It was in his eighteenth year that an event occurred which he regards as decisive in his development. He read Plato. A new world opened, and he felt that his own nature had been revealed. Next year he formed a pa.s.sionate, but pure, friendship with a boy of 15. Personal contact with the boy caused erection, extreme agitation, and aching pleasure, but not e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. Through four years he never saw the boy naked or touched him pruriently. Only twice he kissed him. He says that these two kisses were the most perfect joys he ever felt.
His father now became seriously anxious both about his health and his reputation. He warned him of the social and legal dangers attending his temperament. But he did not encourage him to try coitus with women. He himself thinks that his own sense of danger might have made this method successful, or that, at all events, the habit of intercourse with women might have lessened neurosis and diverted his mind to some extent from h.o.m.os.e.xual thoughts.
A period of great pain and anxiety now opened for him. But his neurasthenia increased; he suffered from insomnia, obscure cerebral discomfort, stammering, chronic conjunctivitis, inability to concentrate his attention, and dejection. Meanwhile his h.o.m.os.e.xual emotions strengthened, and a.s.sumed a more sensual character. He abstained from indulging them, as also from onanism, but he was often forced, with shame and reluctance, to frequent places-baths, urinaries, and so forth-where there were opportunities of seeing naked men.
Having no pa.s.sion for women, it was easy to avoid them. Yet they inspired him with no exact horror. He used to dream of finding an exit from his painful situation by cohabitation with some coa.r.s.e, boyish girl of the people; but his dread of syphilis stood in the way. He felt, however, that he must conquer himself by efforts of will, and by a persistent direction of his thoughts to heteros.e.xual images. He sought the society of distinguished women. Once he coaxed up a romantic affection for a young girl of 15, which came to nothing, probably because the girl felt the want of absolute pa.s.sion in his wooing. She excited his imagination, and he really loved her; but she did not, even in the closest contact, stimulate his s.e.xual appet.i.te. Once, when he kissed her just after she had risen from bed in the morning, a curious physical repugnance came over him, attended with a sad feeling of disappointment.
He was strongly advised to marry by physicians. At last he did so. He found that he was potent, and begot several children, but he also found, to his disappointment, that the tyranny of the male genital organs on his fancy increased. Owing to this cause his physical, mental, and moral discomfort became acute. His health gave way.
At about the age of 30, unable to endure his position any longer, he at last yielded to his s.e.xual inclinations. As he began to do this, he also began to regain calm and comparative health. He formed a close alliance with a youth of 19. This liaison was largely sentimental, and marked by a kind of etherealized sensuality. It involved no s.e.xual acts beyond kissing, naked contact, and rare involuntary emissions. About the age of 36 he began freely to follow h.o.m.os.e.xual inclinations. After this he rapidly recovered his health. The neurotic disturbances subsided.
He has always loved men younger than himself. At about the age of 27 he had begun to admire young soldiers. Since he yielded freely to his inclinations the men he has sought are invariably persons of a lower social rank than his own. He carried on one liaison continuously for twelve years; it began without pa.s.sion on the friend"s side, but gradually grew to nearly equal strength on both sides. He is not attracted by uniforms, but seeks some uncontaminated child of nature.
The methods of satisfaction have varied with the phases of his pa.s.sion. At first they were romantic and Platonic, when a hand-touch, a rare kiss, or mere presence sufficed. In the second period sleeping side by side, inspection of the naked body of the loved man, embracements, and occasional emissions after prolonged contact. In the third period the gratification became more frankly sensual. It took every shape: mutual masturbation, intercrural coitus, f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o, irrumatio, and occasionally active pedicatio; always according to the inclination or concession of the beloved male.
He himself always plays the active, masculine part. He never yields himself to the other, and he a.s.serts that he never has the joy of finding himself desired with ardor equal to his own. He does not shrink from pa.s.sive pedicatio; but it is never demanded of him. Coitus with males, as above described, always seems to him healthy and natural; it leaves a deep sense of well-being, and has cemented durable friendships. He has always sought to form permanent ties with the men whom he has adored so excessively.
He is of medium height, not robust, but with great nervous energy, with strong power of will and self-control, able to resist fatigue and changes of external circ.u.mstances.
In boyhood he had no liking for female occupations, or for the society of girls, preferring study and solitude. He avoided games and the noisy occupations of boys, but was only non-masculine in his indifference to sport, was never feminine in dress or habit. He never succeeded in his attempts to whistle. He is a great smoker, and has at times drunk much. He likes riding, skating, and climbing, but is a poor horseman, and is clumsy with his hands. He has no capacity for the fine arts and music, though much interested in them, and is a prolific author.
He has suffered extremely throughout life, owing to his sense of the difference between himself and normal human beings. No pleasure he has enjoyed, he declares, can equal a thousandth part of the pain caused by the internal consciousness of pariahdom. The utmost he can plead in his own defense, he admits, is irresponsibility, for he acknowledges that his impulse may be morbid. But he feels absolutely certain that in early life his health was ruined and his moral repose destroyed owing to the perpetual conflict with his own inborn nature, and that relief and strength came with indulgence. Although he always has before him the terror of discovery, he is convinced that his s.e.xual dealings with men have been thoroughly wholesome to himself, largely increasing his physical, moral, and intellectual energy, and not injurious to others. He has no sense whatever of moral wrong in his actions, and he regards the att.i.tude of society toward those in his position as utterly unjust and founded on false principles.
