Part 9
“That I desire such indulgence does not spring from the fact that I have become licentious or a debauchee, placing my own selfish sensual enjoyment above everything else. I am as ardent as ever in my yearnings to alleviate human misery and to deny myself for others. But in this matter, the result of my denying myself would be almost as serious as to resolve to give up eating for the sake of saving the money for the cause of missions. There are some things which it would be fatal to us to give up, even if we did it through motives of altruism. I assure you that I have not abandoned my high aspirations and worthy aims of life.
“I assert before God that I am confident that I commit no sin in obeying this instinct. During my moments of closest communion with God, I am sensible of His smile on my conduct in this matter. In general the only legitimate relations are between a legally married pair. The marriage state is open to the normal man and he is duty bound to marry when passion becomes too strong. This duty however is not binding on urnings,[2] because they cannot get any one to marry them. I endeavored to marry a young man in New York, but failed. Therefore it is in consonance with the moral law for urnings to enjoy the company of those they love without marrying.
Footnote 2:
At that time I incorrectly described myself as an urning. Urnings are, at least usually, active pederasts, or else addicted to mutual onanism.
[Sidenote: _Androgyne’s Propensities Not Under Biblical Ban._]
“You may reply that such relations are prohibited in the Bible. Relations between man and man, both of whom are normal, are prohibited. But in the past year I have learned that I am seven-eighths a woman, and only one-eighth man.[3] Were it not for certain masculine conformations of the body, I ought to go about in dresses as a woman, and always identify myself with the female sex. Therefore, I being more a woman than a man, these prohibitions in the Bible do not apply to me.
Footnote 3:
This early statement may be too strong. Psychically I am practically all woman, and physically at least one-third, although the organs of generation are completely male.
“I think I have satisfied you that I can without sin follow out my desire in the way Nature prompts. But I would convince you that my companion also acquiesces in my desire without sin. I would not wish to allure any one into obliging me unless he could see that he was thereby committing no sin. There is sin only in those things which rob God of His glory, or which bring unhappiness and detriment to some sentient being. In this case, if sin at all, it would be sin against self. But by it you harm yourself in no way, as the physician told me.
[Sidenote: _Androgynes the Handiwork of God._]
“Then too, urnings, congenital as I, are the work of God, the divine purpose in their creation being probably to check a too rapid increase in the population; and God must therefore have meant that their instinctive cravings for a sexual counterpart should be gratified, especially since he has made these cravings doubly intense. But how could they be gratified without the acquiescence of some normal individual? Therefore the latter is also without sin.
“I am not now, as you may think, writing in a state of extreme excitement, such as I might be in in the presence of the attractive person, when I would not be my true self; but I am writing in a comparatively calm, rational frame of mind. I am backed up in what I write by an experienced physician, whose letter I can show you, and who says that if I had the occasional satisfaction of this craving, I would become healthy, get rid of my morbid thoughts, and have some vim for work, and for distinguishing myself as a scholar. I am myself confident that with this occasional gratification I would some day win the admiration of the circles of religion and learning for my scholarly attainments and for my work for humanity.
“All I ask is that you take a common-sense, rational view of the matter. If there is still any doubt in your mind about your possible compliance being compatible with honor and morality, please state your difficulty, and I assure you I can remove it, since I have given much study to the ethics of this question....”
[Sidenote: _The Androgyne Merits Forbearance._]
But he absolutely declined to grant the favor asked, giving as his only reason that it would be “self-pollution.” In culture, education, and broadness of mind, he stood much below me, but he had some religious scruples, and also his tastes were naturally against compliance. I made further oral solicitations, but he remained deaf to them. I was plunged into despair at his refusal to listen to reason, and my head was drooping in shame. With an intense impulse for self-destruction possessing me, I turned my steps toward a stream about a mile away, where I intended to blot out my miserable existence. But when I had walked some distance, the beauties of nature gradually drew away my thoughts from my chagrin.
Since this cousin was my only hope during the many weeks that I had still to remain in the village, and since I was madly attracted to him, I did not give up all endeavor. Later happenings are described in the following letter to my New York physician:
“... I write to you in order to see if I can be saved from insanity. Last night I again appealed to my cousin, with whom I am deeply in love. I called at his house about nine o’clock, but he was not in. I told his mother I would go up to his room and wait for him. Finally he appeared. I was simply going to ask him to let me kiss him. If he had granted only this, I would have gone home happy and contented. He could not see me, as the room was in darkness, but as soon as he heard me, he said he would shoot me if I did not clear out immediately, and he made a move to get his revolver, which he always keeps loaded under his pillow. I entreated him not to shoot, and to let me say merely a few words; but he answered angrily, ‘If you do not leave the house immediately, I will put a bullet through your head!’
