Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/204

176 the society of adolescent ruffians fairly clean and sprucely attired. Of course they always ransacked my pockets the first chance that offered. Before it could happen, I had treated liberally half-a-dozen of the handsomest, and thus insinuated myself into their good graces. I always kept a reserve five-dollar bill sewed in the waistband of my trousers—a pair worn on these sprees alone because too shabby to be a temptation for appropriation.

On my second appearance at Pug Heaven, the heroic gunmen entertained me with episodes about other female-impersonators they had encountered. I particularly remember stories about the "Duchess of Austria," from whom, they recounted, "some lucky guys had pumped" hundreds of dollars. One narrated anecdotes of a physician located south of Fourteenth Street. Young fellows would visit his office to be medicated and he would reveal his own bisexuality. My pals did not marvel at all over my strange appetencies. They entreated me to bring around other female-impersonators. They were merely anxious for the money it would bring them. When I apologized for my queer penchant, they said: "It is nothing. It is Nature."

Ralph, those adolescent Pug Heaven sluggers knew more about the psychology of instinctive female-impersonators than all the M. D.'s in America combined! From that single hour's conversation, I ascertained more about my own personality than in my prior fourteen years pilgrimage on this planet. For the first time, the riddle of my existence was solved; I perceived that I had been born a biological sport—a female with male genitals.

I soon acquired half-a-dozen permanent favorites.