Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/446

 he has here one of the—profession. Presently the Uranian, certain of his ground and well-enough suited with his interlocutor's physical type, proposes that they take a walk together; or go. to some near restaurant. During the promenade, or at the café, there is the necessary bargaining, good-humoredly, and as with a woman-harlot. The two men also are pretty sure to pause at the nearest latrine, by common consent, if the patron be especially disposed to estimate the physical capital of the other. If satisfied with the étalage, he accompanies the vendor to the nearest safe locality—a corner of a deserted thicket in the park—an open field; to an equivocal hotel, to the quarters of his new friend; perhaps to his own lodging:

The client pays the tariff agreed or disputed—five or ten shillings, five or ten marks, two or three florins, ten to twenty francs—local and personal prices differ. Anon he says good-evening to his acquaintance, whom he may or may not care ever to meet again. The incident is closed: leaving the Uranian sexually pacified, precisely as is the Dionian by the functions of a female harlot.

The foregoing is a typical incident. The army of such male prostitutes in large cities is of thousands. Boys of precocious debauchery, either in the pay of mature male procurers and patrons, or "working" by themselves, idle and corrupt youths in their later teens, young men in twenties and thirties, older types (often of repulsive maturity) catamites of all ages, complexions, physiques, grades of cleanliness and decency. As a rule, those who begin with health and robustness of body and pretentions to good-looks become feeble, pallid wrecks. Sexual debilities, the precarious, nerve-shattering life, misery, late hours, weather, careless habits of person, drink—all sap away physical attractiveness. The concurrence of the female harlot is not troublesome. But the civilian prostitute