Doughboy, I   By Melissa Tawn   An African-American soldier in World War I stays in Paris after the war to become queen of the jazz scene.

CHAPTER I. FROM SAINT LOUIS TO SAINT NAZAIRE

It was not a good war, though it was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Even though Joe Washington never got any closer to the front lines than the port of Saint Nazaire, where he worked keeping track of war supplies that arrived for his troops and tried to keep the pilfering and confusion to an acceptable minimum, he felt very uncomfortable in an AEF uniform, pretending to be a soldier. Inside, he knew he wasn’t a fighter and certainly not a hero. He shouldn't be here.

Joe had been born and raised in the slums of St. Louis, and had never been outside of that city until he received his draft call up notice. When he reported for his physical, they laughed at him. He was a runt — 5’6” tall in his stocking feet — and skinny. But the Missouri draft quota was far from full, and he did have a high-school education with good grades, so he was drafted anyway and assigned to the quartermaster corps. There he was taught the “system” (Joe always supplied the quotation marks himself) of military accounting and stock management and was shipped overseas.

Joe was assigned to the 369th Infantry Regiment, one of the African-American regiments which General Pershing released to the French Army after other American commanders (many of them white Southerners) refused to have African-Americans serving along with their troops. These units fought under French commanders but wore American uniforms; they saw action in some of the major battles at the end of the war, being cited repeatedly for gallantry and bravery. Since the supply infrastructure for the 369th also remained in American hands, Joe ruled his own little roost in Saint Nazaire, looked down on by both the other Americans and by the French, but with his authority unchallengeable.

The odd situation of being under control of French commanders meant that Joe had to learn French as quickly as possible and, by the end of the war, he had done fairly well. While he was by no means fluent in the language, he had certainly gone far past the average doughboy’s vocabulary (“parlee-voo Francy?”, “kes-ke-see?”) and he was able to bargain with French businessmen and farmers in their own language, as well as argue with officials in the French military establishment who were constantly trying to lay their hands on some of his supplies and transfer them to the French units.

On several occasions, Joe’s duties took him to Paris, usually to meet and argue with the French military or civilian bureaucracy. Like many another doughboy, he was also amazed and charmed by that fabled city. This was not St. Louis by any means. Even though it was buttoned downed and blacked out because of the war, Paris remained the city of lights and enchantment.

CHAPTER 2. THE UNLEASHED PEACOCK

During one of his trips to Paris during the war, when Joe was aimlessly wandering through the streets of Montmartre in the late evening, he had stopped to get a drink at a bar called “The Unleashed Peacock” which, he noticed, seemed very odd. The place appeared to be full of women, but something was out of place: most of the ladies present, though elegantly dressed and mannered, spoke with rather deep voices. They also tended to be taller than the usual French women, though many were extremely beautiful and chic. As he stood at the bar, looking around in a puzzled manner, one of the few men in the place came over to him and began talking in English. He introduced himself as Henry Waterford III, a British businessman living permanently in Paris. Seeing that Joe did not understand where he was, Henry explained that this was a bar for “eonists” — men who liked to dress and act like women. Henry was an “admirer” of eonists, and spent a lot of time at The Unleashed Peacock. “Every lady you see around you,” he boasted, “has the same equipment between her legs that you and I have.”

Joe was amazed; he had no idea that such things existed. He looked around and around in obvious bewilderment. He too was an object of special attention since Africans, and African-Americans, were not yet a common sight in Paris. Finally, one of the women came up to him and asked him if he would like to dance with her. He accepted and, being a very good dancer, enjoyed it very much. Afterwards, they sat at a table to talk. Her name was Marie, she said, and then added “at least that is my name while I am here. What my name is outside this place, is nobody’s business.” “You are a very beautiful woman, Marie,” Joe replied. “It is a shame that you have to live another life outside.” “I know,” replied Marie sadly, “but that is my lot, and it is best to just accept it.”

After that night, Joe would routinely head for The Unleashed Peacock whenever he had a free evening to spend in Paris. He got to know several of the regulars there, and always acted towards them as though they were the ladies they presented themselves to be. They, in turn, had no trouble with his color. Living themselves on the margins of “correct society,” they intuitively empathized with him as he told them of the snubs he and the other soldiers of his regiment received from Frenchmen and white Americans alike.

