Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/78

48 accost them with an indecent purpose.

I was also constantly in love with athletic classmates. In the lecture rooms I found it advisable to take a front seat since the sight of an athlete would hypnotize me, making me stare at his form and disregard the lecturer. If one seated himself beside me, shameful thoughts would come into my mind at once. While seated in the lecture room, some of them have put their arms around me and said " Child." They have taken my hand in theirs and said it was just like a girl's hand. When my sleeves were rolled up they have said that my arms were just like a girl's arms. Their laying their hands on me was ineffably sweet, and always occasioned an orgasm, but modesty forbade betraying my feminine feelings. None ever even hinted at anything further than what I have just narrated.

On my visits home during this first year in college, I was supersensitive to my family's criticism of me for lack of manliness. I sometimes felt like never visiting home again because of my shame at being an effeminate man. I shunned all social gatherings because I detested the idea of courting a female and putting myself forward as a man. I would nevertheless weep at seeing other young people enjoying the ordinary legitimate pleasures of love without my ever—as I then thought—being privileged to have a share in them, since love and courtship in my case must be with one of my own physical sex. I often wished I might get away from the world and live as a monk or, better in my own case, a hermit. Then I would be in a way unsexed, and would be so regarded by the