Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/232

204 It was, mon cheri, all because I wanted to live within half-an-hour's journey of the enchanting old Bowery!

On my first spree, I made my way up and down the crowded sidewalks for an hour, staring with all my eyes at the brilliantly lighted fronts of beer-gardens, the many gaudily dressed girls strutting up and down all alone, but, most of all, the sporty-looking youthful laboring men seeking their evening's fun. How longingly and beseechingly I gazed into the latter's eyes! A hundred times I had accosting words on the end of my tongue. I but barely lacked the brass for utterance, notwithstanding that in my every-day life I had always been morbidly bashful. How I wished I were acquainted with at least one of these powerfully built—and, to me at least, bewitchingly handsome—foreign-looking young fellows!

Who, mon cheri, that knew me as a goody-goody boy in my home town, always going to Bible school twice on Lord's day, and not merely once as nearly all children of pious parents, would have foretold that some day I would be tapping the sidewalks of America's greatest red-light district as a common strumpet?

Doctors claim to understand such as me a priori and are too squeamish to investigate. They would say I am insane. I have never shown any sign of a diseased brain, nor has there been any taint of insanity