I found that the author was severely hurt. This Autobiography was his joy—a work which this epoch had been waiting for and which futurity will crown as a classic.
He fought with all his might against any of his verses being omitted. Every single word that I wanted to change or expunge was of vital importance to him.
And then I saw a light.
The Autobiography of an Androgyne would serve its mission best unedited, and so it practically remains.
The author, in writing this book, has written into it his own soul, for him to read who can see further than the printed word.
He has lighted a torch to show in his own way the baser sex feelings of a sexual invert.
He has shown some of the suffering which he has undergone at the beginning of his career.
He has shown the contempt in which the Androgyne is held by reason of a psychical aberration not of his own making.
He has shown how the homosexualist who does not do because he wills but who does because he must, is exploited by the criminal classes.
In thus lighting the torch and holding it up for us to see what he desires us to see, he also unconsciously lights up himself in all his womanly vanity, showing his pride in the fact that he is different from others; showing his pride in his many conquests; in fact, if I may use the word in a perhaps not quite exact way, giving a psychoanalysis of himself without attempting to do so.