Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/233

Rh in my family. Ours, mon cheri, is simply the case of half-and-half as to sex. The only taint in my family is that father is somewhat womanish: falsetto voice, sissie mannerisms, and never any mind for things thoroughly masculine. He ought never to have married to perpetuate, and probably strengthen, his own mild sexual intermediacy.

As I walked the Bowery on that first spree, I was puzzling my mind as to which of the brightly lighted dance-halls or the dark and fearsome dives—through whose doors I saw pass only sailors, guttersnipes, and slovenly gangsters—would be the best stage for my virgin effort at female-impersonation. At last I slipped into the least prosperous-looking and, to the stranger, most uninviting, dance-hall, the notorious "Rabbit." And why the "Rabbit"? Because it looked to be the most crime-inviting of all the dance-halls. I had stood and watched as there passed in and out the most criminal-faced of the Bowery boys: coal-heavers, dock-rats, and fierce-and-cruel-stalking gunmen—not to speak of the poor, deluded "fallen angels."

I dropped into a chair. Almost in less time than I can tell it, four youthful coal-heavers came up grinning: "Hello Bright Eyes!"

Those three words were the most soulful, the most infatuating, that had ever fallen on my ears. I was also delighted because so lucky as to take in, right off, some of the many bewitching Bowery boys I had stared at that night, and cement them to myself. I smiled back: "Hello!"

For the next few hours, I was in hitherto undreamed-of bliss because of being wooed by all four in