Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/232

 is said among his fellows in the barracks, he soon loses in moral sensitiveness. As was said, he may not be—often he is not—a born homosexual. But he allows himself to drift into the practice of sitting in public resorts where strangers come; in the parks and restaurant-gardens, well-known for equivocal usefulness. He goes to certain baths, to cheap cafés and theaters, of like repute; letting friendly gentlemen scrape acquaintance with him. In a park or suburb, comes the classic aid of a cigarette. Complaisantly he "takes walks" into secluded corners of the place with affectionate strangers, or gets into the way of accompanying them to their lodgings, for an hour or so. The price of giving his physical beauty and sexual vigor, even if with no good-will for the act, to the embraces of some casual homosexual client brings him more money in half an hour than he is likely to receive as his whole week's pay, even at the low quid pro quo of two or three marks, a couple of florins, three or four lire, or a couple of half crowns, for his amiabilities. The "Trade" aspect of it grows on him.—"Why not?" he asks himself. The commerce in a large town becomes easy, successful, and it is practically undetected. He soon discovers that whatever is suspected among his companions of him or of each other, little is said. So many of his fellows engage in the same by-trade of an evening! And as indicated, while soldier-prostitutes may vastly prefer sexual intercourse with women, and may make homosexual complaisances pay for normal gratifications, still, they are likely to lose repugnance to homosexual coitions. Many a young soldier grows into preferring it; he literally first "endures then embraces" it. Lasting intimacies are formed between soldier-prostitutes and civilians, when a particular regiment is stationed long in the same city. It is a curious fact that, while all sorts of soldiery are given to homosexualism, and furnish amateur prostitutes for the pleasure of the civilian, the cavalry, the artillery and the hussar regiments offer the majority. Various