Earl Lind

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In order to draw out atypic individuals—particularly androgynes—I made it a practice first to reveal my own secrets. This frankness generally led them to confide to me what they never breathed to another—people in general, and particularly cultured androgynes, having an absurd reluctance to discuss the sexual side of their lives. (Androgynes for fear of persecution and prosecution, not by reason of prudery.) And the human race has suffered so greatly as a result of this obsession! ”

“ After Abe showed he thought I am the best fellow ever and I had found him to be an easy mark, it was time to discuss money. "Money, brother! You have a little and you love it. If only a fellow has money, he can go everywhere and have everything. Wouldn't you like me to show where you can take your money, AND IN THE SHAKE OF A LAMB'S TAIL MAKE MORE MONEY OUT OF IT?" ”

“ All beneficent talents that the Creator has distributed among mankind must have been meant for use—not for strangling.
As to the ethical question, I myself, who from the age of nineteen to thirty-one had an intensive career as fairie—female-impersonator, can truthfully state, on arrival in my late forties, that I was not once, during that career, guilty of an irreligious or unethical act—excepting alone that I seriously impaired my own health. ”

“ Why deprive cultured androgynes of their solitary rendezvous in the New York metropolitan district and give carte blanche to the thousands of similar hetero-sexual resorts?
Paresis Hall was as innocuous as any sex resort. Its existence really brought not the least detriment to any one or to the social body as a whole. More than that: It was a necessary safety-valve to the social body. It is not in the power of every adult to settle down for life in the monogamous and monandrous love-nest ordained for all by our leaders of thought. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nature alone is to blame for the existence of sexual cripples. Why not marshal every son and daughter of Adam for the work of honeycombing the entire crust of the earth with galleries to be filled with dynamite? ”

“ Since ultra-androgynes are, in a sense, instances of dual personality—a male soul and a female soul inhabiting the same brain and body—it is natural for them to live a double-life.
Moreover, as the "classy," hypocritical, and bigoted Overworld considers a bisexual as monster and outcast, I was driven to a career in the democratic, frank, and liberal-minded Underworld. While my male soul was a leader in scholarship at the university uptown, my female soul, one evening a week, flaunted itself as a French doll-baby in the shadowy haunts of night life downtown. ”

“ In such strange ways a continuous string of both men-women and women-men are being struck down in New York for no other reason than loathing for those born bisexual. And public opinion forbids the publication of the facts of bisexuality, which, if generally known, would put an end to these mysterious murders of innocents. ”

“ To achieve my best success at female-impersonation, the stimulus of an appreciative and responsive audience of youthful Lotharios was necessary. Our hilarity was more and more attracting the eyes and ears of all other guests. Some recognized me as a female-impersonator. Calls began to reach me: "O you Jennie June, give us an impersonation of a prima donna!" The old-timers were remarking to new patrons of the "hostelry": "The little fellow with the red bow is a fairie!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Only a few were playing cards for money. All were refined and orderly. I have never circulated among more delightful people than I met frequently at the Hotel Comfort.
I had become well acquainted with the proprietor and all his employees. For more than a year the "hotel" was substantially the home of my feminine personality, "Jennie June." But this refined and luxurious "hotel" would have tolerated only a cultured and outwardly modest female-impersonator. Most examples of that biological sport were far below the standards of the Hotel Comfort, and would have been barred. ”

“ Is it nothing to you that innocent androgynes are pining in prison an aggregate of thousands of years, and being continually murdered by prudes, like Harvey Green, because you have taught them that no punishment is too bad for so-called "homosexuality"? For prudery is common to some ultra-criminals and to the leaders of thought. ”

“ But there existed little justification for the police's "jumping on" the "Hall" as a sop to puritan sentiment. Culturally and ethically, its distinctive clientele ranked high. Their only offence—but such a grave one as to cause sexually full-fledged Pharisees to lift up their own rotten hands in holy horror—was, as indicated, female-impersonation during their evenings at the resort. A psychological and not an ethical phenomenon! For ethically the "Hall's" distinctive clientele were congenital goody-goodies, incapable (by disposition) of ever inflicting the least detriment on a single soul. ”

“ I guarantee you as good a start in life as young fellow ever had. Wouldn't you like to become a lawyer or physician? Then why not tell me your true name and address, lest I lose you? Because until I know you thoroughly, I can not reveal my own legal name and where I live. Because people misunderstand so terribly women-men like myself."
"Harvey Green, Eagle Hotel, Third Avenue." ”

“ Many times have I eyed every man passed in New York's crowds hoping to recognize your face. Nothing would I like better than to spend my declining years knit to your genial personality and heroic, grand-aired spirit. I freely pardon your past treachery—though it almost drove me insane—if only you would condescend to let my soul be knit to yours until death do us part!
**********
Buddie McDonald! The most precious of all names! If it were my idol's legal name, I would not disclose it. It was the alias he used in the Rialto and the only name I knew him by. ”

