Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/226

 I. Angelo Angevine's Debut as Public Female-Impersonator.

That fancy masculine name was only an alias, androgynes having a penchant for such as are musical and of exalted connotation. Further, its first element was after Michelangelo, an arch-bisexualist.

In 1895, Angelo-Phyllis divulged what I have here recorded as nearly as I can remember. As I said in the first chapter of this book, I remember only the general outlines of the originals of the monologues I give. But I have listened to numerous confessions of the sort of which I now present a sample. Where definite memory fails me, I have had recourse to my sea of general memories of the way the hermaphroditoi talked, how they looked upon life, what they did, and what befell them. I aim at a fairly full, but essentially true, portrayal of the inner history and life experience of cultured female-impersonators who were my bosom-friends during my own heyday in that avocation in the Rialto. In order to economize the reader's attention, I present all of Angelo-Phyllis's life story as if confessed to me at one sitting.

In referring to Frank White it seems more natural to use the masculine alias and pronoun, but [ 198 ]