[Sidenote: _Inhumanity Now Shown Androgynes._]
“I immediately left quite calmly, but after I got in my own bed, I began to cry over my cousin’s treatment of me. All of a sudden, without any conscious volition, I sat up in bed, threw my legs and arms about wildly, and for a few seconds shrieked loudly and frightfully. This paroxysm has left me in a state of complete exhaustion, and I now do not know whether I am sane or insane.
“No one can sympathize with me. My cousin, an honorable and intelligent young man, now knows much about my case, and how I have suffered for years, and yet I received from him last night only harsh words, emphasized by a revolver. Such treatment by one I dearly love drives me crazy. If only he had denied my request in gentle words, I would have gone home and merely wept tears of gratitude at his forbearance....”
I longed to be back in a great city, where alone life is possible for such as me provided one wishes to preserve a good reputation. But I did not have the means to go, nor anything I could give my parents as a pretext. After the last terrible repulse, I left my cousin alone. But I was still frequently driven late at night to wander about the village, hoping to find some man in a thoroughly intoxicated condition, but many, many weary hours were thus spent in a vain search.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _First Soldier Companion._]
I now learned that a detachment of light artillery, stationed at a fort near New York City, who were out on a practice march, would camp in a neighboring town. This news enchanted me, and I informed my parents that I was going off for a trip afoot for a few days, of course not making known my motive. Though a nervous wreck, I was at the time able to walk twenty miles a day.
I reached the camp toward sunset. With other civilians, I lingered around until late in the evening. I tried to enter into conversation with the young soldiers, who fascinated me, but could not overcome my bashfulness. Finally, after most of them had retired, I left the camp, and started off to seek lodging for the night. But on the way I unexpectedly met a tall soldier of imposing appearance, and by a great effort of the will, I stepped up, walked along by his side, and entered into conversation.
When from his words and manner I judged that he was kind-hearted and would not take advantage of my own unfortunate position in society, I threw off the role of a male, and gave full swing to the feminine side of my nature. My long enforced abstinence had driven me wild, and I now poured out hot protestations of love and adoration. Finding that they were received sympathetically, I threw myself into his arms, clasped my hands around his neck, and wept for happiness. The effect on me of the soldier’s charms was beyond description. His face and head seemed to be surrounded with a halo of glory. There was an air about him so careless, so sensual, so brave, so manly, and yet so kind. I called him by all the names which love can invent in order to deify its object. He however soon had to retire to the camp, and left me heartsick.
[Sidenote: _First Arrest._]
I again started toward town, and soon met another soldier, who happened to be in a maudlin condition. Because of this, I thought I had nothing to fear, and accosted him in such a way as to disclose my nature immediately without first sounding to see if he was of a compassionate nature. Though not at all offended, but laughing at what he considered an amusing experience, and expressing his willingness, he demanded five dollars, and said that unless I handed it over, he would take me before the captain of his company. This was said merely to frighten me, but in my greenness, I fully believed he would do it. Thoroughly alarmed, I started off on a run. The soldier staggered after, crying, “Catch him! Catch him!” In a moment there were three other soldiers and a constable in pursuit. I was caught, the constable took me in hand, and asked what it was all about. Before any one else could reply, I addressed the five supplicatingly:
“I am ashamed to tell it, but I am an urning.[4] I simply asked this soldier to do me a favor, to which he certainly did not object, because he only laughed. I have not done anything to him wrong or criminal. I only proposed something, and then he said he would take me before his captain unless I paid him five dollars. I became frightened and ran away. I pray you, have mercy on me, and let me go. If you knew what a sad life I have had, you would feel sorry for me. I have felt like committing suicide a thousand times. I am not willingly what I am. It is my misfortune and not my fault that I am an urning. If you are ever capable of compassion, let my fate move you to pity. Please let me go and don’t arrest me!”
Footnote 4:
Term misapplied.
[Sidenote: _Reflections in Jail._]
The soldiers soon went on their way, and the constable conducted me in the direction of the lockup. He acted toward me as if I was a low criminal, while I continued to supplicate him to let me go. As we came nearer the lockup, in my highly excited condition over the fear of disgracing my family, who lived only four miles away, and the prospect that if my secret was disclosed, I could never see any of my loved ones again, I thoughtlessly declared I would not go any farther, which caused him to rap my head with his club.
I was locked up for the night. Through nervous shock, I did not sleep a wink. Only to the few is it given ever to taste such a night of misery as I passed. “I, whom all think the purest and most pious of men, being arrested!” I meditated. “I, the last one whom anybody would have expected ever to be arrested! But God’s will be done.... Am I to be the one to disgrace my family? Hitherto I have been the scholar, the litterateur, the only collegian of my father’s family, and have by my achievements in learning brought the most honor on my father’s house of all his children. I shall also be the one to bring the deepest disgrace upon it.”
