“I am too. I can take you to a doctor and prove it by his word. I am a girl incarnated in a boy’s body.”
For fear of a pummeling, I handed over all I had, less than a dollar.
Excessive Venery Very Harmful.
“I am undecided what to do with you, lock you up, or give you a thrashing, you d—— fairie!”
“Please let me go! I am very weak and can’t stand much. You want to punish me for being a fairie, but I can’t help being what Nature made me. Do you think any one would be a fairie from choice when they are the most despised of mankind? Think how much better God has been to you than to me. Have pity on me! I am one of the most unfortunate of human beings! For your dear mother’s sake—whom every boy must love—I beg you to show me mercy!”
An appeal to mother-love seldom failed. I return to the dance-hall and enter. My soldier friends are nowhere to be seen, so I take a seat among a group of blue-jackets of my own age, and am not slow in betraying my character through expressions of my admiration. A room is hired.
It was after three A. M. when I sought rest. But my brain was so excited that I tossed about for two hours, having alternately chills for five minutes, and then fever. I felt that I was going to lose my mind any moment, and besought the Omniscient to allay my excitement. I had gone beyond my strength, and in addition the excessive venery was harmful to the nervous system. After five o’clock, I repeatedly fell into a doze, but immediately beginning to dream that my face and buccal cavity were covered with the most loathsome syphilitic ulcers—such as a university confidant had once told me he had seen in a hospital, falsely, in order to scare me from fellatio with strangers—I would awake with a start, horror-stricken. After suffering this nightmare a dozen times, I finally fell into a restful sleep lasting until early afternoon.
Typical Night on Side Street.
A typical night on the side streets: On Canal Street near Thompson was a pool parlor where acquaintances of the highest type for this period of my life—in large part adolescent drivers for the express companies—passed their evenings. While I was received in pool parlors of a lower grade, my presence would have been unwelcome here. One evening I was loafing in front of the place, waiting for some acquaintance to pass. Before long I was recognized, my presence announced to those within, and all temporarily interrupted their games to crowd around me. The majority had never seen me before, and were anxious to interview the person who was then the talk of the young “sports” of that part of the town, as well as of many other parts. Even in the foreign laborer quarters of New York City, if is rare for a young man to run across a professional fairie—as they constitute as near as I can guess only one out of every three thousand physical males—and furthermore, I have been repeatedly told that I acted the part in such perfection as never seen in any other.