Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/231

Rh in the pride of their manly vigor, the virile throw at me a glance full of hatred or of ridicule, I feel like killing myself!

I always closed my hall-door noiselessly and used the stairs. The elevator boy might have recognized me in my disguise. If, on the several flights, I heard an approaching footstep, I would slink for a moment to a dark corner of the spacious hall. Reaching the street, I had my regular hiding place for my key and a yellow back. It was most necessary to be able to let myself in on my late return, when the street door was locked, instead of ringing up the janitor.

On my first spree, Ralphie—as on all for several years—I boarded an elevated train and alighted at a Bowery station. Several times in later years, I spied acquaintances of my every-day world either on the train or on the Bowery. I always gave them a wide berth, although having a great advantage in means of recognition.

And why, on my very first spree, did I seek the Bowery, Ralphie? Because only a few weeks before, in my home town, I had seen a comic opera staged on that avenue, its keynote the oft repeated refrain:

"The Bowery! The Bowery!

There they say such things!

And they do such things!

The Bowery! The Bowery!

I'll never go there any more!"

So I was dead crazy to bring to pass there the female-impersonation sprees of which I, for several years, had had merely waking dreams in my home town. Such realization was why I moved to New York.