Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/84

62 of seven, and was, besides, girlish. I commonly felt myself a little girl and told playmates to call me Jennie. They have remarked that I was "more girl than boy." Adults, however, were blind to my bisexuality. They ridiculed me for carrying a doll in my arms when I took a walk; etc. Because I was the only child of my set thus violently crossed, I was the most unhappy. Taunts sometimes drove me to throw myself on the floor, bang my head, and exclaim: "I wish I were dead!"

But, on the whole, my early childhood was happy. With F'ank I would play "papa and mamma." He would "go to business," while I took care of the dolls; etc. I made and laundered their wardrobes. One day a sudden shower surprised me. Gazing at the ill-fated wash on the line, I sobbed: "Oh it yains! It yains! And my c'ose 'll get wet!"

The day of thoroughgoing disillusionment came early in my seventh year. It was the style for boys to wear skirts up to that age. How I loved them! And I never expected to clothe myself otherwise. Even down to my middle forties, I have always felt more at home in skirts.

Then I wasn't to be allowed to go through life as a girl and a woman? I was up against the choice of spending the rest of life in my bedroom, or drawing on a pair of the utterly loathed breeches. At first it was the same as if I had to go on the street in my underclothes. I would dodge behind a tree when an acquaintance hove in sight. How poignantly I missed petticoats as a screen for my shameful nether limbs! Not to mention the deprivation of the pleasure of feeling them dangling about my knees.