Earl Lind

“ While promenading the streets with him, I would, every other minute, glance into his face, reflecting: "The handsomest and best dressed young fellow of the Rialto is MINE." While we were seated in a theatre together, I would often gaze into his face instead of at the players, reflecting: "New York's Beau Brummel is MY SOUL-MATE." For no soft hair, no rosebud cheeks in a male, no arched eyebrows—ever surpassed those of the Adonis now being described. He was perfection in face, head, and body. ”

“ I was all for Art, with a capital A! Art! Art! Which taste turned me into millinery channels as soon as I began life in New York in 1882.
Excepting the years that George Greenwood was with me as "adopted son," I have in New York lived all by myself in a 5-room apartment. Thus I have been able to transform myself into a young woman and set out for a female-impersonation spree without any one getting wise.
If I had had my say at birth, Ralphie, my lot would have been that of a full-fledged woman, or, less to be wished, a virile man. ”

“ In our drama, it was bliss to me to be the star, the center of attraction, the only representative of the gentle sex present, while there might be around me half a score of large, powerful young bloods. In my every-day sphere, I have been exceedingly shy, but as " Jennie June " I have impersonated a baby-girl before a hundred soldiers at a time without being in the least embarrassed. I would fret after the manner of a baby and sob just for the pleasure of having them soothe and pet me. I would pretend to faint away just for the pleasure of being caught in their arms and held there. ”

“ As to bragging about my intellect, my experience of half-a-century is that in general, Providence makes compensations in the lives of men so that as they, one by one, pass on to the next world, all have fared equally as concerns Heaven-sent boons and the opposite. As a counterweight to having created me a bitterly persecuted sexual cripple (for His inscrutable but surely wise ends) the Architect of the universe endowed me with a brain of such capacity as found in only one out of twenty-five university graduates. ”

“ I have been doomed to be a girl who must pass her earthly existence in a male body. How dreadful it is to a young woman to have a slight growth of hair on lip or cheeks! Only one mark of the male! How much more dreadful for a young woman to possess almost all the male anatomy as I do! How I have bewailed my fate! During my early teens, being in a frenzy sometimes over it, I would meditate taking my father's razor and castrating myself in order to bring my physical form more in accord with that of the female sex to which I instinctively yearned to belong. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Parents, teachers, but preferably the school physician, should begin with children of six a clean initiation into these mysteries—absorbing even to youngsters of that tender age—to replace the hitherto regnant nasty one wrought by child lore handed down, from mouth to mouth, through the centuries, and characterized by unprintable words, in uttering, seeing, and hearing which numerous children seem to take delight.
Or is the subject of sex irreformable and hopeless? Is it really the crying shame of the human race? From my third to seventh year, F'ank and I were drawn toward one another. ”

“ The bugle-call, because closely associated with the clash of arms and with that type of human who shine as demigods, always lifts me up into an unutterably blissful female-impersonate and cross-dress intoxication. I seem to be raised to the very zenith of the universe as THE SUPREME WOMAN, THE FAIRIE QUEEN, and to have all the fighting men that ever lived bowing low in worship of my feminine attributes. During the minute that the bugle-call resounds and reverberates, I live infinitely! I live out a whole eternity! ”

“ In order to ascertain the trustworthiness, good-heartedness, and liberalmindedness of the Hercules, I first drew him out craftily by a long series of questions. Even people in my every-day world have given me the palm for inquisitiveness. I expected to put myself in the power of Hercules and needed to find out all about him. I was always ultra-wary about falling into a trap, as I already had several times in the Underworld. Androgynes are murdered every few months in New York merely because of intense hatred of effeminacy instilled by education in the breasts of full-fledged males. ”

“ But a mere handful, whom Nature endowed with unusual brain power, have been leaders in war and politics. In the United States, I dare instance only Mohammed, Henry the Eighth, Louis the Fourteenth, and Bismarck. But leaders of the American nation have belonged to this tremendously virile class. I dare not name them because cultured society, with their present mediæval ideas on sex, severely censure men of this class as "bestial." ”

