Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/112

82 the habit of visiting my Mulberry Street friends once a week, the visits continuing altogether for about a year. I preferred the society of these adolescent roughs to that of all other human beings, and woe to the friend of my ordinary circle who should hinder or delay me on the evenings on which I had planned a visit to Mulberry Street! If necessary to get rid of him, I would even insult any friend who happened to call at this inopportune time. At first exceedingly nervous for fear something would interfere with my setting out, I became, when safe from interruption after I had boarded the elevated train, blissfully intoxicated at the thought of meeting my beaux again.

During this period of living one evening a week according to the dictates of my peculiar instincts, I was happier than I had ever been before, notwithstanding my suffering for the first two months from a continuously painful sphincter ani. Recognizing the horror I had for paedicatio, and not wishing to drive me away from their " gang," particularly as my visits made them on those evenings what they regarded as flush with money, none ever again subjected me to it. But the lacerations of the first night required two months for healing. Moreover, I was never again robbed of my clothing.

The contrast in my own life between total abstinence and indulgence one evening a week was that the latter made me sing continually on the proper occasions, whereas with abstinence, I had been as continually weeping and moaning. I felt that I had come into possession of the earthly summum bonum, hitherto denied me. I had arrived at the