The next case is, like the foregoing, that of a successful man of letters who also pa.s.sed through a long period of mental conflict before he became reconciled to his h.o.m.os.e.xual instincts. He belongs to a family who are all healthy and have shown marked ability in different intellectual departments. He feels certain that one of his brothers is as absolute an invert as himself and that another is attracted to both s.e.xes. I am indebted to him for the following detailed narrative, describing his emotions and experiences in childhood, which I regard as of very great interest, not only as a contribution to the psychology of inversion, but to the embryology of the s.e.xual emotions generally. We here see described, in an unduly precocious and hyperesthetic form, ideas and feelings which, in a slighter and more fragmentary shape, may be paralleled in the early experiences of many normal men and women. But it must be rare to find so many points in s.e.xual psychology so definitely ill.u.s.trated in a single child. It may be added that the narrative is also not without interest as a study in the evolution of a man of letters; a child whose imagination was thus early exercised and developed was predestined for a literary career.
HISTORY XXI.-"Almost the earliest recollection I have is of a dream, which, from my vivid recollection of its details, must have repeated itself, I think, more than once, unless my waking thoughts unconsciously added definition. From this dream dated my consciousness of the attraction to me of my own s.e.x, which has ever since dominated my life. The dream, suggested in part, I think, by a picture in an ill.u.s.trated newspaper of a mob murdering a church dignitary, took this form: I dreamed that I saw my own father murdered by a gang of ruffians, but I do not remember that I felt any grief, though I was actually an exceedingly affectionate child. The body was then stripped of its clothing and eviscerated. I had at the time no notion of anatomical details; but the particulars remain distinct to my mind"s eye, of entrails uniformly brown, the color of dung, and there was no accompaniment of blood. When the abdomen had been emptied, the incident in which I became an active partic.i.p.ant occurred. I was seized (and the fact that I was overpowered contributed to the agony of delight it afforded me) and was laid between the thighs of my murdered parent; and from there I had presently crawled my way into the evacuated, abdomen. The act, so far as I can decide of a dream at an age when emission was out of the question, caused in me extreme organic excitement. At all events, I used afterward definitely to recur to it in the waking moments before sleep for the purpose of gaining a state of erection. The dream had no outcome; it seemed to reach its goal in the excitement it caused. I was at that time between 3 and 4 years old. (I have been told that erections occurred when I was only 2 years old. It was between 3 and 4 that I used to induce, at all events, the sensation of an erection. But I was nearer 5 when, sitting on my bed and waiting to be dressed, I got an involuntary erection and called my nurse"s attention to it, asking what it meant. The appearance must, therefore, have been usual to me at that date, but certainly the sensation was not.)
"At that time I was totally ignorant of the conditions, of p.u.b.erty, which afterward, when I discovered them, so powerfully affected me. I could not even visualize the private organs of a man; I made no deductions from myself. The only naked bodies I had seen then-I judge from circ.u.mstances, not from any actual memory of the facts-were those of my own sisters. In the waking dreams which I began to construct, though I recurred often to the one already narrated, the goal of my desire was generally to nestle between the thighs or to have my face pressed against the hinder parts of the object of my worship. But for a time my first dream so engrossed me that I did not indulge in any promiscuity. Gradually, however, my horizon enlarged, and took in, besides the first mentioned, three others: a cousin very much my elder, an uncle, and the curate of the parish.
"At this stage I began to invent circ.u.mstances for the indulgence of my pa.s.sion. One of the earliest was to imagine myself in a tank with my three lovers floating in the water above me. From this position I visited their limbs in turn; the attraction rested in the thighs and b.u.t.tocks only. I fancy this limitation of the charm to the lower parts only lasted until actual experience of a more complete embrace made me as much a lover of the arms and breast; indeed, later I became more emotionally enamored of these parts than of all the rest. At the beginning of things I simply loved best what my mind could first get hold of.
"Quite early in my experience, when I was not more than 5, I awoke earlier than usual, and saw my nurse standing in complete nudity, commencing her toilet. She seemed to me a gross, coa.r.s.e, and meaningless object; the hair under her armpits displeased me, and still more that on the lower part of her body. In the case of men, directly I came to have cognizance of the same thing on their bodies, the effect was exactly the opposite. It so happened that about this time the gardener had received some injury to his leg, and in showing the bruise to another exhibited before my eyes a skin completely s.h.a.gged over with dark hair. Though the sight of the bruise repulsed me, my pleasure was intense, and the vision of the gardener"s legs was in my bed every night for a week afterward. My point is that the sight of my nurse was liable to rouse interest just as much as the far more prosaic display of the gardener"s wounded leg, but my nature made it impossible.
"It was about this time, if not before, that an enormous sense of shyness with regard to all my private duties began to afflict me. So great was it that I could endure from no hand except my mother"s or my nurse"s the necessary a.s.sistance in the b.u.t.toning and unb.u.t.toning of my garments, always excepting those who were about my own age, toward whom I felt no privacy whatever.
