"In my eighteenth year we returned to America, where I entered the university.
"The course of my love of women was now a little erratic; normal connection began to lose fascination. As long ago I had formulated untutored the rationale of coitus, so now imagination, groping in the dark, conceived a fresh fillip for the appet.i.te-cunnilinctus. But this, though for a while quite adequate, soon ceased to gratify. At this juncture, Christmas of my first college year, I was appointed editor of a small magazine, an early stricture of whose new conduct was paucity of love stories. Such improvident neglect was in keeping with my altering view of women, a view accorded to me by self-dissipation of the glamour through which they had been wont to appear. I had wandered somehow behind the scenes, and beheld, no footlights of s.e.x intervening, the once so radiant fairies resolved into a raddled humanity, as likable as ever, but desirable no longer.
"Soon after this the Oscar Wilde case was bruiting about. The newspaper accounts of it, while illuminating, flashed upon me no light of self-revelation; they only amended some idle conjectures as to certain mystic vices I had heard whispered of. Here and there a newspaper allusion still too recondite was painstakingly clarified by an effeminate fellow-student, who, I fancy now, would have shown no reluctance had I begged him to adduce practical ill.u.s.tration. I purchased, too, photographs of Oscar Wilde, scrutinizing them under the unctuous auspices of this same emasculate and blandiloquent mentor. If my interest in Oscar Wilde arose from any other emotion than the rather morbid curiosity then almost universal, I was not conscious of it.
"Erotic dreams, precluded hitherto by coition, came now to beset me. The persons of these dreams were (and still are) invariably women, with this one remembered exception: I dreamed that Oscar Wilde, one of my photographs of him incarnate, approached me with a buffoon languishment and perpetrated f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o, an act verbally expounded shortly before by my oracle. For a month or more, recalling this dream disgusted me.
"The few subsequent endeavors, tentative and half-hearted, to repristinate my venery were foredoomed, partly because I had feared they were, to failure: erection was incomplete, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n without pleasure.
"There seemed a fallacy in this behavior. Why coitus without sensual desire for it? No sense of duty impelled me, nor dread of s.e.xual aberration. The explanation is this: attraction to females was not expunged, simply sublimed; my imagination, no longer importing women from observation, created its own delectable sirens, grown exacting and transcendental, pet.i.tioned reality in vain. Substance had receded for good now, and soon even these tormenting shadows of it became ever dimmer and dimmer, until they too at length faded into nothingness.
"The antipodes of the s.e.xual sphere turned more and more toward the light of my tolerance. Inversion, till now stained with a slight repugnance, became esthetically colorless at last, and then delicately retinted, at first solely with pity for its victims, but finally, the color deepening, with half-conscious inclination to attach it to myself as a remote contingency. This revolution, however, was not without external impetus. The prejudiced tone of a book I was reading, Krafft-Ebing"s Psychopathia s.e.xualis, by prompting resentment, led me on to sympathy. My championing, purely abstract though it was to begin with, none the less involved my looking at things with eyes hypothetically inverted,-an orientation for the sake of argument. After a while, insensibly and at no one moment, hypothesis merged into reality: I myself was inverted. That occasional and fict.i.tious inversion had never, I believe, superposed this true inversion; rather a true inversion, those many years dormant, had simply responded finally to a stimulus strong and prolonged enough, as a man awakens when he is loudly called.
"In presenting myself thus s.e.xually transformed, I do not aver having had at the outset any definitive inclination. The instinct so freshly evolved remained for a while obscure. Its primary expression was a feebly sensuous interest in the physical character of boys-in their feminine resemblances especially. To this interest I opposed no discountenance; for wantonness with women under many and diverse conditions having long ago medicined my s.e.xual conscience to lethargy, no access of reasons came to me now for its refreshment. On the other hand, intellectual delight in the promises of the new world, as well as sensuality, conduced to its deliberate exploration. Still, for a year, the yearning settled with true l.u.s.t upon no object more concrete than youths whose only habitation was my fancy.
"A young surgeon, having read my copy of Psychopathia s.e.xualis, fell one evening to discussing inverts with such relish that I inquired ingenuously if he himself was one. He colored, whether confirmatively or otherwise I could not guess, in spite of his vehement no. Presently he very subtly recanted his denial. But to his counter-question I maintained my own no, lest he propose some s.e.xual act, a point the esthetics of my developing inversion would not yet concede, the boys of my imagination being still predominant.
