Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/129

Rh II. A Typical Female-Impersonation Spree.

The one evening a week on which I (the scholarspirit) surrendered, I called "going on a female-impersonation spree." The typical spree did not occur until the December (1894) of my senior year. I had become somewhat adept in the art of impersonation through a year's apprenticeship in the Mulberry Street Italian quarter. As that training has been detailed in my and, I omit it here.

On the afternoon preceding a spree, I would be overwhelmed with dread and melancholia. I dreaded disclosure, which I realized would mean expulsion from the university because of the full-fledged man's horror of a sexual cripple. I dreaded possible disfigurement by blows—or even murder—by one of the numerous prudes who detest extreme effeminacy in a male (supposed). I was melancholy because about to embark on something that my puritan training had impressed me as in the highest degree disgraceful, and that I secretly wished I did not have to undertake. But to be contented and even happy for the following week and to guarantee that tranquillity necessary for the best scholarly success, the weekly spree was unavoidable.

Only a handful of upper-class female-impersonators adopt feminine attire for street wear. For myself (being a university student, and subsequently an honored member of a learned profession) it was too