“Well, Tony, how much would you expect?”
“Two hundred bucks a month.”
I argued for one hundred—all that at the time I cared to part with, although my infatuation soon after augmented so that I voluntarily presented him three times my first offer. But on this first night I repeatedly assured him coaxingly, though sincerely, that he was just the type of young fellow that appealed to me. Over and over again he replied: “I wouldn’t sell me goodwill so cheap! All your fine talk, Mr. Skirt, doesn’t get us anywhere. It doesn’t have the least effect on me. Only money talks. If you’ll part with two hundred bucks, I’ll know you think that much of me. Besides, if we don’t fix up matters now, don’t ever show your face again on Wall Street!”
But when he had bluffed to his limit, he accepted my first offer. And I didn’t mind the promise of that stipend to him—so winsome and handsome and assuring me he would be my soul-mate.
Because his “lady” was dancing attendance, our conversation had to be broken off before the end of five minutes. In parting, I said: “The more I have heard you converse, the better I like you, Tony. You are a pretty smart boy. I would be glad to give you an education, so that you can rise to my own social level instead of continuing in the servant class. We shall not regard our agreement as blackmail. Instead I now adopt you as my sole well-beloved son. I will |Now Man; Now Woman.| even be your slave. We shall enjoy together all the good things of life. But, remember, you must never do anything to betray my character and our relations to anybody. And, Tony, always call me ‘Frank.’ I would prefer that in private you called me ‘Eunice,’ but if you acquired the habit, you would sometimes make a break before people.”
Frank—Eunice.
V. Frank—Eunice’s Indiscretion.
Would you like, Ralph-Jennie, to be enlightened as to how I came to reside, five years of my prime, within prison walls? You have censured me for black-guarding the Church and religious people. But do you marvel thereat after I disclose that it was they who were instrumental in robbing me of five years of man’s all too brief sojourn on earth? In my youth, I was naturally religious. While no longer a church member, not a Sunday passes but I attend morning service. I continue to be a disciple of Christ in my own way, and estimate church attendance as one of the greatest privileges of existence. But religious people, the Church, and the Bible have occasioned me such terrible persecution that I can no longer do aught than revile them for their hypocrisy. And the average preacher, while meaning well, is so bigoted! Only recently I heard one declaim about the deluge: “God then drowned humanity as rats with the exception of Noah’s family because MONSTERS were being born in considerable numbers.” He claimed that “monsters” is the correct translation for “giants” of King James’ version. And he made evident that he understood by “monsters” us bisexuals. Must we poor sexual cripples bear the blame not alone for the decline and fall of nations, but also for the Noachian deluge?
You ask, Ralph-Jennie, my philosophy of life. First: To brighten the lives of unfortunates. Secondly: To get out of existence all the good times one can without transgressing against any one else. We are |Making a Misanthrope.| certain of nothing in this life except the passing moment. I even do not know that you exist, Ralph, otherwise than as a percept in my stream of thought.
My incarceration supervened, but not immediately, upon my reception of Tony Neddo as adopted son. Nature created me impotent. I could never possess wife and children. And for the reason that I accepted the only alternative of an adopted son, society incarcerated me! Ralph, do you call that Christianity and enlightenment? You, Ralph, recognizing that I am a congenital goody-goody, are in condition to accept my declaration that I have never in all my earthly pilgrimage transgressed against a solitary individual. In addition, Mother Nature endowed me with such cerebral capacity that at the university I was one of the leaders in scholarship. Nevertheless policemen and jailers—who of course are not responsible for their meager education in the rural districts of Ireland, where they were instructed merely to spell out the primer and scrawl their own names—have tyrannized over me, handcuffed me, and compelled me, when absolutely guiltless of any offence against the Deity or society, though having transgressed against mediæval jurisprudence, to accompany them whither I strenuously did not desire, and to perform hard labor for years without remuneration, and to abide in a cell, amid vermin, and subsist on disgusting nourishment! Do you marvel that such impositions, continued for years, have rendered me a misanthrope? For while I sympathize with and alleviate the sufferings of humanity up to my capacity, I experience only detestation for hypocritical humanity surfeited with exuberant health and in influential positions.