CHAPTER 3. AN AMERICAN IN PARIS

When the war finally ended, Joe made a monumental decision. As did many other soldiers, he requested that he be demobilized in France and not be shipped back to the United States. He intended, he told his commanders, to spend some time touring Europe before returning home. Actually, Joe had no intention of returning to St. Louis. His childhood had not been a happy one, even though is family had been relatively well-off since his father, a factory worker, had managed to provide them adequately with food and a stable home — something not that usual in the African-American community of the time. But Joe had a secret, which he shared with nobody. Deep down, inside, he too firmly believed that he was a girl, somehow born into the wrong body. Now that was something you just did not tell your mom and dad, but it was a belief that was nonetheless there. Joe had always assumed that he was a unique “assembly line error”, but his encounters at The Unleashed Peacock opened his eyes. There were others like him in the world. As long as he was in uniform, he felt it his duty not to reveal his secret. However, now that he was a civilian, he decided that he could, and should, be more frank with them.

Joe found a cheap place to live in the more outlying district of Montparnasse — a single room over a glassmaker’s workshop. This area was rapidly becoming a center of the postwar bohemia, and — over the years -- included a large contingent of expatriates, among them the American writers Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Its bars and cafés were full of life and fun at all hours of the day and night.

He was not sure what he was going to do in Paris. Vaguely, his thoughts turned to music. Like all of the boys of his generation, Joe had grown up enveloped and entranced by the new musical style which made its way up the Mississippi from New Orleans, a style which had become known as “jazz”. This was black music, generally unknown to the majority of Americans. Joe had learned to play jazz on the trumpet, though he was not very good at it. But more importantly — Joe loved to dance to jazz, often improvising his own steps and movements on the dance floor. At this he was very good. Perhaps he could study music, or dancing, in Paris. It was all very hazy in his mind, but he had time. American dollars went a long way in postwar Paris, especially if one was frugal.

Joe's more immediate goal was to return to The Unleashed Peacock as a civilian, and become accepted in the world of the eonists. He saw himself, some day, sitting at the bar in a beautiful dress of the type Marie wore. He decided to tell her his secret, and ask for her help.

Marie was delighted when Joe confided in her, and promised to help. She excused herself from the table at which she was sitting with him, and returned a few minutes later with another regular, Celeste. “I am bigger than you are,” she explained to Joseph, but Celeste is about your size. Let us see what we can do. The two girls took Joe into a large back room. “You see,” Marie explained, we don’t dare come here dressed like this, or leave like that. Even if we could sneak out of our homes without being noticed, there is always a chance that a gendarme would stop us and ask for our papers. Therefore the owners of The Unleashed Peacock provide us with this room, where we have individual lockers in which we store our female clothes and where we can change in and out of them. There is another adjoining powder room where we can apply makeup. Celeste opened her locker and took out a beautiful yellow dress and matching shoes, together with undergarments — including an artificially-stuffed bra. “Come, honey, let’s see if they fit you.”

The clothes fit Joe reasonably well and, after Marie applied eye and lip makeup, Joe looked in the mirror amazed. She felt like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. Celeste apologized that she did not have a spare wig she could lend, but Joe said that it was all right — back home, many women wore their hair short and nappy, like his. “There is one last thing you need,” said Marie. “What is that?” asked Joseph. “A new name,” replied Marie. “Je sui Josephine,” he answered, “like the empress.”

Five minutes later, Josephine made her triumphant entry into the main room, and was received with applause. She tried to curtsy, and nearly fell on her face. Then, one by one, the other regular girls came up to Josephine, kissed her on the cheek, and welcomed her into the group. Throughout the evening, she learned a lot about the eonist life in Paris. Most of the girls had their clothes tailor-made for them by a seamstress named Mme. Langrand, both of whose sons were fixtures in the eonist community. Shoes were best bought at a certain shoe store they named, which maintained a special back room for customers who preferred not to be seen in public and who needed large sizes. One of the women even knew of a cosmetician who had lived for several years in the African colony of Dahomey, where her husband had been an administrator, and who was surely able to find, or concoct, cosmetics which would fit Josephine’s special coloration.

And so Josephine Washington became a fixture at The Unleashed Peacock, and spent almost every evening there. Like Marie and the others, she rented a locker in the back room to store the clothes she accumulated. It took her several months to get used to them, and to get used to putting on makeup, but she slowly learned and soon it became natural for her. Her French also improved, and after a while she became quite fluent.

CHAPTER 4. JOSEPHINE TAKES WING

One day, as she was getting ready to change back to Joe’s clothes in the early hours of the morning, she hesitated. Why couldn’t she go back to her room dressed as Josephine? She lived alone, after all, and she was not a French citizen. If a gendarme stopped her, she would pretend to only speak English and demand to be taken to the American consul. Given the fact that the French government was trying to make the best possible impression on “Meester Vilson”, who had come personally to Paris to participate in the peace negotiations, it would be hardly likely that the French police would hassle an American citizen over a trivial problem with papers. And so Josephine left The Unleashed Peacock in her female clothes, walked for a while until she was a few blocks away, and then hailed a taxi (all of the hack drivers knew what The Unleashed Peacock was, so it would be dangerous to take one directly from there). Nothing bad happened.

