During the last decade of the 19th century, the Fourteenth Street Rialto ranked second only to the “Tenderloin” as an amusement center in the entire metropolitan district. While it still holds the same rank in 1921, its present night life is only a shadow of what it was. A quarter of a century ago, New York was wide-open, whereas for more than a decade, the lid has been down tight. Promenading the Rialto on |The Fourteenth Street Rialto.| an evening of 1921, the pedestrian would conclude that no such phenomenon as sex attraction existed. But during the period that I was an habitué, the Fourteenth Street Rialto was as gay as European bright-light districts, which I was fated to explore.
Fourteenth Street Rialto, Stamping-Ground of the Hermaphroditoi
Stuyvesant Square, One of Jennie June’s Stamping Grounds
(Usually the evening was spent on the bench where two girls are seated in picture.)
The Rialto is confined principally between Third Avenue and Broadway. While I was an habitué, theatres, museums for men only, drinking palaces, gambling joints, and worse abounded.
On pleasant evenings, when the sidewalks were thronged with smartly dressed adolescent pleasure seekers, I would promenade—up and down, up and down—until I chanced to meet a coterie of young bloods who invited me to join them. Our evenings would be spent in pool-rooms, gambling joints, beer gardens of ill repute, or worse resorts. Nature made me proof against the vices I there witnessed. My only weakness was the craze for female-impersonation. My greatest joy was to flaunt myself as a bisexual before those who did not know my identity. I realized that every soul among my Rialto associates was turning his or her back on the Creator. But I was always determined to give Him first place in my affections. However, for fear of bringing reproach on religion if I made myself its representative—I, a misunderstood female-impersonator, whom even the Underworld in general regarded as one of the most impious of humans—I never mentioned the theme except under extraordinary circumstances.
If the weather were bad, I would immediately enter a beer-garden and call for sarsaparilla. I would consume it in driblets while watching for the opportunity |Female-Impersonators Popular.| to join some tremendously virile bachelors out for a lark.
On the typical evening I have chosen to describe of my many passed in the Rialto, I happened to run across several youthful Lotharios waiting in front of a theatre for something “to turn up”. Only one adolescent “male” out of three thousand in New York City adopts the role of quasi-public female-impersonator. A Rialto habitué therefore does not often run up against one. Judging by my own experience, a female-impersonator proves an attraction of the first order for young bloods having time hanging heavy on their hands. Thus this coterie—as many others have done—called out jubilantly on catching sight of me: “Hello Jennie June!” ... “Hello sweetheart! That is what you want us to call you, isn’t it?” ... “Let me introduce you to Mr. A and Mr. B. They have never met a female-impersonator, and are dead anxious to see you take off a girl.”
“And you are Jennie June, are you?” A and B exclaimed. “We have heard a lot about you and longed to meet you.”