I was conducted to a dark, deserted street, where one of them rained violent blows in my face, while I did nothing except to seek to protect my features as much as possible with my hands. Finally it occurred to me to feign unconsciousness—my first adoption of this ruse—when they all hurried away.
Only through the special mercy of an overruling Providence I was saved from permanent injury that night, and on several other subsequent nights of my career as a fairie. During my Mulberry Street career I never received the least blow, and during my years of association with hundreds of soldiers of four forts, I never received a blow deserving of mention. But I was seriously assaulted three times by soldiers of a fifth fort, several times by Stuyvesant Square acquaintances, several times by acquaintances of my Bowery period, and only the one time just described, by Fourteenth Street acquaintances. A certain class of adolescents, regarding the conduct of a fairie as the depth of depravity, yearn to lay violent hands on him.
Serious Assaults.
I was compelled immediately after the assault described to have my wounds dressed by a physician. On subsequently arriving in my room, I followed my universal custom after a return from a female-impersonation spree: that is, the first thing I did was to fall on my knees and thank the Omnipresent, All-pervading Spirit, that I had been permitted to see home again and resume for a season the ordinary course of my life as a scholar. But after retiring, I could not sleep, but tossed about all night in a half-waking delirium. Every moment it seemed as if I would become a raving maniac. I moaned repeatedly, and called upon God to show mercy and deliver me from my mental agony.
Is it just that inoffensive inverts should be subjected to such outrages, and have no redress? A confidant, with whom I discussed proceedings against these conscienceless young men, gave it as his opinion that the court would immediately turn around and make me—who, if I must say it myself, have always been unusually conscientious notwithstanding my sensuality—the defendant against the most serious charges. (This practically happened in 1905.) What other class of men is treated thus by the law and public opinion?
Incognito Adventures Practically Inevitable.
The reader may reply: “If they don’t want to suffer in this way, let them stay home and keep away from people who deal thus with them.” But inverts often have to follow their own nature, although they have striven hard to act according to the nature of the majority of men. With the present organization of society, and the present extreme scorn manifested toward victims of inversion, it is only natural, and almost necessary, if inverts desire to preserve the respect of their every-day circles, that they should visit incognito some section of a great city remote from their own. Suppose in a war between two tribes of red men, a brave is captured, consigned to adopt the dress and occupation of a squaw, and is in every way treated as a squaw. Would this unnatural life be to the brave’s tastes? Would he be blamed if he sought to escape where he could live according to his masculine inclinations? No more is the passive invert to be blamed for escaping occasionally where he can live according to his quasi-feminine instincts.
The remedy lies in the dissemination of just and correct views of inversion, the removal of the deepseated but ill founded prejudice against individuals thus marked by Nature which is regnant in all classes of society, and the repeal of the unjustified laws against inverts, which more than anything else account for the unthinking man’s persecution of these stepchildren of Nature. Then like the red-man androgyne, his cultured counterpart can, without losing his economic and social position, choose a mate from among his every-day circle. As long as he is outwardly modest and chaste, he should receive only commiseration and condonation for his homosexuality.
Period of Monandry.
For a week following the assault described, my terribly disfigured face confined me to my room. When somewhat healed, I was compelled to give my every-day circle a false explanation. For several weeks I felt only hatred for all adolescent libertines. At the end of that period I chanced to witness a youthful artilleryman reeling around a ferry waiting-room. Fascinated, I entered into conversation, told him I was an invert, and requested quasi-permanent monandry. His exact words were: “With all my heart.”