[22]. An adult who never surpasses the mentality of a child of twelve.
[23]. One of my three confidants achieved the highest success in life of any student in college with me—one of the highest political offices in the United States. Down to forty, I confided my homosexual adventures, although after we graduated, our personal relations were never closer than shaking hands. Within two years of his honorable name’s appearing in absolutely every newspaper of the Union, he permitted me to receive mail addressed to one of my aliases (used only by those who knew I was an androgyne) in his care. At the time I did not realize the favor I was asking—the risk to his reputation that he unselfishly took. Ungrounded scandals sometimes arise when a full-fledged man does favors for an androgyne.
[24]. Some androgynes of a less extreme type, however, tolerate militarics. I know of two who served in the World War—because they wanted, every day and hour, to be surrounded by adored young Mars. But if they ever got to the front, they would probably malinger. I know of another androgyne who was so afraid of being drafted that he took a hatchet and chopped off two fingers of his right hand. In the World War, I was subject to draft under the latest law. I had planned to escape by claiming that I was not a man, the law specifying that sex alone as liable.
[25]. Non-mushy specimens are given in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE. Its editor killed the mushy.
[26]. Substitute for the real name of the pseudo-hotel.
[27]. Decades ago I read in a newspaper this imperfectly remembered lyric. Name of poet not published.
[28]. I was dogged only three times in my many years of leading a double life: (1) Several Stuyvesant Square club-men succeeded, unbeknown to me, in boarding the same elevated train. I discovered them only after I had descended to the street. My refusal to proceed to my lodgings so incensed them that they disfigured my face with blows. (2) I was dogged again by several other Stuyvesant Square club-men. I discovered them before I boarded the train. Again my refusal to proceed angered them to giving me a beating. [They beat me because they had been taught that androgynes are monsters of depravity. All were around twenty years old.] (3) I was dogged in 1918 by a ruffian of twenty-two, with whom I had talked confidentially, but finally forsook because my usual test had shown him untrustworthy. He followed me for more than a mile, although I turned several corners suddenly and stood in a doorway and watched. But he had reckoned on my doing just that, and in some mysterious way guarded against my discovering him. He was evidently a super-crafty criminal. On straight stretches of street, I looked back half-a-dozen times, but saw nothing of him. (Because he had always taken the opposite side of the street and kept such a distance behind I could not recognize him, while his own eyesight carried further than mine.) When I arrived at my goal (fortunately this time an amusement resort and not my home), he gave me one of the surprises of my life by coming up to me. I fled from him in irrational terror.
[29]. Note.—See “Recollection” in Part VIII.
[30]. Martin and Paul are depicted in THE RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD.
[31]. In the summer of 1921 I twice saw moving pictures of Jack Dempsey arching his naked biceps. I was thirty feet away and his size was magnified at least twice. I carefully watched for comparison with Harvey Green. The protuberance was not equal to Harvey’s, who was far from being approached by any of the scores of sluggers whose biceps I have pinched. I can never forget Harvey’s mountains of biceps.