"When I was a little more than 5 I formed a friendship with a young clerk, a youth of about 15, though he seemed to me a grown-up person. One day, as he sat at his desk writing, I sat down and began playing with his feet, investigating the height to which his socks went under his trousers; in this way I obtained six inches of bare leg. Conscious of my courage I fell to kissing it. My friend laughed, but left me to my devotions in peace. This was the first time in which a feeling of romance mixed itself in my dreams; the physical excitement was less, but the pleasure was greater. I cannot understand why I never repeated the experience. He remained to me an object of very special and tender consideration.
"In the next episode I have to relate the ideal was totally absent, and the part I played was pa.s.sive rather than active. I was put to sleep with a boy considerably my senior. His initiation led to a physical familiarity between us which was not warm or kind, and I was allowed no scope for my own instinctive desires for a warmer kind of contact; if I sought it under cover of my companion"s slumbers I found myself kicked away. Only on one occasion did I find a few moments of supreme charm, while his sleep remained sound, by discovering in the recesses of the sheet an exposed surface of flesh against which I pressed my face in an abandonment of joy. For the rest I was a pa.s.sive partic.i.p.ant, his pleasure seeming to end in the mere handling of the fleshy portions of my body. For this purpose I usually lay face downward across his knees. So far as I can remember, this intimacy led to a decrease in my pursuit of imaginative pleasures; for about a year no further development took place.
"At about this date I was circ.u.mcised on account of the prepuce being too long.
"Between the 6th and 7th years a change of environment brought me into contact with a new set of faces. I had then a bed to myself, and once more my imagination awoke to life. It was at this time that I found myself constructing from men"s faces suppositions as to the rest of their bodies: a brown face led me to suppose a uniformly brown body, a pale face a pale body. This idea of variety began to charm me. I now made definite choice in my reveries whether I would go to sleep between white thighs, or red thighs, or brown thighs. Going to sleep definitely describes the goal of the method to which I had addicted myself. As soon as I entered my bed I abandoned myself to the construction of an amour and retained it as long as I had consciousness. I may say that I was not conscious of any emissions under these circ.u.mstances (until some years later, when I brought it about by my own act), but the pleasure was fairly acute.
"All this time there were secret meetings, with my bedfellow of the year before. But they now took place by day, in various hiding-places, with little unclothing or exposure, and my companion was cold and fastidious and repelled any warmth on my part; it became to me a dry sort of ritual. I had an idea at that time that the whole thing was so much an original invention of his and mine that there was no likelihood of it being practised by anyone else in the world. But this consideration did not restrain me in constructing love scenes with all those whose appearance attracted me. At this period nearly every man with whom I came in contact won at least my transient desire; only the quite old and deformed lay outside the scope of my wishes. Many of my amours developed in church; the men who sat near me were the objects of my attention, and the clergyman, whose sermon I did not listen to, supplied me with an occasion for reverie on the charms his person would have for me under other circ.u.mstances. It must have been at this time that I began to elaborate ideas of a serried rank of congregated thighs across which I lay and was dragged. I would arrange them in definite order and then imagine myself drawn across from one to the other somewhat forcibly. Admiration of strength was beginning at this time to have a definite part in my conceptions, but anything of the nature of cruelty had not then appealed to me. (I except the original dream of my childhood, which seems to me still to stand fantastically apart.) In the inventions to which I now gave myself the sense of being pa.s.sed across limbs of different texture and color was subtle and pleasurable. I think the note of constructive cruelty which now followed arose from an imagined rivalry among my lovers for possession of me; the idea that I was desired made me soon take a delight in imagining myself torn and s.n.a.t.c.hed about by the contending parties. Presently out of this I began constructing definite scenes of violence. I was able in imagination to lie in the thick and stress of conglomerated deliciousness of thighs struggling to hold me; I was able to imagine at least six bodies encircling me with pa.s.sionate contact. At the same time I had an ingrained feeling of my own physical smallness in relation to the limbs whose contact threw me into such paroxysms of delight. A new and sufficiently ludicrous invention took possession of me; I imagined myself strapped to the thigh (always, I think, the right one) of the man on whom I chose, for the time, to concentrate my desires, and so to be worn by him during his day"s work, hidden beneath his garments. I was not conscious of any difficulty due to my size. The charm of bondage and compulsion was here, again, in the ascendant. I fancy that it was in this connection that I first antic.i.p.ated whipping as the delightful climax to my emotions, administered when my possessor, at the end of his day"s work, unclothed himself for rest.
