On my fortnightly hegiras, I was well supplied with money so that I could give all a first-rate treat in exchange for their wonderful kindness. They kept good friends because I loaded them with gifts. Only after seven years, a born criminal, who had happened to worm his way into my gang, now and again sought to dog me home. Twice I had to sit for an hour in the Grand Central waiting-room to get him off my trail. Up to that time no one had broken my firm command that I should not be tracked the moment I chose to fade away for a fortnight. For I was like a good fairy—in the twinkling of an eye bobbing up in the midst of my gang, gathered by appointment in the “Rabbit,” and a few hours later as weirdly dropping out of sight. Of course I could not let any of the gangsters find out in what part of the city I lived. At last, to put a stop to high-handed and high-figured blackmail by this one rascal, and, most of all, to escape murder, I was forced to say goodby forever to the whole Bowery. Of course I did not dare let even the most trustworthy gangster know that I was never to see him again. It pained me fearfully to leave them in the lurch, but I could do nothing else.
I henceforth made the Rialto my stamping-ground when yielding my bisexual body to the woman in me. And fortunately, for I thus met Roland and the other hermaphroditoi who had likewise turned to the Rialto to blow off now and again their ordinarily pent up, but at last overwhelming, craze for female-impersonation.
II. Jailed for Wearing Petticoats.
Angelo—Phyllis.
A scrape that I like to tell about, mon cheri, although very bitter in the happening, is my only arrest for flaunting myself in feminine finery. Don’t you think a jail a queer home for a wishy-washy gentleman and art connoisseur? A softy whose swatting a fly was the worst act he was ever guilty of, and he almost had to weep when he did that.
Ever since driven from the Bowery six years ago, I have, one evening out of fourteen, clad in my beloved feminine finery, tried to get on the string strange young fellows in the Rialto ladies’ parlors. My nerves need such a lark now and again. Otherwise years ago I would have gone crazy or killed myself.[[44]] In my later teens, while living in my home town, where I had to crucify my cross-dressing and female-impersonating instincts, I was its most melancholy being. Because I, a female soul, was imprisoned in a male body. How dark life looked from inside my male prison! How I pined to be free! To have my soul wholly clothed in woman’s bone and flesh instead of man’s for the most part—the latter so hated in my own body, but slavishly worshipped when breathing out |Regimentals Overpowering.| yells of joy in sport or the cry to battle and the clash of arms!
One evening five years ago in the Rialto I ran across two youthful artillerymen from Fort Q and spent the evening with them. Regimentals have always overpowered me. Even when I was as young as ten, when an acquaintance enlisted in the national guard, his mere donning the regimentals brought about, in my eyes, a magic transformation. If already handsome, the young fellow became supremely, unearthly enchanting. If plain and unattractive in civilian dress, he grew handsome. Blue clothing and brass buttons surely bring out whatever charm was born in a young fellow. Furthermore, his taste for warfare, shown by his volunteering, proves him a demigod. For I think warfare the highest function of the real man.
Whenever I catch sight of a youthful soldier, I rivet my gaze every second possible, even halting at the curb to look back at the wonderful vision. I yearn to fling myself at the soldier’s feet and cry out my worship of all his magic traits. As the vision fades away, a pang goes through my heart that he must pass out of my life forever and I never be able to make known to him that for the rest of my days I shall be continuously burning incense in my heart to his memory.
O Ralphie, I am overwhelmed when I call to mind the hundreds of the cream of physical youngmanhood with whom I have flirted, and whom I wholeheartedly loved! I have to weep at thinking that the way the world is made, I must be forever barred from them. In spirit, I am eternally joined, knit, dovetailed to |Eternally Dovetailed.| every man of them, but in the flesh, must never lay eyes on the demigods again. How I wish I could have continued to heap blessings upon them and make their sojourn on earth happy! But I am not God! In the next world, how I wish, as a reward for my always having tried in this to make my associates happy, I might be placed by Providence in the position of a sort of sub-deity to the hundreds of rough, uncultured young bachelors whom I have made protegés in this life, in order that I might be the means of affording each the eternity of bliss I so covet for them!...
I do not lose an opportunity to see a parade of the national guard, and particularly of regular soldiers, marines, and blue-jackets. I do not give a straw to see any other type of men marching. But while witnessing warriors stalk by, I am seized with a craze to prostrate myself in the roadway and have those fierce, pugnacious young tigers—as they tramp, tramp, tramp!—trample upon me until dead.