“ But the phenomenon works against the multiplication of the human race. Nature, with this in view, instilled in all but the scum of mankind this utter disgust for the invert. To the end of the continued existence of the race, he must be condemned to a life of unsatisfied longing. ”

“ But I here confine myself to what I experienced and learned while impersonating a French doll-baby because it constitutes something novel to most readers.
Indeed Parts Three, Four, and Five portray the social life and diversions of the most cultured New York coterie of the third sex during the last decade of the nineteenth century. For, while little has yet been published about instinctive female-impersonators because of the prudery of the sexually full-fledged, they form (necessarily sub rosa) quite a large class of society—about one out of every three hundred physical males. ”

“ The innate feelings and the conscience, as well as the Bible, teach that the invert has no rights! I myself have only deep-rooted contempt for him! Every fibre in my body, every cell in my tissues, cries out in loud protest against him! He is the lowest of the low! ”

“ If it be asked how I, pretending to be of high morals, could associate with sharpers, I answer: Love is blind. In my subsequent Bowery period, described in my Autobiography of an Androgyne and The Riddle of the Underworld, I was knit into one being with youthful burglars, who, to whet my admiration for themselves, have entertained me with accounts of their burgling houses and demonstrated their truthfulness by exhibiting terrible scars from gunshot wounds suffered as they were fleeing from a burglary they had "made a mess of." ”

“ Among the scores of Strong Hanses whose biceps I have been privileged to pinch, you are the muscular prodigy! [5] You must be a terrible slugger! I pity your opponent! Only a pyramid of jelly after you got through with him! Do you know, Mr. Strong Hans, that I have fallen in love with your biceps?"
"That's a funny thin' ter fall in love with! But just feel me chest muscles and leg muscles."
"They are steel!" I cried in ecstacy. "Because of your being a muscular prodigy, I am driven beside myself in hero-worship! Do you know what the word 'worship' means? ”

“ The Overworld has enjoined complete silence about female-impersonators because of their thoroughly false view that any adolescent adopting the role must do so from moral depravity. They argue: "If I myself adopted the role, it could only be through unspeakable depravity. Ergo, the same is true for every male." They overlook the fact that Nature did not make all anatomical males of like passions. What would be moral depravity for one is not for another. ”

“ A person always considers right and highminded whatever he himself is inclined to, and wrong and devilish whatever others are inclined to. Because people are thus in love with themselves and their own tendencies, they will not forgive my own bad side. ”

“ By means of an introduction of the reader to several androgyne patrons of Paresis Hall, I aim to demonstrate that instinctive female-impersonation has no relation to brain lesions, dementia praecox, or other psychic disease. The prevalent diagnosis, by physicians, of androgynism as insanity is as rational as for a male alienist to pronounce all women insane because their psyche differs radically from his own. ”

“ New York is a Babel. On an hour's promenade in the Rialto, conversation in a score of languages would impinge on one's ear. Bright young men brought up in a New York foreign colony acquire a score of the commonest expressions in several languages.
"I miei amici, siete amati da me," I next declared in a third language.
"Pee-an-gou, savez? We don't understand Dago, Jennie. Tell us in American how much you love us."
I reply in Spanish: "Esto es lo mejor que podemos hacer. Hablemos ingles."
"Bert, Jennie seems to be a bright fellow—or girl—doesn't she? ”

“ Heaven wills that I, a poor weakling, bow low in adoration of a muscular prodigy!"
"You said it! I've got the build of a pugilist. But it's meself as needs ter go ter the dentist ter git me teeth filled and have n't the price."
"I'll attend to that. Because you are a rare find, Mr. Strong Hans! You are one young fellow out of ten thousand. I must n't lose track of you. Let me tell you the plans that have been going through my head since I met you. Nature has made it impossible for me ever to marry a woman. For I am myself really a girl whom Nature has disguised as a fellow. ”

“ On the other hand, I have heard of mildly virile men marrying in their twenties, begetting children, and only after reaching middle age, becoming somewhat sissified, acquiring horror feminæ, like ultra-androgynes, and finally seeking the latter's sexual role.
These changes in ultra-androgynes and in the mildly virile are like menopause in woman. There is a turning point in the sex life. The hitherto passive ultra-androgyne occasionally becomes active. The mildly virile occasionally develops a quasi-feminine leaning. ”

“ While in this book I use the resort's popular name, androgyne habitues always abhorred it, saying simply "the Hall." The full nickname arose in part because the numerous full-fledged male visitors—it was one of the "sights" for out-of-towners who hired a guide to take them through New York's Underworld—thought the bisexuals, who were its main feature, must be insane in stooping to female-impersonation. ”