Several stick their hands into my bosom. “He’s got a girl’s breasts all right.”
They ask me to sing, listen attentively, and then remark: “That is a high tenor. It has an effect on the voice all right.”
“Are you and I of the same sex?” I ask, taking pleasure in our physical and psychical contrasts.
“No, Jennie, you are a baby, and we are the big, big braves.”
My presence would inspire them to an evening of innocent frolicking, and they would play pranks on me, for example, dancing around the room shrieking like wild Indians, brandishing their swords, and banging them on the floor. I would respond to their pranks in the manner they were looking for. They thought that I had only the mental capacity of a girl-boy weakling, as I did not compose my own songs until after more than two years of association with them.
Hecatontandry.
In the barracks I was always outwardly modest and frowned on decidedly improper advances, but my venery in private soon set a minority against me so that entrance to the barracks was forbidden. I had a craze for hecatontandry, and achieved it. In a letter I wrote: “You know by that act [fellatio], you and I are bound together in a new and close relation of friendship, in a sort of wedlock. We stand henceforth forever in the relation of husband and wife, whether you will or not. Therefore please always remember me as more nearly related to you, more completely a part of your life and being, than your soldier comrades.”
In summer I would linger after retreat near the gate of the fort to watch the soldiers start out to seek their evening’s recreation. A hundred would pass, and nearly every one call out a pleasant greeting: “Hello sweetheart!” “Hello little wife!” I would reply: “Hello you dare-devil!” “Hello you dark-eyed beauty!” etc.
I was occasionally robbed or blackmailed by evil-minded ones, and was several times handed over to the police by such as misunderstood me. But the police always refused to place me under arrest, and even acted as a bodyguard against the very few soldiers who loathed an effeminate male and sought to inflict pain. My conduct in public was always above reproach, although I have been forced at night on a public road by half-intoxicated adolescents who happened to run across me. Discovery in the bushes by pedestrians only thirty feet away would have placed me in peril of long imprisonment. On one occasion the two soldiers had threatened to cut my throat if I made a sound, and they themselves did not stir from their positions (Simul fellatio atque pædicatio).
Ethics of My Conduct.