“ How I have envied many a young mother before my eyes with babe in arms! How could a God of love have created me physically a male when I have always so coveted personal female corporeality, and, in adulthood, the mothering of offspring!
These weekly female-impersonation explosions continued more than two years, when my father relegated me to a university several hours from New York. I leave it nameless—to spare it the disgrace of having once numbered "Frank White" among its students. These evenings in Pug Heaven were the most beatific feature of life. ”

“ 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.
The two artillerymen I met in the Rialto begged me to make an hegira out to the barracks to give a female-impersonation before their buddies. One afternoon I made the hour's journey, clad as an extreme dresser of the gentle, and at the same time harebrained, sex. ”

“ My return to college in the fall of 1892 was followed by a decline from the high spiritual level attained during the summer vacation, this decline being especially marked by periods of depression, during which I would lament to myself that I was practically, by birth, an outcast from society, with a deformed nature, and despicable in the eyes of all people. I felt that I was a soft effeminate man who was wanted nowhere. At the sight of other young men rejoicing in their manly vigor, I would exclaim, "T want to die! I want to die!" ”

“ For some years it has been my dream to take to live under the same roof, as long as God leaves me in this world, a young fellow who approaches my ideal. And you do as hardly another I ever met. And I want you to live with me as my husband. When you reach twenty-five, you may also marry a physical woman, and she will keep house for us. I shall always regard your and her children as my own. God has given me much above the average brain power, and I can earn money enough to support all. You will never have a care. You need never work unless you want to. ”

“ I feel that I must give up all plans for a noble career, and that maybe I shall come to a disgraceful end!
"Oh that all instinct would die in me! It makes my life miserable. How gladly would I be free from all desire so that I could make a name for myself in the world! An extreme girl-boy can hardly become a scholar and a preacher. ”

“ The ultra-brilliant Age of Pericles surpassed all other periods in the recognition and influence of androgynism, which promotes art and general culture. The androgyne, being a combination of man and woman in a single individual, has a wider view of life than the full-fledged man or woman. He possesses, in a measure, the mental qualities peculiar to each sex. That is why the Shakespeare-Author knew both the masculine and the feminine mind better than any other writer. Such duality is the reason artistic genius crops out far more frequently among androgynes than among the sexually full-fledged. ”

“ What a contrast between this life and that as Jennie June! While the phenomena of the procreative side of life bring to man the highest earthly bliss, they also occasion the intensest misery. The life as Jennie June had been a bitter life apart from all the extraneous suffering. But in a life given for others, seeking not its own, there was everything satisfying, and nothing to regret. Truly there is a glorious salvation from sin and unhappiness in announcing glad tidings to the poor, binding up the broken-hearted, and opening the eyes of the spiritually blind. ”

“ Being in woman's garb, I would not step inside, but jollied with them on the large porch. The news spread that I was only a female-impersonator and half-a-hundred crowded around, flirting for all they were worth. That was, mon cheri, my apotheosis—far above all other adventures. I was overjoyed at hearing at one time from half-a-hundred demigod? cries of admiration and affection. For I would sacrifice myself more for, and give more richly to, youthful common soldiers than any other class of men. ”

“ But first, why have I been the victim of blackmail? Because my strongest passion is to get into feminine finery now and then and play the coquette. I also occasionally yield to instinct in the way Nature ordained for me. But in all this I transgress not in the least against God or man. Of course I have offended against laws that are a legacy from the Dark Ages.
No man should cast a stone at me who indulges in marital joys more than once a week. For since my Pug Heaven apprenticeship, I have not myself averaged once a week. True I have changed partners about thirty times. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I was just crying because some soldiers shook me, but making your acquaintance brings me happiness again, because you are wild young bloods."
"What do you see in a fellow to love any way? I don't see anything. What good do you get out of loving a fellow?"
"Well, what do you see in a girl to love? I don't see anything. Girls are not brave. They are not rough. They are not strong. You are brave, rough, and strong, and that is why I love you. I love fellows for the same reason you love girls—because they are my opposites. The weak love the strong and the strong, the weak. ”

