Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/86

64 and his sturdy build. Now and then we kissed when no one was looking. But once a loud smack reverberated just after the near-sighted school-marm had requested such stillness that one could hear a pin drop. As she had never been kissed by a person of the opposite sex, she considered a smack the unpardonable sin. My hero-boy took his whipping with a cynical smile. But I wept for a half -hour.

Third year: I was caught in an immeasurably worse impropriety under a desk. The teacher thought my parents ought to know. Violently angry, my father hammered my body with the heel of a boot. In a dozen years, not one of my numerous brothers and sisters (although I was the only goody-goody one) suffered such a thrashing. All the rest of my home life, father treated me the worst of all, notwithstanding I far excelled in school-work. What a trial to have a girl-boy son? Why had I ever been born? Subsequently there existed a lifelong coolness between father and me.

Fourth year: [A typical spring afternoon.] After school, the west playground was thronged with boys. I alone hastened directly to the street, embarrassed as a little girl alone with two hundred boys. One calls out: "Ralph, hurry to the girls' yard where you belong!" Another: "Ralph, your legs are as shapely as a girl's. You would make a goodlooking girl!" A third throws his arms around me and exclaims: "Kissing you is as good as kissing a girl!"

My embarrassment prevented my relishing these attentions at the moment. But I always gloated over them after I got to bed.