"Up to this stage my attraction to the male organ of generation had been slight and vague. Two things now contributed to bring thought of it into prominence. On two or three occasions when I accompanied farm laborers to their occupations I saw them pause by the way to relieve nature. My extreme shyness as regards such matters in my own person made this performance in my presence like an outrage on my modesty; it had about it the suggestion of an indecent solicitation to one whose inclination was to headlong and delirious surrender. I stood rooted and flushing with downcast eyes till the act was over and was conscious for a considerable time of stammering speech and bewildered faculties. When I afterward reviewed the circ.u.mstances they had the same attraction for me that amorous cruelty was just then beginning to exercise on my imagination. My mind secretly embraced the fearful sweetness of the newly discovered sensation, surrounding the performance of the function with all sorts of atrocious and bizarre inventions. For a time my intellect hung back from accepting this as the central and most fiery secret of the male attraction; but shortly afterward, when out walking with my father, I saw him perform the same act; I was overwhelmed with emotion and could barely drag my feet from the spot or my eyes from the damp herbage where he had deposited the waters of secrecy. Even today, when my mind has been long accustomed to the knowledge of generative facts, I cannot dissociate myself from the shuddering charm that moment had for me. The attraction my father"s person had always had for me was now increased tenfold by the performance I had witnessed (though I had not seen the p.e.n.i.s in any of these cases).
"For a considerable time only those lovers were dominant in my imagination whom I had witnessed in the act that had so poignantly affected me. My delight now took the form of imagining myself strapped to the thighs of the person while this function was in progress.
"By this time I must have been 8 years old. The cold and secret relationship of which I have given an account had continued without instructing me in any of the ardent possibilities it might have suggested; no force or cruelty was used upon me, no warmth was lavished. It made little difference that my companion had now discovered the act of masturbation; it had no meaning to me, since it led to no warmth of embrace. His method was to avert himself from me; I had to fawn upon him from the rear and also to invent indecent stories to stimulate his imagination. I felt myself a despised instrument, the mere spectator of an act which, if directed toward me with any warmth, would have aroused the liveliest appet.i.te. At this time, as I have since seen, my companion was gaining knowledge from the ancient cla.s.sics. For a time some charm was imparted by his instructing me to adopt a superinc.u.mbent face-to-face embrace. The beginning of his p.u.b.erty was enormously attractive to me; had he been less cold-blooded I could have responded pa.s.sionately to his endearments; but he always insisted on rigorous pa.s.sivity on my part, and he explained nothing. One day, by a small gratuity, he induced me to offer him my mouth, though I still had no comprehension of the result I was helping to attain. Once the o.r.g.a.s.m occurred, and the effect was extremely nauseous; after that he was more careful. My companion was approaching manhood, and his demands became more frequent, his exactions more humiliating.
"At the same time my pa.s.sion for male love was growing stronger. I was able to construct from the unsatisfactory bondage in which I was held images of bodily embrace which I had not before had sufficient sense of human contact to form, though I seldom imagined any of the acts that in actual experience repulsed me. One day, however, I shirked a particularly repulsive humiliation which my companion had forced upon me. He discovered the deception, rose from the p.r.o.ne position in which he lay, and throwing me across his knees thrashed me violently. I submitted without a struggle, experiencing a curious sensation of pleasure in the midst of my pain. When he repeated his order I found its accomplishment no longer repulsive. One of the few pleasurable memories this intimacy, extending over years, has left for me is that moment of abject abas.e.m.e.nt to one who, with no warmth of feeling, had yet once had sufficient energy to be brutal to me.
"It must have been from this incident that the calculated effect of flagellation began to have weight with me when I indulged my imagination. A wish to be repulsed, trampled, violated by the object of my pa.s.sion took hold of my instincts. Even then-and, indeed, up to my 13th year-I had no idea of normal s.e.xual connection. I knew vaguely that children were born from women"s bodies; I did not know-and when told I did not believe-the true facts of the marital relationship. All that I had experienced-both in fact and imagination-was to me so highly individual that I had no notion anything kindred to it could exist outside of my own experience. I had no notion of s.e.x as the basis of life. Even when I came gradually to realize that men and women were formed in a way that argued connection with each other, I still believed it to be a dissolute sort of conduct, not to be indulged in by those who had claims to respectability.
"I had, however, by this time arrived at a strong attraction toward the organs of generation and all aspects of p.u.b.erty, and my imagination spent Itself in a fantastic worship of every sign of masculinity. My enjoyment now was to imagine myself forced to undergo physical humiliation and submission to the caprice of my male captors, and the central fact became the discharge of urine from my lover over my body and limbs, or, if I were very fond of him, I let it be in my face. This was followed usually by a half-caressing castigation, in which the hand only was instrumental.
"The period of which I am now writing was that of my entry into school life. My imaginary lovers immediately became numerous; all the masters and all the boys above a certain age attracted me; for two I had in addition a feeling of romantic as well as physical attachment. Indeed, from this time onward I was never without some heroes toward whom I indulged a perfectly separate and tenderly ideal pa.s.sion. The announcement that one was about to leave surprised me into a pa.s.sionate fit of weeping; yet my reserve was so great and my sense of isolation so crushing that I made no effort at intimacy, and to one for whom I felt inexhaustible devotion I barely spoke for the first three years, though meeting him daily. At this time the subjects of my contemplation had distinctly individualized methods of approach. Thus in one case I imagined we stood face to face in our night-gear; suddenly mine was stripped from me; I was seized and forcibly thrust under his and made to hang with my feet off the ground by my full weight on the erect organ which inserted itself between my thighs; so suspended-my body enveloped in the folds of his linen and my face pressed upon his heart-I underwent a castigation which continued until I was thrown down to receive a discharge of urine over my prostrate body. Such images seemed to come independently of my will.
