Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/448

 Thus Henry becomes "Henrietta", Charles signs himself "Charlotte", Paul is known as "Pauline", Jules as Juliette, and so on. Such noms de guerre as "La Belle Hortense", "Cleopatra", "La Marquise" "Die Schöne Salome" and "Petite Fleur" are attached to youths or men, perhaps with moustaches that a trooper would envy, and of blamelessly male sexual qualifications—according to what popularly would seem to decide that matter. The fantasies in these sobriquets are endless, descending to the most obscene picturesqueness, But merely feminized male names are most in favour, perhaps because this practice is so usual among homosexuals distinctly effeminate, but of thoroughly good social station and wholly apart from any venal or proletarian classes. As to the latter, an amusing caricature appeared lately in a Paris humorous journal, in which a severe old valet is projecting his head from out of the door of his master's bedroom, saying to an elegantly dressed young man, on the landing—"The Baron don't receive to day—he's abed!"—to which the youth smilingly replies, "Ah yes—but he expects me. Please just tell him it's Lucy."

Such is homosexual street-prostitution of usual sort. It differs from female prostitution in that it is not so observable by the uninitiated. Nothing is more common than to hear heterosexuals, all their lives in some noted center of male prostitution, deny, angrily or serenely, that it flourishes in their town. Any much-frequented, street music-hall, ball, theater witness the contrary.

In a large radius of Europe the male prostitute can "labour in his vocation" with impudent frankness. In Madrid, Belgrad, Constantinople, Naples, Florence, Paris, New York, Palermo, Milan, Marseilles, and so on, while homosexual brothels are not encouraged by statutes or police, there are houses for—sometimes