On the way he inquired my real name, occupation, residence, and all about me, and feigned a friendly interest. I of course gave false answers. Arrived in the deserted region, he allowed me to incriminate myself for a single second. Then he seized me violently and exclaimed: “I was just laying for fellows like you. You have been lying to me. You don’t live down on the Bowery, and you are no tailor. I know you! I have seen you uptown! Now I have evidence against you! That is all I was after! I am a detective, and you are under arrest!”
Adventure with Reputed Detective.
“What have I done to you that you should treat me like this? I did not accost you! You accosted me! Have mercy on me, a poor unfortunate, and let me go!”
As we walked along, I, unexpectedly to him, wrenched myself from his grip and escaped. A kind Providence made me unusually fleet of foot, and many times in my subsequent career, I outran a persecutor. The young man may have been fabricating, but detectives have been actually sent out by the authorities to entrap inverts. The author knows of a case where the invert was induced by the detective to incriminate himself where he could be photographed in the act, and as a result spent several years in state’s prison.
On another warm evening, I was skylarking with several high-class adolescents in the deserted region in question. A gang of youthful dockrats surprised us, and we fled in a panic. I happened to be captured. Having perceived that I was an invert, they at first conducted themselves in what was to me the most pleasing manner and then robbed me.
One of my associates on a summer evening conducted me to Stuyvesant Square, a few blocks from my usual haunts, and introduced me to his circle of friends, who in good weather spent part of nearly every evening on the park benches. All these adolescents were members of a young men’s club in the neighborhood, with about three score members of which I soon became acquainted. Morally and religiously, these young men stood higher than any other class that I ever associated with as “Jennie June.” No virile young men in New York City stand higher than they, being of the best “Y. M. C. A. type.” In summer, for about ten years subsequently, I occasionally called on my many friends some of whom were almost sure to be seated in this small park during part of a pleasant evening. I saw some successively reach puberty, young manhood, marriage, and fatherhood.
Debut in Stuyvesant Square.
The majority of this superior class of young men treated me kindly, but only about one in eight ever went to extremes, and these never more than six times individually. A considerable proportion of those who knew me to be a fairie, however, thought I must therefore be a monster of wickedness, and of the many different sets of adolescents with whom I associated as “Jennie June,” only one other inflicted on me as much suffering as did this Stuyvesant Square group. An extenuating circumstance is that I could not let them know that I was a person of strong religious and moral convictions, and habitually led a respectable life. I was always entirely inoffensive, merely coquetting with those to whom I had been introduced. My influence on their lives was not at all bad. I even encouraged them to live the higher Christian life, as about one-half were church members, and practically all, regular attendants on its services.
Persecution by High-Class Adolescents.
Some of their number who looked upon a fairie as necessarily a monster of wickedness—for why otherwise would the law place upon his sexual conduct a penalty of ten years in state’s prison?—gave me several severe thrashings, so that I always visited the Square in great fear, but took the risk for the affection that I had for those who were glad to have me talk and coquet with them.