[Sidenote: _Chronic Fear of Arrest._]
The following morning I was sentenced to three days in the lockup. As the village of my incarceration was only four miles from my home, and I was known at least by sight to some of its inhabitants, my father evidently soon learned of my disgrace, notwithstanding that I had sought to conceal my identity. Although he never mentioned the episode, he soon began to treat me regularly with extreme bitterness, as if he wished I had never been born. I was the only one of his children to whom he manifested any such spirit, notwithstanding I was the brightest of them.
Throughout an entire decade subsequent to this episode, I had an unreasonable nervousness about arrest and about policemen. Whenever any one whose name was unfamiliar was announced as waiting to see me, my first thought and fear were that a policeman had come to arrest me. Whenever any one called me up on the telephone, I always feared that it was in connection with my forthcoming arrest.
A few days after being restored to liberty, I informed my parents of my intention to go off on another trip afoot, this time for a couple of weeks. My secret object was to mingle with this detachment of troops, whom I knew to be encamped for some weeks about two days’ easy journey on foot from my home. That just described was my first experience with soldiers, and I had become fascinated as never before. All my reveries were now to relinquish the career of a scholar and become a sutler near some fort in the wild west so that I could mingle daily with these demigods, whom I most abjectly worshipped. I was in misery because my lot in life separated me from these ferocious young men.
[Sidenote: _Soldiers Are Demigods._]
I look upon a youthful professional soldier as a most wonderful being, different from all other human beings. There seems to be a sort of enchantment about him. Merely the process of enlistment, the donning of the uniform, and the acquiring of skill in handling the weapons of warfare make a demigod out of the young man, as your author looks upon it. When a newspaper item states that a trainload of _regular_ soldiers passed through a certain town, I reflect with a thrill on what a wonderful burden that train bore, and experience a sense of pain that I could not be along and make known the adoration I feel. Ever since this my first encounter with regular soldiers, I have wished for omnipresence with the men of the regular army. Privates, corporals, and sergeants are men after my own heart. I was never attracted toward commissioned officers, and they have appeared to me as being less manly than the classes named. Perhaps my predilection is due to the fact that the commissioned officers are as a rule intellectual like myself. Subsequently to my reaching the age of twenty-five, regular soldiers have been practically the only young men to whom I have been strongly attracted. After that age I found it easy to relinquish coquetry with all other young men. Now (1918) when I have arrived at my middle forties, I pine alone not to be able longer—on account of my age—to mingle with regular soldiers as a mignon. As Ophelia with Othello, I love them and adore them for the dangers they have passed through, as well as those attached to their vocation. Furthermore, in man’s natural state, fighting—next to procreating—is the pre-eminent function of the male. For this reason the war-loving man is my sexual ideal.
[Sidenote: _Music Overwhelms._]
Arrived a short distance from the camp, I, for only the second time in my life, caught the thrilling notes of the bugle-call. It took all the strength out of my legs so that I felt as if I would fall to the ground. Since I began to associate with soldiers, the notes of the bugle have had an unearthly—I might say, an eternal, overwhelming—beauty. Subsequently to 1905, when my open career as a soldiers’ mignon became a thing of the past, the bugle-call has made me live that career over again in a few moments. It brings up fond memories of the many evenings spent in the long, long ago with the “mighty men of war.” It fills my soul with adoration for these “mighty men of valor,” these “mighty men of renown.” I have sometimes been seized with a babyish cooing or gasping, and have ardently wished that I were youthful again and in the arms of one of these wonderful beings.
The effect on me of secular music in general has been to arouse reveries of my amours and paramours. I have been an unusual lover and patron of grand opera, the soprano and alto solos having an overwhelming effect particularly (because that is the manner in which I would have wished to sing). I have often been raised into sublime heights of ecstasy, generally with a sensual tinge.
Arrived at the camp, I strolled about and was soon recognized: “Hello Pretty! Where did you come from?” Filled with bliss, and thrown into my most babyish and effeminate mood, I responded: “You adorable artilleryman, I was pining for you, and followed you here from X——.” He told me to meet him outside the camp after retreat, when he appeared with several comrades. I was in ecstasy on this first walk of my life on a country road with a party of bewitching adolescent soldiers as daylight was fast fading into darkness. In my years of subsequent association with soldiers, I found that those over twenty-five years of age were in general disinclined to talk with me. They appeared to have been already satiated with flirtation, while numerous youngsters were desirous of a frolic with me.