The next day, Josephine went to Mme. Langrand and asked her to prepare several “day outfits”. When they were ready, she began venturing out onto the streets. She found that while people sometimes stared at her, it was because of her color more than because they suspected that she was not a biological woman. By the end of a month, she was feeling so comfortable that she decided that Joe had to go for good. She gave her landlord notice and found another room — this time near the Place de la Bastille. The lease was made out to Josephine Washington.

Slowly but surely, Josephine became comfortable in her role as a beautiful woman. The flat-chested look of the 20’s helped a lot, as did the shorter skirts, which emphasized her shapely legs. Blacks were still looked upon as “exotic” and that helped a lot too. People saw what they wanted to see in her. From time to time, men would try and pick her up. While she enjoyed drinking and dancing with them, and even kissing them, she drew the line at anything more.

As Josephine became more and more comfortable with herself, she also became more and more uncomfortable at The Unleashed Peacock. She began to realize that the others there were only “women for the night”, whereas she now saw herself as a fulltime woman. They were playing a role; she was beginning to live a life. Finally, she confided her feelings to her friend Marie. “I suspected this would happen, Josephine,” Marie said. “It has happened before and, of course, we can only give you our blessing. I envy those who can make the final transition, which I know will never be my lot. But I promise you that I will also give you a very special “graduation” present. On Thursday at 10:00 am, come to room 317 at the following address (which she wrote on a piece of paper) and bring two passport-sized photographs of your new self.”

When Josephine showed up at the address that Marie had given her, she was astonished to see that it was an office building belonging to the Ministry of the Interior. The name on the door of Room 317 said M. Olivier. When Josephine entered, she saw a typical French bureaucrat seated behind a big desk. Suddenly, she realized — this was Marie in her male form. “Oui,” M. Olivier replied when he saw her astonished look, “c'est moi. Did you bring the pictures?” Josephine handed them over. M. Olivier put one in a file he had before him on the desk, and attached the other to a small card. He then stamped the card with three different rubber stamps and signed it. He then handed it to Josephine, who saw that it was a genuine Carte d’Identité — the identity card of a French citizen — with her name and picture on it. “Joe may have been born in St. Louis, but without a doubt Josephine Washington was born here in Paris,” said M. Olivier. “I can personally attest to that. That makes you a bona fide French citizen. You will never have to worry about gendarmes checking papers in the future.” Josephine hugged him and tears started rolling down her cheeks. She wiped them off as she left the office, knowing — in her heart — that she would never see her best friend Marie or the others from The Unleashed Peacock again. She felt the same as when she graduated high school.

CHAPTER 5. ALL THAT JAZZ

For a period of time after she resolved not to return to The Unleashed Peacock, Josephine drifted from bar to bar and club to club, sometimes enjoying herself, sometimes warding off unwanted advances, sometimes leaving after she felt that blacks were not wanted. Some Frenchmen, she was well aware, could be as racist and narrow-minded as any Alabama cracker. No place was really to her liking until, one day, as she walked down the street, she heard familiar music coming out of an obscure club named The Headless Rabbit — American jazz. Excitedly, she entered the place and found a group of somewhat bewildered young Parisians sitting in front of a small stage, on which a trio of African-American musicians were playing genuine New Orleans Jazz. At first, she stood at the back and just listened; letting the sweet music bring back memories of the life she had left behind. Then, suddenly, she could hold herself no longer. Josephine pushed her way to the front and there, on the small (and empty) dance floor in front of the stage, began to dance by herself. As the music washed over her, she remembered the steps of her youth and added to them improvisations to fit the music. The astonished musicians — who hardly expected to see a black woman in a place like this — responded to her presence; one of them jumped down from the stage and, trumpet still in hand, began dancing with her. Needless to say, the crowd went wild.

Fifteen minutes later, when the music stopped, the enthusiastic patrons threw handfuls of money onto the stage. The band members gathered it all up and then the trumpet player graciously handed it all to Josephine and gave her a big kiss. The crowd went wild again. After the cheering died down, the band members went backstage, taking (the rather unwilling) Josephine with them.

They were Ed, Langston, and Harmon — together known as the Cotton Club Trio (though they had no real connection to the Harlem nightclub by that name). They had come over from New York on the same boat as President Wilson in the hope of capitalizing on the pro-American sentiment in Paris. So far, they had only been marginally successful — the French listened with interest and a certain amount of appreciation, but did not really understand the music and only few of them took to it. Since they had never seen jazz danced to, they really had no idea what to do with it. In short, the trio was not doing well. They were also handicapped by the fact that none of them spoke any French and they felt (justifiably, as it turned out) that they were being cheated by the owners of the clubs in which they played.

Josephine liked the guys, and especially Harmon, the trumpet player who had spontaneously danced with her, playing his instrument all the while. When they asked her if she would come back and dance with them the next night, she readily agreed. Before long, she became a regular feature of their act — she would always appear unheralded from the back of the room and spontaneously start dancing. On some days, one or two audacious members of the audience would join her and later others would come forth as well. When the dance floor filled up, Josephine would jump onstage and continue there, often dancing with Harmon while he continued to play his trumpet. The members of the audience copied her moves, which she often improvised on the spot. When the show was over, the trio members would give her whatever money they received in tips.

After a while, the word of a new and exciting act got around and long queues of customers formed in front of The Headless Rabbit. The trio members went to the management and demanded a new contract, one which included payment to Josephine. The manager refused and so they abrogated their contract and moved to a new club in Montparnasse, The Green Strawberry. Here they were billed as “The Cotton Club Trio with Josephine Washington”. Again, they were a success and were even reviewed in several of the newspapers. During one performance, Josephine noticed a familiar group of women seated together and obviously enjoying themselves. During one of the breaks, she went over and hugged them. They were her friends from The Unleashed Peacock, including Marie and Celeste, who had summoned up enough courage for the first time in their lives to come together to a club not specially-intended for eonists. Josephine felt very happy for them, and hoped that this would be a new broadening of their lives.

After six months, the group moved again -- this time to a much larger dance hall with a spacious stage, The Drunken Potter. There they were billed — at the management’s insistence — as “Josephine Washington and The Cotton Club Trio”. Before long, Josephine was the talk of Paris and crowds flocked to every performance. The Drunken Potter became one of the most popular dance halls in Paris, rivaling the Folies Bergere and the Moulin Rouge.

One night, when Josephine had just started dancing, a white man came out of the audience, climbed onto the stage, and began dancing with her. He was superb. Not only did he match her step for step, even during her improvisations, he began superimprovising on them and dancing around her, drawing her into more and more impassioned interpretation of the music. The Trio members too got carried away and carried their music to new heights. Finally, the music and the dance reached a climax, and came to a halt. He and Josephine literally fell into each other's arms. The musicians took a break and the man — speaking highly-accented French — asked Josephine if she would mind sitting with him for a while.

A bit of background is in order here. The great cultural resurgence of Paris which began in the decade before World War I was, to a large extent, led by transplanted foreigners: the American writer Gertrude Stein, the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, and the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. To this Big Three one usually adds the Russian-born Polish dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, the breathtaking star of Diaghilev’s famous Ballets Russes. Nijinsky suffered a mental breakdown in 1919, and his role as the company’s male star was taken by another Russian, Léonide Massine, who was later to become one of the great choreographers of his time. But, at this moment in our story, Léonide Massine was seated at The Drunken Potter, telling Josephine that he had never had the pleasure of dancing with a more natural dancer. He wanted to choreograph a jazz ballet just for her, if she would agree to perform it. Josephine said she was willing to try, but insisted that The Cotton Club Trio be a part of the musical accompaniment for it. It was agreed.

Six months later, for the first time, Josephine Washington and The Cotton Club Trio appeared not in a club or a dance hall but onstage at the Palais Garnier, the official theater of the Paris Opéra Ballet, at the official opening of Léonide Massine’s new ballet “Harlem”. Alongside Josephine danced the African-American ballet dancer Paul Chauncey, and two white dancers from the Ballets Russes, one of whom was Léonide Massine himself. Every important dance critic in Paris was there, as well as a few from Berlin, London, and Amsterdam. While the final criticisms were mixed — the music and dancing were too avant-garde for most of them — there was no doubt that American jazz, for better or for worse, was in Paris to stay.

And so was Josephine Washington. After the short run of “Harlem”, she realized that she needed more formal training to become a professional dancer and so asked the Trio to let her go, so that she could enroll in the dance studio of the Paris Opéra Ballet. Ed, Langston, and Harmon, who never truly adjusted to Paris and never managed to learn French, agreed and decided to sail back to New York. Meanwhile, a new wave of American jazz musicians were making their way to the City of Lights. An era had begun.

FINAL NOTE: The acute reader should have noticed that the character of Josephine Washington was inspired by another African-American dancer from St. Louis who scored a big success in Paris (and later became a naturalized French citizen), namely the great Josephine Baker, whose picture illustrates this story and who was most definitely not a transsexual. Still, one can dream. The dancer and choreographer Léonide Massine, whom I needed for the plot of this story, was a real person. Most probably, he would not have approved of the role I assigned to him. He did not like black people and is notorious for insisting that Janet Collins, the first African-American prima ballerina, paint her face white if she wanted to perform with the Ballets Russes.