Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/104

74 thought for a few days, when with a fresh dedication of myself to God and to a life of self-renunciation, I would again completely banish them for another half-month.

After several months treatment, I was rendered almost a physical and nervous wreck by the powerful drugs administered, but my amorous desires showed no change. I now repeatedly appealed for castration. I argued that Nature had designed me to be a fille de joie—the worst fate possible as I then believed—and that castration alone could save me from it. But the answer was that I might in later years regret such a measure. I had recently read in a medical journal of a man similarly but not identically afflicted who was placed in possession of the normal procreative instinct through castration. During these months I had made diligent search at the library of the New York Academy of Medicine for light on my abnormality, and discovered a number of articles in American and foreign journals bearing on it.

During this course of treatment occurred one of the crises of my life. I had been appointed a delegate to a student's missionary convention in another city, and was assigned to a room with a rather athletic student from another college. The first night, after he had fallen asleep, I left the bed and lay on the floor, but was driven back by the cold. All possible alternatives were out of the question. Previous to that day, I had not known how I would have to pass the night. The chances were good that I would be assigned to a room alone, or else have an unattractive bed-fellow inasmuch as nine out of ten religious and studious adolescents were sexually repulsive,