[Sidenote: _Milites Easiest of Conquests._]
Havelock Ellis says: “The homosexual tendency appears to have flourished chiefly among warriors and warlike peoples.” In another place he says: “I have been told by medical men in India that it is specially common among the Sikhs, the finest soldier-race in India.” I have myself found adolescent professional soldiers the easiest of conquests and the most inclined of any class of men to take the virile part with me. I speak from experience in flirtation with at least two thousand different professional soldiers, only about four hundred of whom, however, went to extremes. I saw not the least tendency toward homosexuality amongst themselves, although I frequented to some extent their barracks and even their bunks. They are only capable of taking the virile part with an individual like your author. In general the common soldiers of the regular army are particularly rough, coarse-grained, vigorous, and sensual men, constituting physically the best blood of the race. As already indicated, practically all civilians who were intimate with me were of this same type, and there appears to be some connection between tremendous virility and active homosexuality. Furthermore, along with this ultra-virility of the professional common soldier, he is almost entirely shut off from the gentle sex, whereas the young civilian of the laboring classes has usually an acquaintance who gladly yields as his mistress. Of course many of the nation’s fighters have a natural distaste. As just indicated, only about one in five with whom I coquetted went to extremes, while about fifty per cent. of those who knew me by sight would never even speak to me. But the line of cleavage did not at all correspond with that between the religious or conscientious and the vicious. It was a matter as much outside the province of ethics as is vegetarianism.
[Sidenote: _Actives Are Ultravirile._]
Moreover, soldiers lead comparatively idle lives, and also monotonous lives, and these two conditions add to their susceptibility to the wiles of a fairie. A bright and facile fairie is capable of furnishing them a great deal of entertainment, aside from the opportunity of exercising their fundamental impulse. With myself also, _coitus was a comparatively small element_ in our mutual relations. Innocent coquetry, including “taking off” the baby and the woman, occupied a far larger place.
[Sidenote: _Author’s Two-Sided Life._]
My relations with a coterie of beaux, and particularly with soldiers around the camps and forts, reminded me sometimes of a play. I was, as it were, acting a part. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that another personality was in possession of me. I was conscious that I was the same “I” who was one of the leaders in scholarship at the university and who was there looked upon as a particularly innocent and pure-minded youth. I was also conscious that in the society of my beaux I was not acting as became the sensible, rational, respectable collegian of other occasions. I felt that I had temporarily relinquished my mind and body to the dictates of another spirit, that of a “baby girl”—a combination of baby and girl. It was however a spirit not alien to me. It was a spirit which had dwelt in my brain from infancy. It was a spirit that had always been called up by the sight of beautiful stalwart males of the proper age. For the work of life I realized that this spirit would not do. If I was to make a name for myself in the world, I must dethrone this baby-spirit in me. When in my study, I sought to forget this baby-spirit. I even turned against it at times with a sort of abhorrence, and asked myself how I could give way to it. Thus I lived a sort of a two-sided life. Part of the time I was a sober-minded intellectual worker. Part of the time, when under sexual excitement, even to a slight degree, I displayed the mental traits of a baby. I knew that these two states, babyhood and adult manhood, were incongruous, but to have a contented mind and to be in a mood which would render a career devoted to scholarly pursuits possible, it was necessary occasionally to follow out my feminine and babyish instincts. It should be remembered, however, that I have never developed into a full-fledged man either physically or mentally. If my business associates tell the truth, I am still in 1918 a child nearly half a century old. Childlikeness is a common characteristic of androgynes.
[Sidenote: _Acting Out a Drama._]
I was not alone in acting a part when with a coterie of beaux, but they also did in conducting themselves toward me as if I were a girl. While strolling with soldiers through the fields and woods, I would demand assistance over places of the slightest difficulty, and some of them were marvellously solicitous under the circumstances. They instinctively yearned to be the protector of some weak female, and being deprived of practically all female company, they spent their instinctive gallantry on me. This was to me a rare pleasure.
In our drama, it was bliss to me to be the star, the center of attraction, the only representative of the gentle sex present, while there might be around me half a score of large, powerful young bloods. In my every-day sphere, I have been exceedingly shy, but as “Jennie June” I have impersonated a baby girl before a hundred soldiers at a time without being in the least embarrassed. I would fret after the manner of a baby and sob just for the pleasure of having them soothe and pet me. I would pretend to faint away just for the pleasure of being caught in their arms and held there. When in the country, I sometimes feigned unwillingness to go with them, and forced them to carry me, with hands, arms, and whole body hanging limp. This was also a rare pleasure. Sometimes they would scare me in fun in order to bring from me a shrill feminine shriek—when I felt sure no officers or civilians were near. Indeed while in their company, I exaggerated cowardice, babyishness, and femininity in general.
[Sidenote: _Cast Out of a Camp._]