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Angelo-Phyllis.
III. George Greenwood.[1]
Ralphie, I am now going to tell you about the foremost specimen of young manhood I ever met. If a man show had been held five years ago, on the model of the horse show, the young fellow I am going to tell you about would have won first prize.
You know that most of us hermaphroditoi have a single soul-mate. Of course they are uncultured. Mere diamonds in the rough. For the past four years, George Greenwood, whom you have seen with me, has been my own soul-mate. For while I have flirted with many others, he alone has been like an adopted son—as we older hermaphroditoi look upon our soul-mates. At present, George is twenty-nine, and in outer attractiveness, only a wreck of what he was when I "adopted" him.[2]
- ↑ The reader might omit this chapter because thinking it not a propos. It is given because describing an actual episode in the life of the sexual cripple being depicted. It also paints the type of fast young bachelor after whom the cultured ultra-androgynes of New York commonly "run." To avoid any chance of a suit for slander, I merely substitute the real name of one of my own half-dozen New York favorites—the half-dozen who will live forever in the sanctum sanctorum of my memory—that one favorite who physically much resembled Phyllis's "adopted son," but whose character was ideal. The real George Greenwood—of immaculate beauty and charm, and unsurpassed friendliness to a sexual cripple like myself. In the words of Phyllis, I am "continuously burning incense in ray heart to his memory." I would wish to confer on him immortality.
- ↑ At the time I knew him slightly, he was very bald and possessed a rather "passe" countenance. He was nearly six feet tall, perfectly proportioned, and had a negroid complexion, charcoal eyes, and the blackest of curly hair—that is, what was left of it. He was apparently of Spanish extraction. Only when he had his hat on was he still of entrancing appearance.