"It was at this time that I found a large pleasure in imagining contact with people whom I disliked; the prevailing note of these intimacies was always cruelty, to which I submitted with acute relish. I discovered, however, from the ordinary school experiences of corporal punishment, that it had no charm to me when administered for school offenses, even from the hands under which at other times I imagined myself as delighting to receive pain. The necessary link was lacking; had I perceived on the part of my judge any liking for the operation, there would probably have been a response on my side. On one occasion I was flogged unjustly; conscious as I was of its cruel instead of judiciary character, this was the only castigation I received which had in it an element of gratification for my instincts. At the same time I never forgave the hand that administered it; it is the only instance I remember in myself of a grudge nourished for years.
"Meanwhile, amid this chaos of confused love and hatred, of relish for cruelty and loathing for injustice, my first thoroughly romantic and ideal attachment was developing itself. I may say, of those to whom romance as well as physical attachment bound me, that they have remained unchangeable parts of my nature. Today, as it was twenty years ago, when I think of them the blood gushes to my brain, my hands tingle and moisten with an emotion I cannot subdue: I am at their feet worshipping them. Of them my dreams were entirely tender; the idea of cruelty never touched the conception I had of them. But I return to that one who was the chief influence of my youth: older than myself by only three years, he was of fine build and athletic, with adolescence showing in his face; my tremulous beginnings of worship were confirmed by a word of encouragement thrown to me one day as I went to receive my first flogging; no doubt my small, scared face excited his kind pity. I made it my concern afterward to let him know that I had not cried under the ordeal, and I believe he pa.s.sed the word around that I had taken my punishment pluckily. So little contact had I with him that beyond constant worship on my part I remember nothing till, about three years later, I received from him a kind, half-joking solicitation, spoken in clean and simple language. So terrific was my shyness and secrecy that I had even then no idea that familiarity of the sort was common enough in schools. I was absolutely unable to connect my own sensations with those of the world at large or to believe that others felt as I did. On this occasion I simply felt that some shrewd thrust had been made at me for the detection of my secret. He had drawn me upon his knee; I sat there silent, flushing and dumbfounded. He made no attempt to press me; he had, as he thought, said enough if I chose to be reciprocal; beyond that he would not tempt me. A few years ago I heard of him married and prosperous.
"In following up my emotions in this direction I have far outstripped the period up to which I have given a complete exposition of my development. I must have been more than 12 years old before school life persuaded me to face (as taught by sn.i.g.g.e.ring novices) the actual facts of s.e.xual intercourse. At the same time I learned that I had means of extracting enjoyment from my own body in a definite direction which I had not till then suspected. A growing resistance on my part to his cold desires had led to a break with my former intimate; to the last he had taught me nothing, except distaste for himself. I now found ready teachers right and left of me. One of my schoolfellows invited me to watch; him in the process of masturbation; the spectacle left me quite unmoved; the result appeared to me far less exciting than the discharge of urine which, until then, I had a.s.sociated with male virility. I was so accustomed to my own lone amorous broodings that the effort and action required for this process, when I attempted to imitate it, disconcerted my thoughts and interfered with concentration on my own inventions. I had never experienced the pleasure accompanying the spasm of emission, and there seemed to be nothing worth trying for along that road. I desisted and returned to my reveries. I was now in a perfect maze of promiscuity; there must have been at least fifty people who attracted me at that time. I developed a liking for imagining myself between two lovers, generally men who were physical contrasts. It was my habit to a.n.a.lyze as minutely as possible those who attracted me. To gain intimacy with what was below the surface I studied with attention their hands, the wrists where they disappeared (showing the hair of the forearm), and the neck; I estimated the comparative size of the generative organs, the formation of the thighs and b.u.t.tocks, and thus constructed a presentment of the whole man. The more vividly I could do this, the keener was the pleasure I was able to obtain from their contemplated embraces.
"Till now I had been absolutely untouched by any moral scruples. I had the usual acquiescence in the religious beliefs in which I had been trained; it did not enter my head that there was any divine law, one way or the other, concerning the allurements of the imagination. From my thirteenth year slight hints of uneasiness began to creep into my conscience. I began perhaps to understand that the formulas of religion, to which I had listened all my life with as little attention as possible, had some meaning which now and then touched the circ.u.mstances of my own life. I had not yet realized that my past foretold my future, and that women would be to me a repulsion instead of an attraction where things s.e.xual were concerned. I had the full conviction that one day I should be married; I had also some fear that as I grew to manhood I might succ.u.mb to the temptations of loose women. I had an incipient revulsion from such a fate, and this seemed to me to indicate that moral stirrings were at work within me. One night I was amorously attacked in my bedroom by two of the domestics. I experienced an acute horror which I hid under laughter; my resistance was so desperate that I escaped with a tickling. I had been accustomed to sit on the servants" knees, a habit I had innocently retained from childhood; I can now recall in detail the approaches these women had been used to make me. At the time I was utterly oblivious that anything was intended.