"One evening, soon after this, he convoyed me to several of the cafe"s where inverts are accustomed to foregather. These trysting places were much alike: a long hall, with spa.r.s.e orchestra at one end, marble-topped tables lining the walls, leaving the floor free for dancing. Round the tables sat boys and youths, Adonises both by art and nature, ready for a drink or a chat with the chance Samaritan, and shyly importunate for the pleasures for which, upstairs, were small rooms to let. One of the boys, supported by the orchestra, sang the "Jewel Song" out of "Faust." His voice had the limpid, treble purity of a clarinet, and his face the beauty of an angel. The song concluded, we invited him to our table, where he sat sipping neat brandy, as he mockingly encountered my book-begotten queries. The boy-prost.i.tutes gracing these halls, he apprised us, bore fanciful names, some of well-known actresses, others of heroes in fiction, his own being Dorian Gray. Rivals, he complained, had a.s.sumed the same appellation, but he was the original Dorian; the others were jealous impostors. His curly hair was golden; his cheeks were pink; his lips, coral red, parted incessantly to reveal the glistening pearliness of his teeth. Yet, though deeming him the beautifulest youth in the world, I experienced no s.e.xual interest either in him or in the other boys, who indeed were all beautiful-beauty was their chief a.s.set. Dorian, further, dilated on the splendor of his female attire, satin corsets, low-cut evening gowns, etc., donned on gala nights to display his gleaming shoulders and dimpled, plump, white arms. Thus arrayed, he bantered, he would bewitch even me, now so impa.s.sive, until I should throw myself, in tears of happiness, into his loving embrace.
"My first venture upon f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o was a month later, with the young surgeon. I confessed the whim to try it, and he acceded. Though this nauseous and fatiguing act, very imperfectly performed, was prompted mostly by curiosity, there arose soon a pa.s.sional hankering for repet.i.tion. In short, appetence for f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o grew slowly from the night of that mawkish fiasco and waxed eventually into a sovereign want.
"Perhaps miscarriage of that initiatory experiment was due to precipitance, incubation of my perverse instinct being not yet complete. A hiatus of a month now supervened, in which, while further f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o was not attempted, my mind came always nearer to a reconcilement with the grossness of the act, and began to discover for its creatures some correlation in pretty boys beheld in the flesh. One evening, in Broadway, I conceived suddenly a full-fledged desire for a youth issuing from an hotel as I pa.s.sed. Our glances met and dwelled together. At a shop-window he first accosted me. He was an invert. With him, in his room at the hotel whence I had seen him emerge, I pa.s.sed an apocalyptic night. Thereafter commerce with boys only in the spirit ceased to be an end; the images were carnalized, stepped from their framework into the streets. That boy, that G.o.d out of the machine, I see him clearly: his brown, curling hair; his eyes blue as the sea; his chest both arched and so plump, his rounded arms, his taper waist, the graceful swell of his hips and full, snowy thighs; I recall as of yesterday the dimples in his knees, the slenderness of his ankles, the softness of his little feet, with insteps pink like the inside of a sh.e.l.l. How I gloated over his ample roundness, his rich undulations!
"In the last eight years I have performed f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o (never pedicatio) with more than three hundred men and boys. My preference is for boys between 15 and 20, refined, pretty, girlish, and themselves h.o.m.os.e.xual.
"Personally, barring this love for males, I am in all ways masculine, given to outdoor sports, and to smoking and drinking moderately. In appearance I am but a boy of 18. My face and figure are generally considered beautiful: I am clean-shaved, with black, curling hair, red cheeks and brown eyes; features delicate and regular; body, of medium height, everywhere practically hairless. By years of training I have attained alike great strength and cla.s.sic proportions, the muscular contours smoothly rounded with adipose tissue. My hands and feet are small. My p.e.n.i.s, though perfectly shaped, is rather enormous-erect, ten and a half inches in length, seven and a quarter inches in circ.u.mference.
"Some abetment of my apostasy from orthodox methods was, no doubt, this hypertrophy of the p.e.n.i.s, which already in my twentieth year had acquired its present redundance, rendering coitus impracticable with most women I essayed and painful where insertion was effected. Since falling heir to inversion, a unique recurrence of normal desire, six years ago, persuaded me to attempt coitus with eleven or twelve prost.i.tutes, and, strangely enough, with much of the old-time salacity and full erection, but, as it chanced, always with too great disparity of parts for success."
A certain preciosity in the manner of this communication may be put down partly to the nature of the literary avocations with which the writer is by preference occupied, and partly, no doubt more fundamentally, to the special character of his predominantly esthetic temperament and attraction to the exotic. An attraction for exotic experiences will not, however, suffice to account for the rather late development of h.o.m.os.e.xual tendencies, a late development which may be held to place this case in the r.e.t.a.r.ded group of inverts. H. C. has himself pointed out to me that his aversion to women, beginning to appear in the eighteenth year, was already well p.r.o.nounced before he had ever heard definitely of specific h.o.m.os.e.xual acts, and fully a year before he experienced the slightest s.e.xual interest in men or boys. Moreover, while it is true that the actual tendency to h.o.m.os.e.xual attraction only appeared after he had read Krafft-Ebing and come in contact with inverts, such influences would not suffice to change the s.e.xual nature of a normally const.i.tuted man.