“ It was, mon cheri, all because I wanted to live within half-an-hour's journey of the enchanting old Bowery!
On my first spree, I made my way up and down the crowded sidewalks for an hour, staring with all my eyes at the brilliantly lighted fronts of beer-gardens, the many gaudily dressed girls strutting up and down all alone, but, most of all, the sporty-looking youthful laboring men seeking their evening's fun. ”

“ But during the eighteen months that my sprees were staged in the Fourteenth Street Rialto and the six years on or near military reservations in New York's suburbs, my attire was as fancy and flashy as a youth dare adopt. Fairies are extreme dressers and excessively vain. To strange adolescents whom I passed on the street I proclaimed myself as a female-impersonator through always wearing white kids and large red neck-bow with fringed ends hanging down over my lapels. ”

“ On my visits home during this first year in college, I was supersensitive to my family's criticism of me for lack of manliness. I sometimes felt like never visiting home again because of my shame at being an effeminate man. I shunned all social gatherings because I detested the idea of courting a female and putting myself forward as a man. I would nevertheless weep at seeing other young people enjoying the ordinary legitimate pleasures of love without my ever—as I then thought—being privileged to have a share in them, since love and courtship in my case must be with one of my own physical sex. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hasn't the human race survived the best decades of classic Greece? While the Greeks are acknowledged by all modern historians to have attained the highest development of mind and body ever known, they at the same time gave to the women-men who happened to be born among them—as among all races of all ages—an honorable place. ”

“ You thus see that I may some day have to flee from the wrath of men by suicide, or by self-imposed exile in a distant land, where I doubt if I could stand the misery I would suffer, forever removed from all my dear ones, and worse than dead to them. No one would have any mercy on me, and my name would be held up as that of a consummate hypocrite and the most degraded of men. ”

“ Through heart-to-heart talks with hundreds of strange young bloods in New York's Underworld I discovered that boyhood environment makes a vast difference in adult honesty and altruism. The country-bred adolescent manual-laborer is apt to be far less vile-mouthed and pugnacious, and far less likely to assault and rob one of Nature's step-children than a young-blood product of city slums. ”

“ The only taint in my family is that father is somewhat womanish: falsetto voice, sissie mannerisms, and never any mind for things thoroughly masculine. He ought never to have married to perpetuate, and probably strengthen, his own mild sexual intermediacy.
As I walked the Bowery on that first spree, I was puzzling my mind as to which of the brightly lighted dance-halls or the dark and fearsome dives—through whose doors I saw pass only sailors, guttersnipes, and slovenly gangsters—would be the best stage for my virgin effort at female-impersonation. ”

“ Since I had expected to take him under my own roof and acquaint him with my every-day professional personality, I had not gone to the extremes of frivolous female-impersonation customary before young bloods who would never meet me in every-day life. I had feared I would forfeit his respect. Thus I had bidden him call me "Ralph"—not "Jennie."
"Ralph, what a ya think when I say I've served time in Elmira Reformatory? I kin prove what kinder man I am! Reach your hand here and feel this terrible scar. And then reach it here and feel this other. ”

“ To mimic the baby and the woman in his presence was a rare pleasure. Up to my early thirties, in all my conduct with him, I was more feminine than any woman and as babyish as a three-year old. Sexually I have never grown out of babyhood.
I liked to be regarded as the slave. In the " Enslaving Ceremony," I lay prostrate on the floor, my companion towered above, placed his foot on my head, and pronounced me his slave. I have always felt that a woman should adore her husband so much as to delight in being treated as a slave, and to suffer gladly any abuse by her lord. ”

“ 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. ”