Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/117

Rh exclusively my associates during my apprenticeship.

Large frame counted for a great deal, as also large and well-developed membra virilia. Variety exists as much in the latter respect as in respect to frame. There is often an inverse proportion between the two.

I much preferred the rough to the gentleman, and the profane boozing libertine to the morally upright. I have always been strongly attracted by disregard for personal danger. When reading accounts of exploration and adventure, I have sometimes fallen in love with the adventurer. For example, I fell in love with a noted Arctic explorer while reading his book, as well as with the kayakmen whose courageous deeds he describes. 'To me tattooing has always been the mark of supreme masculinity. It was a habit with me to seek for it on my beaux, and if found, I would rave over it, osculate it, kneel before the young blood in adoration, and call him all the glorious idealizing names I could think of. That one of my eight hundred beaux with whom I would have chosen to live out my life in daily comradeship was by far the most tattooed of all, and he did actually live with me for several months when I was forty years of age, besides being my " adopted son" for nine years. But it was not the tattooing alone that attracted me. In practically every manly charm, he stood supreme.

After an hour or so spent with a companion, it was painful to say good-by, and I generally hoped for another meeting. But subsequently to my apprenticeship just described, I generally had the same companion only once, or at most several times, as it was a long time, if ever, before