Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/135

Rh "Jennie, let's walk around to the ladies' parlor of the Hotel Comfort and have a few drinks."

We arrived in an artistically furnished room 25 feet by 75. At one side was a bar from which waiters continuously carried drinks to the fifty-odd couples seated around the small ornamental tables which occupied most of the floor. Nearly all the patrons were under thirty, and absolutely all, highfliers sexually. The vast bulk merely smoked, drank, and "chinned."

Only a few were playing cards for money. All were refined and orderly. I have never circulated among more delightful people than I met frequently at the Hotel Comfort.

I had become well acquainted with the proprietor and all his employees. For more than a year the "hotel" was substantially the home of my feminine personality, "Jennie June." But this refined and luxurious "hotel" would have tolerated only a cultured and outwardly modest female-impersonator. Most examples of that biological sport were far below the standards of the Hotel Comfort, and would have been barred. But I was looked upon as a personality likely to attract a pecuniarily desirable class of patronage.

My five companions and I spent an hour sipping beverages.

[While during my twelve years as quasi-public female-impersonator, my companions always drank intoxicants, I always called for non-alcoholics. The latter's price was double in order to discourage the consumption of temperance drinks. I had been brought up to loathe alcoholics, and during my twelve years