Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/453

 It is to be observed that not all similisexual prostitutes, including thousands of young men who habitually sell their bodies to all passions of the Uranian patron, are homosexual. Often they are thoroughly dionistic; dislike and even detest, by natural repugnance, such relations; and have strong preferences for sexual intercourse with women. They violate their natures, turn prostitutes, because too idle to work; frequently only to get money to spend on women-harlots. Many younger or older male-prostitutes have other occupations; earning honestly their real daily bread, they are not homosexual by temperament. By prostituting themselves similisexually,—clandestinely—they make considerable additions to their modest wages. However repugnant be the embraces and attouchements of the Uranians, they accept them complaisantly, and even play with verve at homosexual harlotry. But in a large part of Europe, as we shall see, they aim toward the confidential bond with any Uranian, because of the opportunities to blackmail, to rob, to victimize their unlucky homosexual client. This is a potent inducement to the simulated catamite; exactly as it is so terrible a weapon pecuniarily in the case of the prostituting rascal who is really homosexual.

Every shade and grade of the venal homosexualism occurs, exactly as occurs every shade and grade of feminine whoredom. We find the ill-clad, graceful, dirty lad, of an Italian or Spanish or French city, who sells an hour of his person in a shabby hotel, for a few francs. We encounter the type who is: ready to oblige a client by the most expeditious technique—almost publicly—in some near latrine or deserted by.-place, for a handful of cigarettes. We have the quasi-respectable and middle-class pathic, who fulfills his functions under more formal, decent conditions. We encounter the male-harlot that is well-dressed, well-fed, perhaps still young; and