been barred from "prep" and university. I was expelled from the latter as soon as the faculty learned that I lived according to Nature's behests. The university training is, of course, worth erotic pleasures ten-thousand times over. But during the first two years of my college course, my health and happiness (as recounted in my Autobiography of an Androgyne) were sorely wrecked by abstinence. Does the wrong not after all lie in the groundless intolerance of "prep" and university for androgynes who obey Nature's demands, and fill, in an unobtrusive manner, the niche in the universe for which the Great Architect predestined them?
Thus being excluded from the pastimes of both the recognized sexes and from their joint social intercourse—on account of my belonging to a third and outcast sex—I found my only recreation from an ultra-studious college-preparatory life in long walks on country roads, during which I often brooded because Providence had consigned me to membership in the third sex. From the age of thirteen to eighteen, I endured the most melancholy existence I have ever heard or read of.[1]
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Particularly during my teens, I have worried and grieved a thousand times as much as the average individual. I say for the solace of fellow melancholiacs who retain their reason that at my present age of forty-seven, I show not the least sign of thinning or whitening hair. But this may be due to my being an ultra-androgyne, a subspecies blessed with perennial youth. Strangely also in my own case intense grief (except the agonies in my Garden of Gethsemane, for which see close of this chapter) has seemed to put physical strength into my usually weak body. I feel also that it sharpens my wits and adds to my wisdom and literary ability. "There's not an ill wind but blows some good."
At the age of forty-seven my conviction is that great sorrows, after the lapse of a score of years, are recognized