"I was equally oblivious to things that had a nearer relation to my own feelings. In pa.s.sing along a side-street one night I was overtaken by a man who began conversation on the weather. He asked me if I were not cold, began pa.s.sing his hand up and down my back; then came a question about caning at school, whether certain parts of me were not sore, leading to an investigating touch. I put his hand aside shyly, but did not resent the action. Presently he was for exploring my trousers pockets and I began to think him a pickpocket; repulsed in that direction, he returned, to rubbing my back. The sensation was pleasant. I now took him for a pimp who wished to take me to a prost.i.tute, and as at that time I had begun to realize that such pleasures were not to my taste I was glad to find myself at my destination, and said good-bye sharply, leaving him standing full of astonishment at his failure with one who had taken his advances so pleasantly. I could not bring myself to believe that others had the same feelings as myself. Later I realized my escape, not without a certain amount of regret, and constructed for my own pleasure a different termination to the incident.
"I was now so possessed by masculine attraction that I became a lover of all the heroes I read of in books. Some became as vivid to me as those with whom I was living in daily contact. For a time I became an ardent lover of Napoleon (the incident of his antic.i.p.ation of the nuptials with his second wife attracting me by its impetuous brutality), of Edward I, and of Julius Caesar. Charles II I remember by a caressing cruelty with which my imagination gifted him. Jugurtha was a great acquisition. Bothwell, Judge Jefferies, and many villains of history and fiction appealed to me by their cruelty.
"I had become an adept in the mental construction necessary for the satisfaction of my desires. And yet up to that date I had never seen the nude body of a full-grown adult. I had no knowledge of the extent to which hair in certain instances develops on the torso; indeed, my efforts at characterization centered, for the most part, around the thighs and generative organs. At this time one of my schoolfellows saw a common workman, known to me by name, bathing in a stream with some companions; all his body was, my informant told me, covered with hair from throat to belly. In face the man was coa.r.s.e and repulsive, but I now began to regard him as a lovely monstrosity, and for many nights embraced the vision of him pa.s.sionately, with face buried in the jungle growth of hair that covered his chest. I was, for the first time, conscious of deliberately (and successfully) willing not to see his face, which was distasteful to me. At the same time another schoolfellow told me, concerning a master who bathed with the boys, that hair showed above his bathing-drawers as high as the navel. I now began definitely to construct bodies in detail; the suggestion of extensive hairiness maddened me with delight, but remained in my mind strongly a.s.sociated with cruelty; my hairy lovers never behaved to me with tenderness; everything at this period, I think, tended to draw me toward force and violence as an expression of amativeness. A schoolfellow, a few years my senior, of a cruel, bullying disposition, took a particular delight in inflicting pain on me: he had particularly pointed shoes, and it was his custom to make me stand with my back to him while he addressed me in petting and caressing tones; just when his words were at their kindliest he would inflict a sharp stroke with the toe of his boot so as to reach the most tender part of my fundament; the pain was exquisite; I was conscious that he experienced s.e.xual pleasure (I had seen definite signs of it beneath his clothing), and, though loathing him, I would, after I had suffered from his kicks, throw myself into his imaginary embraces and indulge in a perfect rage of abject submission. Yet all the time I would gladly have killed him.
"At the age of 14 I went, for a time, to a farm-house, where I was allowed to mingle familiarly with the farm-laborers, a fine set of muscular young men. I became a great favorite, and, having childish, caressing manners a good deal behind my real age, I was allowed to take many liberties with them. They all lived under the farmer"s roof in the old-fashioned way, and in the evening I used to sit on their knees and caress and hug them to my heart"s content. They took it phlegmatically; it apparently gave them no surprise. One of the men used to return my squeezes and caresses and once allowed me to put my hand under his shirt, but there were no further liberties.
"It was not until I was nearly 15 that the event happened which made me, for the first time, restless in my enforced solitude. I was verging on p.u.b.erty, and perhaps in the hope that I should find my own development met by a corresponding warmth I again came into intimate relations with the companion whose frigid performances had caused me weariness and disgust. He was now a man, having reached majority. He put me into his bed while he undressed himself and came toward me in perfect nudity. In a moment we were in each other"s arms and the deliciousness of that moment intoxicated me. Suddenly, lying on the bed, I felt attacked, as I thought, by an imperative need to make water. I leaped up with a hurried excuse, but already the paroxysm had subsided. No discharge came to my relief, yet the need seemed to have pa.s.sed. I returned to my companion, but the glamour of the meeting was already over. My companion evidently found more pleasure in my person than when I was a mere child; I felt moved and flattered by the pleasure he took in pressing his face against certain parts of my body. On a second occasion, one day, I seemed involuntarily about to transgress decency, but again, as before, separated myself, and remained ignorant of what it was on which I had verged in my excitement. At another meeting, however, I had been allowed to prolong my embrace and to act, indeed, upon my full instincts. Once more I felt suddenly the coming of something acutely impending; I took my courage in my hands and went boldly forward. In another moment I had hold of the mysterious secret of masculine energy, to which all my years of dilirious imaginings had been but as a waiting at the threshold, the knocking on a closed door.
