In its regular hiding place in a stone wall of a neighboring park, I obtained the key to the street door of my boarding house.[[33]] Fortunately without encountering anybody, I mounted the several flights of stairs and secured my room-key from its hiding place. On |Struggling to Save Reason.| arrival in my own snug harbor, the first thing I did—as always—was to fall to my knees and bless Providence for permitting me to see home again.
For several hours, I could not sleep. Every moment I felt as if I would lapse into insane raving. Every moment I besought God to show mercy on a persecuted outcast. I reflected on my lot: To go through life as a cordially hated bisexual. That was my cross, and I repeated over and over again—in my struggle to save myself from insanity—the identic prayer that I had at fifteen repeated over and over again on the night I had consecrated myself, and been consecrated by the brethren of the puritan church to which I then belonged, to be a preacher of the Gospel:
“Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee;
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken,
Thou from hence my all shalt be:
Perish every fond ambition,
All I’ve sought and hoped and known;
Yet how rich is my condition,
God and heaven are still my own!”
Immediately following later similar assaults, I have had to have my wounds dressed by a physician before seeking my room, and on one occasion had to enter a hospital. But on this occasion I waited until the following morning to summon my physician. He made one significant remark: “It would be worse than useless for you to try to prosecute your assailant. The court would immediately turn around and prosecute you as a felon!”
For two weeks I had to keep to my room. Never |My Visage the Most Marred.| in all my life have I seen such a swollen and discolored face; with one exception, and that exception died a few days later as a result of his terrible blows in the face. I told my landlady I had been in a fight defending a woman from her drunken husband. I telephoned my office that I was slightly indisposed. Thus emphasized so no business associate would call.[[34]]
After two weeks, when my face had become somewhat presentable, I ventured to the office still retaining only a black eye. “In my room in the dark, I struck the edge of the eye-socket on a chair spindle.” I doubt whether all believed me, but none proved so impolite as to ask embarrassing questions.[[35]]
But Harvey Green! I here address you in case your eyes should ever fall on these lines. I shall remember you to my dying day as occupying third or fourth place among the hundreds of hero-boys with whom Providence permitted me to commune. I never |Apostrophe to the Supreme Man.| met your equal in strength and muscle. Whenever I think of you, the words, Supreme Man, come into my mind. If I ever run across and recognize you after the lapse of more than a quarter of a century, I shall merely step up behind—where your eyes can not recognize me—and call: “Supreme Man!” “Supreme Man!” Then, without yet seeing me, you will recognize “Ralph” to be behind you; because no one else has probably thought to call you “Supreme Man”; because no one else could ever have worshipped you as I!
Poor deluded youth that you were in 1895! I almost weep whenever I reflect what you have missed in life through your poor judgment in robbing, and even aiming to murder, your would-be benefactor. For a few dollars worth of trinkets and for the satisfaction of torturing effeminacy, you turned your back on benefits to which could be attributed a money value of at least ten thousand dollars. But I freely forgive. Like the soldiers who crucified the world’s Savior, you did not know what you were doing.
The Fairie Boy.