On my departure for home, as high as a dozen have escorted me at night along the deserted country roads and through the woods. Thoroughly fatigued after an hour, and refusing to go on, I would have my wrists twisted, and be slapped and pinched into obedience. But not one of the 500 acquaintances at Ft. Y ever inflicted pain because of ill will, and only six or seven of the 500 at Ft. X. I had remarkable success in winning the favor of men who before learning to know me personally detested me because they thought I was of the type of fairie to be found in the lowest of New York’s dens of vice. Personal acquaintance convinced them that I was an individual devoid of all vices except coquetry and dalliance.
Adventures with Policemen.
In the vicinity of X, I several times came into contact with the police, who came to know me as a fairie. The youthful ones would chat in a friendly manner, but some of the older ones, to whom soldiers who had not learned my inoffensive character had denounced me as an undesirable person to have around, have heartlessly ordered me off their beat, and warned me never to be seen there again under penalty of arrest. I thereafter sought to avoid them, but nothing ever resulted. My conduct in public was of course always above reproach. It was a bitter experience to have the public streets closed to me when I had been entirely inoffensive.
The following are extracts from letters written during this period to a former university associate. He had always been my favorite of all the students, being good-looking, athletic, and of particularly noble disposition. If he had not turned the cold shoulder on my amatory advances, and had been willing to be mated with me permanently—as I fondly imagined before I started on my career as a fairie—monandry would probably have satisfied me for life. In my first two or three years of puberty, monandry had occupied my thoughts rather than polyandry. This friend has continued to be a confidant from my student days down to the present writing, when I have reached my middle forties. In all my fairie life of twenty-five years, outside of several physicians, from whom I sought a cure, and my favorite pastor, I have confided events of that life only to five close friends of my ordinary life, and they all proved helpful and compassionate, and continued to be as good friends as ever.
A Conductor’s Sympathy.
(1) [Referring to only my second evening spent with men of Ft. Y.] Next they led me to a tree, and said they were going to get a rope and hang me. [Teasing.] I thought they intended great violence, and to save myself, while still held by them, fell to the ground, feigning to have a fit. This ruse frightened them, and they all ran off, fearing they had seriously injured me by their rough treatment. I lay in the woods until they were out of hearing, then arose and walked to the depot. But it was dark and I lost my way, and arrived at the wrong depot. I had my return ticket, which I had kept safe in my sock, but the conductor demanded an extra nickel. I told him I had no money, except a dollar sewed in my clothes. This I secured and paid him. I told him the soldiers had taken all of my money, and how roughly they had handled me, of course confessing myself to be an invert. It was surprising to hear his words of condolence, coming as they did from an uneducated conductor, the most beautiful words of sympathy I ever heard, just like the words of the Savior to the woman taken in adultery. Among other things he said: “If only every one lived as harmless a life as you, this world would be all right.”
Female and Infant Impersonation Natural.
(2) I sat down on a stone wall near the reservation to eat my lunch. I was both sick and exhausted, and wept while eating, and regretted I had come when I was feeling ill. But I felt that I couldn’t keep away. I longed to be where I am regarded as a girl and a baby, and where I am flirted with and petted.... I also mourned my fate, reflecting on my errand, and realizing that I was doing what would ostracize me and shock society if they heard of it.
(3) I often ask myself: When will it all end? I answer: When I am thirty years old. [I was then twenty-eight.] Then I shall be no longer youthful, and only a youthful person can be a professional fairie. A fairie over thirty is unthinkable. If I still have strong desire after that age, I shall have to seek some one in private [This came true] instead of flaunting myself as a fairie before the public gaze. For a male of over thirty to act the woman and the baby before a company of men would be unthinkable. But now, at my present age, it seems to me natural and not unbecoming.
(4) I am sometimes conscience-stricken over my actions. When I entered college, I intended my life to be one of self-denial, and I intended in every act to live over again as nearly as possible the life of Christ. But I am now doing almost nothing to spread the kingdom of God in the hearts of men, and to visit and cheer and relieve the afflicted, and I am indulging in so much animal pleasure.... Nevertheless, though I indulge in promiscuous intercourse, I spend no more moments in the pleasures of Aphrodite than the majority of married people, and I do not make these pleasures the chief aim of life. I spend one evening a week in flirting with what to me is the opposite sex, intensely masculine, fierce, cruel, pugnacious young men, and in dalliance with them. Two hours per week spent in the company of sweethearts, and all the rest of my time spent in seclusion from them. Am I a libertine? Am I indulging excessively in the lower pleasures of life?