Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/159

Rh The following conversation serves to illustrate and analyze the hero-worship of the androgyne. It is admittedly mushy. The question is whether the reader wants the mushy or the untrue. Ordinarily conversation with a sexual counterpart made me silly. All my flirtations were mushy. The following phraseology is very close to the actual except that I have semi-translated Harvey's dialect into ordinary English. Further, the reader must educate himself to judge justly even that with which, as he reads, he does not like to identify himself or make his own sentiment. For example, two confidential, Platonic literary friends told me that my original songs published in my were "sickening." They could not sympathize with the androgyne sentiments and therefore the songs were "shoddy." Likewise the following conversation must be judged objectively and the reader's verdict be based on absolute reason, not on personal bias—not on the basis of the reader's ability to put himself in the place of the Hercules or myself. It is a conversation to be analyzed scientifically.

"Beau, see how much bigger your hands are than mine! And how horny the palms! I bet you would give a good account of yourself in a fight!"

"I've had lessons in pugilism. Besides I come from a strong-built family. Me father's piano -mover and me only brother steeple-Jack. Meself has worked as riveter on sky-scrapers."

"So you have wielded a sledge-hammer!" I exclaimed enthusiastically because of his more and more marvellous revelations.