On female-impersonation sprees in Stuyvesant Square, I carried less than ten dollars. But judging from my rich attire and not knowing I had set out from home just for such a spree, Harvey must doubtless have thought I had on me a big roll. The present is only one of the most remarkable of about two hundred adventures I have had with robbers, the thievishly inclined regularly preying on androgynes because knowing the latter are themselves outlaws and thus unable to complain to the police.
Incensed over the disappointing size of his haul, Harvey continued: “And now, you sneak, I’ve got yez at me mercy! There’s not a man within hearin’! Shut your d— throat, or you’ll be worse off yet! Hold down your hands from in front of your mug! Hold down your hands! You bastard! You cannibal! Your nature’s so disgustin’ that every rightminded man would agree your face oughter be used as a butcher’s choppin’ block! And it’s me own great joy ter do the job!”
Only about so much of the fiend’s ranting was I able |Experiencing Death.| to catch. After I had received several sledge-hammer blows in the face, fallen to the ground, been kicked and stamped upon, I entirely lost consciousness. Even while I still heard his ranting, I hardly noticed any pain. I merely thought I was dying. I was fully reconciled, and prayed: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!”
The next thing of which I was conscious was violent retching—due to internal injuries. In his youthful verdancy, the fiend had probably thought he had finished me. But Providence overruled, as in a number of subsequent similar assaults when I was snatched from the very jaws of death, whereas every few months I see in the papers that some less fortunate androgyne has not lived to tell the tale.
I was at first puzzled as to whether I was waking up on the earthly plane or in another world. Until I fully recovered my senses, I lay inert. Then I slowly dressed and limped away, having to rest on the curb every five hundred feet. I searched out a street fountain to bathe my bloodstained face and try to counteract the swelling and discoloration. For, most of all, I feared arousing the suspicions of my every-day circle.
I then boarded a car for home, begging my fare. In its regular hiding place in a stone wall of a neighboring park, I obtained the key to the street door of my boarding house.[[33]] Fortunately without encountering anybody, I mounted the several flights of stairs and secured my room-key from its hiding place. On |Struggling to Save Reason.| arrival in my own snug harbor, the first thing I did—as always—was to fall to my knees and bless Providence for permitting me to see home again.
For several hours, I could not sleep. Every moment I felt as if I would lapse into insane raving. Every moment I besought God to show mercy on a persecuted outcast. I reflected on my lot: To go through life as a cordially hated bisexual. That was my cross, and I repeated over and over again—in my struggle to save myself from insanity—the identic prayer that I had at fifteen repeated over and over again on the night I had consecrated myself, and been consecrated by the brethren of the puritan church to which I then belonged, to be a preacher of the Gospel:
“Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee;
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken,