The first of Marilyn's revelations came to me on an interior set that was part of a picture in which she had had so small a role that eventually she fell out of it completely, so no one could ever remember that she was in it.

  We were there as the result of a hurry call from the studio. A whole scene was being redone, and everyone who had a part in it had to be there at seven in the morning for searches and new shots.

  "You'd imagine I was a star or something," she whispered in my ear after half an hour of waiting. "After agent-deductions the picture will leave me with just a little over hundred dollars."

  There was a cute little boy sitting opposite us. He recognized Marilyn, left  his mother's side and stepped up boldly to ask her for an autograph.

  "The little rascal didn't as much as say please," I remained her when the child-dressed in long, gray silk pantaloons-had made his way back.

  "The little goon might have done worse, he might have tried to pick up my skirt to see if my panties are as pretty as his," she murmured in my ear, " Apparently you've much to learn about these little monsters.'

  Something in her voice was more shocking than her words.

  "Not at his age!" I said.

  "They can be worse even when they're younger," she assured me. "You see, I was born with a definite preference for things masculine. When I was old enough to play I wanted to play with little boys, not with little girls. I didn't go for dolls nearly as much as I went for baseballs.

  "But don't let your psychiatric balls flare up. My interest in the boys  was purely in their games, I don't care how many doctors can prove it to have been exactly in reverse. It was different with the boys, however. Their interest was often more in me that in the games we played together. For my part, I was extremely unhappy when they played and left me out.

  "If you'll take it easy, I'll show you exactly how it worked.

  "There was a big tenement house on our block in which most of the boys I played with lived. Behind the house was a cheerless gray yard big enough for almost any kind of game we had in mind to play. Under the house there was a dark, wet, low-ceiling basement. No  games were played in the basement. The boys used it for what an older boy called experimenting.

  "I must have been somewhere between four and five then. Some of the boys were younger, some older. I often followed them into the basement because of the exciting talk that went on among them about the wonders they were accomplishing in it, in experiments such as mixing kerosene with mils to produce gasoline, or turning an old cooking-pot into a drum by stretching abandoned pieces of linen over the open end.

  "It would never occur to me-until it actually came to pass-that they would eventually tire of experimenting with odd pieces of wood and bottles and begin to experiment on me. But that's exactly what happened.

  "The leader of this gang of ambitious juvenile delinquents was a redhead with a moon-face and green eyes. As I knew him from his earlier behavior in and out of the basement he had no initiative at all, unless adopting other kids' ideas as his own can be called initiative. When he did anything it was usually in compliance with the suggestion of someone else, though he never failed to make an effort, however futile, to make it appear that the suggestion had really originated with him.

  "The decision to turn from dead material to live, to take advantage of the presence in their midst of that strange phenomenon in bruised knees and torn skirts must have been made at  a time when I was on an errand for my foster mother, and was probably originally suggested by the tall, skinny bespectacled kid who actually got up all the ideas which the redhead adopted and acted on as if they were his.

  "At any rate it was the redhead who greeted me the afternoon it began. He grabbed my hand as I entered the yard, walked me up against the fence, and ordered me to take off my waist.

  "What for?" I demanded to know.

  "Just take it off," he repeated.

  "I liked from him to the other boys, and I could barely believe my eyes: they were all nodding in unison. The skinny one actually spoke up, and this was the first time he did it outside of council:

  "Take it off, Jeane," he said.

  "I pleaded I had nothing on under it, but that only made them all grin, and the redhead picked up the initiative again:

  "That's why we want you to take it off, stupid. We wanna see your bubbies."

  "My what?" I demanded.

  "He repeated the word and it sounded twice as nasty.

  "I aint got any, " I announced defiantly.

  "There was a snicker in which only a few of them joined.

  "You're a girl ain'tcha?" asked the redhead.

  "Sure I'm a girl," I answered. "But I ain't taking off anything . I don't care what you do to me, I won't take off anything."

  "We wont do anything to you," interposed the skinny one. "But if you wont work with us we wont let you play with us."

  "That's right. We wont ever take you in our games again, a few of the others joined in.

  "There was nothing for me to do but leave the yard. I did so reluctantly, knowing that the one thing I  couldn't give up was being a part of the mob and their games. I thought I'd just stay away a few days and come back when everything was forgotten.

  " I had not reckoned on the tenacity of those little beasts. The moment I entered the yard three days later they ran forward, surrounded me, and began dragging me out.

  "Go play  in your own yard!" they shouted. "You're too stuck up for us!"

  "By the time they got me to the doorway of the hall leading into the street I reconsidered the while thing. What harm was there in letting them look? There was really nothing for them to see!"

  "A groan of disappointment greeted my unveiling.

  "Why I got more tits than that!" came from Spaghetti Joe Venelli.

  "Are you sure you're really a girl?" the redhead scoffed.

  Afraid he might ask for further proof by a more drastic measure I placed my hands on each of the beginnings of what were to be my greatest allures, and took a firm step backwards.

  "Don't you see? I asked.

  "See what? asked the skinny one.

  "We don't see nothing!" the redhead declared. Saying this he put aside my covering hands and began to vigorously manipulate my obviously inadequate mammilla as if to bring them forward more prominently. It has occurred to me more than once that this foul brat could have been at least partly responsible for the development of my breasts into what they are like now.

  "While the redhead was busy with his monstrous manipulations one of his companions did something to remind me that matters could become much worse. Spaghetti Joe Vinelli suddenly stooped and with his hands made a fierce dive for my knees, As I fell helpless to the ground four of them seized me by a hand and foot, dragged me to a comparatively obscure corner of the yard and one by one began the unlocking of my thighs. Each of them failed in his turn. When the fifth, who was the redhead, failed, he ran out and returned a moment later with a large wooden clothes-pin. At the sight of it I let out such a yell, windows of the houses began to be flung up, and the boys rushed out in a body.