Lest I should be misjudged (the reader will any way judge me the warmest body that ever breathed, as intimates have told me) I further confess that during the year ending March, 1921, I visited at another fort about once a fortnight a 20-year-old private whom I planned to adopt (not legally) as son to live with me the rest of my life. I previously looked over, at ball games at the post, the entire common-soldier personnel of several hundred in order to pick out one of the three or four handsomest. Even at my first visit, one or two of the privates with whom I exchanged words evidently took me for an androgyne looking for a sweetheart, and did their best to be “the lucky dog.” But I passed the poor fellows by until I could get intimately acquainted with one of the three or four pre-eminent Adonises. I later ascertained that the one selected—greatly to his joy and to the envy of numerous “buddies”—excelled in disposition and character as much as in good looks. I also learned he had been brought up in the back woods and had never attended school a single day, although he had learned to read and write a little after entering the army. After I had known him intimately for nine months, his enlistment expired. Only now I disclosed my true name and station and took him to live in my own home, where I had been all by myself, doing my own housework like a woman. Although I had loaded him with gifts, this my “third adopted son” took French leave after only three days’ residence with me. His “buddies” told me he had gone away to marry the girl with whom I had known he had been corresponding.
Having lost him, I immediately started in to cultivate at the same barracks its pre-eminent Adonis, and almost its pre-eminent Hercules, with a view to his non-legal adoption to live with me as son the rest of my life after a nine-months apprenticeship during which he would not know my real name, station in life, or place of residence. It is easy to conceal these things from common soldiers. They are not inquisitive. They believe my misrepresentations of myself—necessary because androgynes are the favorite victims of blackmailers. But after a month, this latest favorite committed theft and I never saw him again. His “buddies” told me that he had stolen two blankets, “government property,” and was therefore sentenced to two years in military prison. If I am correctly informed, court martials often impose on an enlisted man caught in a misdemeanor a prison sentence several times as lengthy as would a civil court. I take this opportunity to enter a plea for better treatment of common soldiers, who have been my “pals” for a quarter of a century—particularly for punishments by court martial no more severe than by civil courts. Sometimes I have thought that when an uneducated young man enlists to defend his country as a common soldier, he thereby forfeits all rights of citizenship and all privileges guaranteed by the |An Adonis or a Hercules?| American constitution. The cowboys of the Rockies have mingled with common soldiers because of the numerous forts scattered throughout the “Indian country.” I asked one with whom I was well acquainted why he did not serve a few years in the army. His words were: “Do you think I want to be a slave?” But the lot of the common soldier has steadily improved during my association with him, excepting during our war with Germany. In 1921, he is better treated by his officers than ever before.
The context of this footnote moves me to reflect: Do I prefer an Adonis or a Hercules? I incline to the latter slightly. My first “adopted son” (for nine years, as described in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE) was an almost unmatched Hercules and at the same time an almost unmatched Adonis. He was one young man out of ten thousand. My second “adopted son” (for only a half-year, as described in same work) was neither a Hercules nor an Adonis. Not more than one out of twenty adolescents can qualify under either of these physically superior types, and I must confess that these types are very much lacking in mental acumen. Bright intellects nearly always go hand in hand with poor physical development. My second “adopted son” (while only tolerably good-looking) commanded my adoration because of his beautiful disposition and extreme passion for myself. My third prospective “adopted son” was a pre-eminent Adonis, and a fair Hercules.
There exist other attractive qualities in males that knit females to them. The chief is intellectual brilliance. That to me has always been, sexually considered, decidedly detractive—because I am myself of the intellectual type. As a rule, only opposites attract.
[50]. Attempt at poetical expression of experiences described in prose on page [255] following.
[51]. For prose description of the personality that I have here attempted to depict poetically, see page [114] following.
[52]. See page [103] following.
[53]. See THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS, page [153]. Second stanza is a free translation from Beranger. For original, see AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, page viii.
[54]. Seemingly natural language of “pup love”, the girl repeating the former a hundred times in five minutes, and the adolescent the latter. Both also cry these words simultaneously while gazing into each other’s eyes.