"It was inevitable that from that day our intimacy should dwindle into dissolution (though other causes antic.i.p.ated this natural decay), but I no longer found masturbation a dry and wearisome formula. In my novitiate I was disheartened to find how long it took me to dissociate myself from the contemplative and attach myself to the active form of self-gratification. But I presently found myself committed to the repet.i.tion of the act three times a day. On almost the last occasion I met my intimate he showed an exceptional ardor. At that meeting he proposed to attempt an act I had not previously considered possible, far less had I heard that it was considered the worst criminal connection that could take place. I had a slight fear of pain, but was willing to gratify him, and for the first time found in my submission a union of the two amative instincts which had before disputed sway in me: the instinct for tenderness and the instinct for cruelty. Pedicatio failed to take place, but I received an embrace which for the first time gave me full satisfaction. My delight was enormous; I was filled with emotions. I have no words to describe the extraordinary charm of the warm, smooth flesh upon mine, and the rougher contact of the hairy parts. Yet I was conscious, even at the time, that this was but the physical side of pleasure, and that he was not and never could be one whom I might truly be said to love.
"I was now in my sixteenth year, and under the influence of these and many other emotions then, for the first time, beginning to seize me, a sense of literary power and a desire to express myself through imaginative channels began to take hold of me. I feared that my indulgence was having an enfeebling power on my faculties (I had begun to experience physical languor and depression), and certain religious scruples, the result of my early training, took hold of me. For the first time I became conscious that the ardors I felt toward my own s.e.x were a diversion of the s.e.x-instinct itself, and to my astonishment and consternation I found by chance the practices I had already indulged in definitely denounced in the Bible as an abomination. From that moment began a struggle which lasted for years. I made a final breach with my former intimate, and thereupon a long dispute took place between the conflicting influences that strove for possession of my body. For a time I broke off the habit of masturbation, but I could not so easily rid myself of the mental indulgence, which was now almost an essential sedative for inducing sleep. At this time a visit to the seaside, where, for the first time, I was able to see men bathing in complete nudity, frankly, in the full light of day, plunged me again for a time headforemost into imaginative amours, and my scruples and resolutions were flung to the winds. But, on the whole, I had now entered a stage which, for want of a better term, I must describe as the emotionally moral. To whatever depth of indulgence I descended I carried a sense of obliquity with me; I believed that I was a rebel from a law, natural and divine, of which yet no instinct had been implanted in me. I still held unquestioned the truth of the religion I had been brought up in, and my whole life, every thought of my brain, every impulse of my body, were in direct antagonism to the will of G.o.d. At times physical desire broke down these barriers, but I practised considerable restraint physically, though not mentally, and made great efforts to conquer my aversion from women and extreme devotion for men, without the slightest success. I was 30, however, before I found a companion to love me in the way my nature required. I am quite a healthy person, and capable of working at very high pressure. Under s.e.xual freedom I have become stronger."
HISTORY XXII.-T. J., aged 50; man of letters. Height 5 feet 7 inches; weight 10 stone, but formerly much less. Belongs to an entirely normal family, all married and with children.
"Owing to the fact that my mother suffered from some malady the whole period of gestation prior to my birth, I came into the world so puny a child, so ill-nourished, that for some time the doctors despaired of my life. Till the age of p.u.b.erty, though never ill, I suffered greatly from delicate health. I was abnormally sensitive and all my affections and pa.s.sions extraordinarily developed. Owing to my brothers being much older than myself I was thrown into the society of my sister. Till 8 years old she was my chief playmate. With her I played with dolls and abandoned myself wholly to the delights of an imaginary land which was much more real to me than the world around me. I never remember learning to read, but at 5 the Arabian Nights and Kingsley"s Hereward the Wake were my favorite books. Living in the country the society of other children was difficult to obtain. My whole affections centered in my father, my mother having died when I was a child. This affection for my father was rather a morbid pa.s.sion which absorbed my life. I dared not leave his side for fear of a final separation from him. I would wake him when asleep to see if he still lived. To this day, though he died twenty-six years ago, his memory haunts me.
"My first abnormal desires were connected with him. I had seen him occasionally micturating in the garden alleys or out in the country. These occasions excited me terribly, and I would, if possible, wait till he had gone, and touch the humid leaves, drawing a terrible pleasure from the contact. Afterward, though he never suspected it, desire for him became a consuming pa.s.sion, and I remember on one occasion, when on a holiday, I occupied the same bed with him, the excitement of his propinquity brought on such a formidable attack of heart palpitation that my father called in the family physician on our return home. Needless to say my heart was found quite sound. The desire still remains after all these years, and nothing excites me more even now than the memory of my father in his morning bath.
"The whole world for me in my early childhood was peopled with imaginary beings. While still a young child I would invent stories and relate them to any listener I could find, one such story lasting three years. I was an omnivorous reader, but my favorite reading was poetry. At 7 I could repeat the greater part of Longfellow"s poems; Scott followed; then Milton captivated me when I was 14; then came Tennyson, Arnold, Swinburne, and Morris. Later came the Greek and Latin poets. From 7 years on I wrote verses to my father. Till 8 years I was excessively timid of the dark and, indeed, of all loneliness. This pa.s.sed, however, and developed into an extreme sensitiveness of seeing or meeting people. Even on a country road I would walk miles out of my way to avoid meeting the ordinary yokel. At this period my day-dreams were my favorite occupation. Even to the present day my visions take up the greater part of my life. Though timid I was not wanting in courage. At an early age I would fight boys even older than myself. Later I have risked my life many times in various parts of Europe. As regards sports, I can do a little of everything: swimming, riding, fencing, shooting,-a little of each. Cricket and football I also played pa.s.sably, but sports never interested me much. Literature became and is the pa.s.sion of my life and for some years has remained my sole occupation.
