The reader now beholds me for the first time transformed into a sort of secondary personality inhabiting the same corpus as my proper self, to which personality I soon gave the name of “Jennie June,” and which personality was to become far more widely known in the immediately following dozen years than the other side of my dual nature, the unremitting student and scholar, was ever to be known. The feminine side of my dual nature, for many years, as a matter of conscience, repressed, was now to find full expression in “Jennie June.” For it was not alone fellatio that I craved, but also to be looked upon and treated as a member of the gentler sex. Nothing would have pleased me more than to adopt feminine attire on this and my multitudinous subsequent female-impersonation sprees, as some other ordinarily respectable androgynes are in the habit of doing when going out on similar promenades, but my position in the social organism was much higher than theirs, and the adoption of female apparel would in my case have been attended with too great risk. The mere wearing of it on the street by an adult male would render him liable to imprisonment.
I made my way to the quarter of the city bordering the Hudson River that is given over largely to factories and freight yards and is known as “Hell’s Kitchen” because of the many steam vents. In this lonely and at night little frequented neighborhood, perhaps the most advantageous in the city for highway robbery, where nothing else than burning passion could have induced me to go at night, I ran across a stalwart adolescent of about my own age seated alone on a beer keg in front of a bar-room. By a great effort of the will I accosted him. My voice trembled and my whole body shook as if I had the ague.
Ruffians’ Attitude Toward Inverts.
I had anticipated little difficulty in securing a companion, but events showed it to be otherwise. For years subsequently I associated intimately with hundreds of unmarried toughs of the slums from seventeen to twenty-four years of age, and so I know their nature. Approximately one-third have a distaste for coitus with an invert. The other two-thirds would accommodate him provided their sexual needs were not fully met by normal intercourse—which is generally the case. Moreover, there is a difference between their attitude toward a perfect stranger who accosts them, and an invert with whom they have become somewhat acquainted. The impulse to rob a perfect stranger tends to drown out all the movings of carnality. In addition, the feeling that he is a stranger and an outlaw—the latter fact being almost universally known—prompts them to assault him.
Along with an outline of what happened on this my first nocturnal ramble, I describe below my general method of approaching strangers in the poor quarters of the city. Of course I cannot recall the exact dialogue in a particular case, but all the sample conversations given in this autobiography are woven from actual remarks passed at different times. I have taken part in hundreds of dialogues of the kind sampled here and there in this book, and the reader can be assured of obtaining a truthful impression of the words exchanged by me—an androgyne—with my youthful virile associates. On the present occasion, after a few commonplace remarks, the conversation was of the following character:
“What big, big strong hands you have! I bet you are a good fighter.” My aim was to talk rather babyishly so as gradually to betray my nature.
Method of Leading Up.
“There’s a few as kin lick me but not many.”
“I love fighters. If you and I had a fight, who do you think would win?”
“I could lick a dozen like yer together.”