Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/459

 Nothing is more curious in metropolitan aspects of homosexuality, when its democracy is studied, than the formal entertainments which in cities of size are organized by, Uranians, patronized by Uranians, are for Uranians only; but given under relatively private conditions. They include balls, soirees, masquerades, marriage-ceremonies and the like. In France, Germany, Italy and Austria, before the license of the Carnival's gayeties had declined as now, the homosexual, balls in Berlin and Vienna were sometimes saturnalia of the Intersex-Masculine. They recur as such occasionally. Eccentric, mischievous, or merely effeminate homosexuals, who delight to dress as women, are sometimes of remarkable beauty when in female costume, and sustain the rôle of a coquettish fille de joie with vast success. Hence such assemblies are, or were, natural occasions for most deceptively feminine aspects. Such balls, attended by all grades of homosexuals, were condoned by the police-authorities, as belonging to the season of masquerades; though too many of them became pandemoniums, by "high-jinks" not at all moral, as the hours advanced, they were not until recently so much suppressed. Aside from these large affairs, in Berlin, Munich, Paris and Vienna, each winter there still are notable dances and social gatherings, in which all the guests are homosexual, with a large part of the younger or older guests in female evening-dress. The aristocratic kept-mistress is escorted by "her" lover, or the less favoured male-harlot comes, errant as to luck, but equally elaborate in travesti. In the "Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen" appear accounts of such reunions. Dr. von Krafft-Ebing's work "Psychopathia Sexualis" cites a ball that occurred in Berlin, in what Berlin homosexuals sometimes style "the good old days" of such gallimaufries, back in February, 1884. The report of a ball given October, 1889, in the Hotel "König von Portugal" Berlin, is extant as follows (in part) in the Berlin "Morgen-Post".