These adolescent sluggers and gunmen lost no time in assuring me: "You're only a doll-baby, Eunice, and so need us big, strong fellows to fight your battles. But you must stay with our gang! If we should catch you running around with any other, we'd murder you!"
I coveted to be their slave, Ralph, and did all I could for them without disclosing that I belonged to a wealthy family, because a female-impersonator of a higher social stratum associating incognito with gangsters must conceal his status. At Pug Heaven, I became an expert detective and actor—an accomplishment requisite for every upper-class impersonator destined to sprees in the Underworld.
A thousand times I desiderated female corporeality so that I could have married one of these magic gunmen. How I have envied many a young mother before my eyes with babe in arms! How could a God of love have created me physically a male when I have always so coveted personal female corporeality, and, in adulthood, the mothering of offspring!
These weekly female-impersonation explosions continued more than two years, when my father relegated me to a university several hours from New York. I leave it nameless—to spare it the disgrace of having once numbered "Frank White" among its students. These evenings in Pug Heaven were the most beatific feature of life. During college vacations, and for several years following graduation, I occasionally visited the joint. But finally, on my return from an extended residence in Europe, I discovered a haberdashery occupying the site. I was informed that an application for renewal of license had been denied. Its habitues became thus scattered.
