Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/185

Rh were seated a dozen flashily dressed "sports," about the same number of shabbily clad ruffians, three or four girls costumed as for a fancy-dress ball, and five " sports " in the biological sense of that word, that is, youths with no front teeth, hair à la mode de Oscar Wilde (that is, hanging down in ringlets over the ears and collar) and clad in bright colored wrappers. Their faces were painted, and their bodies also were seen to be when later they threw aside the loose wrappers.

The assemblage were sipping their favorite beverages. From time to time decidedly obscene dances took place— in 1897 to be seen only in brothels, but in 1917 gracing even university receptions. In the terpsichorean art, our universities today stand only where our brothels stood twenty years ago. One of the painted youths furnished the dance music. Another from time to time rendered the latest songs in a treble voice.

When some came forward to make my acquaintance, my friend introduced me as "Miss June." I protested: "Not Miss June. That doesn't sound pretty. Jennie June. I am only a baby-girl, not a grown-up female."

Three of the fairies were introduced to me as Jersey Lily, Annie Laurie, and Grace Darling. Two others had adopted the names of living star actresses. The unreflecting and uneducated victims of innate androgynism, and having passed their lives exclusively in the slums of New York, they had always been perfectly satisfied with the lot Nature had ordained for them. As already stated, in unenlightened lands, as India, these human "sports," clad in feminine apparel, appear in public in the company of