"At 8 years the s.e.xual inversion began to manifest itself, though till I had attained 10 years of age I was practically quite innocent. At 8 years of age, my family removed to another country and I made the acquaintance of a little boy who attracted me s.e.xually. We m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed in company, without any reason except the pleasure of seeing each other exposed. Then I had connection with him in anum. This really at that time was an exception to my ordinary tastes which speedily developed into an intense desire of f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o and later on of intercrural pleasures. This latter perhaps may be accounted for by the visit to our house of a small boy with whom I slept for about a year. Every night during this period, I had intercrural connection with him twice and sometimes three times. Then came a consuming pa.s.sion for all young boys and very old men. Boys after 14 or 15 ceased to attract me, more particularly when the hair of the p.u.b.es began to develop. From 8 to 14, when first I had s.e.xual emissions, I m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed at every opportunity. From 14 to 27, always once a day, generally twice and sometimes three times a day. At 27 I took rooms and formed acquaintance with the family occupying the house. The boys, one by one, were allowed to sleep with me and I conceived an extraordinary pa.s.sion for one of them, an attachment which lasted till I finally left England. The attachment was much more that of a man for his wife and had nothing degrading in it. I was wretched when away from him, and as he was very attached to sport of all kinds I suffered "divers kinds of death" each time that I imagined his life to be endangered. I can honestly say that in each of my attachments, and I have had many, the prevailing sentiment was the delight of protecting a weaker being than myself. Each person whom I have loved has been perfectly normal and all are now fathers of families. Each still regards me with affection and respect in spite of what has pa.s.sed between us. All my life I have been possessed with the pa.s.sion for paternity, I could almost say maternity. Willingly would I have suffered the pains of h.e.l.l could I have borne a son to the person I loved. That I can honestly say has been the dominant instinct of my life. In my pa.s.sion I have never been brutal, nor save under the influence of wine have I had connection with men over the age of p.u.b.erty. In Southern Europe my experiences have been the same, a predominant pa.s.sion for a boy exhibiting itself in every species of protecting care, and though terminating so far as s.e.xual pa.s.sion was concerned when the boy reached 15 or 16 years, yet still lasting and enduring in an honest and unselfish affection. At the age of 51, I still m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e once or twice a week, though I long for some person whom I love to share the pleasure with me. I tried vainly at the age of 27 to bring myself into line with others. Prost.i.tutes caused me horror, whether male or female. I attempted the act of coitus four or five times, twice with women of loose lives and at other times with married women. Save in one case the attempts were either abortive or caused me extreme disgust.
"Practically from the time of p.u.b.erty I have attracted s.e.xually not only women but men. Women, oddly enough, though I care nothing for them s.e.xually, either hate me or adore me, and I have had five offers of marriage. At the same time up till five years ago, I was pursued by men and have had the oddest experiences both in England and abroad. In the early period of this history I suffered tremendously from the feeling that I was isolated and unique in the world. I strove against the habit of masturbation and my perverted tastes with all my might. Scourges, vigils, burnings, all were of no avail. Deeper reading in the Cla.s.sics showed me how common was the taste of s.e.x for the same s.e.x. At 27 I began to have a settled philosophy. Then as now, I made endless resolutions to avoid masturbation, though I can see nothing wrong in the mutual act of two persons drawn together by love. I am and always have been an extremely religious man, and if I am not altogether an orthodox Catholic, do my duties and have a high sense of the supernatural. I suffered much from melancholy from my earliest years. At 18, though nothing definitely was wrong, a vague but profound malaise induced me to open the veins of my arm. I fainted, however, and was promptly succored. At the age of 35, after a return from abroad, I took an enormous dose of poison. This time again a singular coincidence saved me, and I once more came back to life. After this I purposely went abroad to obtain death and sought it in every possible way. Quite in vain, as you see. One thing I have never had a fear of, but have always longed for-Death. I am sure that if we only knew what joys lay on the other side of death, the whole world would rush madly to suicide. I have, apart from any perversion of taste, an honest and genuine pa.s.sion for children and animals, and I am never happier than when in their society. Both adore me.
"My life has not dimmed nor deadened my faculties, for I am occupied at the present time with very important work and I write steadily. But my real life is pa.s.sed in my visions, which take me into another world quite as real as this sensuous one, and where I always retreat on all occasions possible. And yet, a strange paradox-I am a convinced Stoic and almost confine my reading to Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and the "Imitation." I am extremely emotional, fond of the society of women, though I loathe the s.e.xual side of them, and when I love, though pa.s.sion is certainly inextricably mixed, the prevailing sentiment is spiritual. I shall probably end by being a Carthusian or a fakir."
HISTORY XXIII.-Englishman, aged 70, of German descent on father"s side. Was first child of his mother, who was 36 at his birth; a younger brother normal; has no other relatives.