It may be added that H. C. is not attracted to normal males. As regards his moral att.i.tude he remarks: "I have no scruples in the indulgence of my pa.s.sion. I perceive the moral objections advanced, but how speculative they are, and constructive; while, immediately, inversion is the source of so much good." He looks upon the whole s.e.xual question as largely a matter of taste.
I regard the foregoing case as of considerable interest. It presents what is commonly supposed to be a very common type of inversion, Oscar Wilde being the supreme exemplar, in which a heteros.e.xual person apparently becomes h.o.m.os.e.xual by the exercise of intellectual curiosity and esthetic interest. In reality the type is far from common; indeed, an intellectual curiosity and an esthetic interest, strong enough even apparently to direct the s.e.xual impulse in any new channel, are themselves far from common. Moreover, a critical reading of this history suggests that the apparent control over the s.e.xual impulse by reason is merely a superficial phenomenon. Here, as ever, reason is but a tool in the hands of the pa.s.sions. The apparent causes are really the results; we are witnessing the gradual emergence of a r.e.t.a.r.ded h.o.m.os.e.xual impulse.
HISTORY XXVIII.-English, aged 40, surgeon. s.e.xual experiences began early, about the age of 10, when a companion induced him to play at intercourse with their sisters. He experienced no pleasure. A little later a servant-girl began to treat him affectionately and at last called him into her bedroom when she was partially undressed, fondled and kissed his member, and taught him to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e her. On subsequent occasions she attempted a simulation of intercourse, which gave her satisfaction, but failed to induce emission in him. On returning to school mutual masturbation was practised with schoolfellows, and the first emission took place at the age of 14.
On leaving school he became a slave to the charms of women, and had frequent coitus about the age of 17, but he preferred masturbating girls and especially in persuading girls of good position, to whom the experience was entirely novel, to allow him to take liberties with them. At 25 he became engaged, and mutual masturbation was practised to excess during the engagement; after marriage connection generally took place twice every twenty-four hours until pregnancy.
"At this time," he writes, "I stayed at the house of an old school-fellow, due of my lovers of old days. There were so many guests that I shared my friend"s bedroom. The sight of his body gave rise to l.u.s.tful feelings, and when the light was out I stole across to his bed. He made no objection, and we pa.s.sed the night in mutual masturbation. We pa.s.sed the next fortnight together, and I never took the same pleasure in coitus with my wife, though I did my duty. She died five years later, and I devoted myself heart and soul to my friend until his death by accident last year. Since then I have lost all interest in life."
I am indebted for this case to a well-known English alienist, who remarks that the patient is fairly healthy to look at, but with neurasthenia and tendency to melancholia, and neurotic temperament. The body is masculine and pubic hair abundant. One t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e shows wasting.
HISTORIES XXIX AND x.x.x.-I give the following narrative in the words of an intimate friend of one of the cases in question: "My attention was first drawn to the study of inversion-though I then regarded all forms of it as depraving and abominable-at a public school, where in our dormitory a boy of 15 initiated his select friends into the secrets of mutual masturbation, which he had learned from his brother, a midshipman. I gave no heed to this at the time, though I remembered it in after-years when immersed in Plato, Lucretius, and the Epicurean writers. But my attention was riveted to it at the age of 20, when I spent a holiday with A., a companion with whom I was, and still am, on terms of great friendship. We enjoyed many things in common, studied together and discussed most unconventional matters, but not this. Previously we had always occupied separate sleeping apartments; on this occasion we were abroad in a country place, and were compelled to put up with what we could get. We not only had to share a room, but a bed. I was not surprised at his throwing his arm over me, as I knew he was extraordinarily attached to me, and I had always felt a brute for not returning his affection so warmly. But I was surprised when later I awoke to find him occupied in f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o and endeavoring to obtain my response. Had it been anyone else I should have resented strongly such a liberty, and our acquaintance would have ended, but I cared for him too well, though never very demonstrative. This episode led to discussion of the topic. He told me that his s.e.xual strength was great, that he had tested it in many ways, and that it was essential to his well-being that he should have satisfaction in some way. He loathed prost.i.tution and considered it degrading; he felt physically attracted to some women and intellectually to others, but the two elements were never combined, and though he had been intimate with a few he felt that it was not right to them, as he could not marry them because he held too high an ideal of marriage. He had always felt attracted to his own s.e.x, and had kept up a Platonic friendship with a college chum, X (to whom I knew he was pa.s.sionately attached), for some years. Both considered it perfectly moral, and both, felt better for it. Both abhor pedicatio. X., however, would never discuss the subject, and seemed half-ashamed of it. A., on the other hand, though showing a great self-respect in all things else, feels no shame, though he says he would never discuss it except with close friends or if asked for private advice.
"A. is the elder child of a military officer. His parents were 21 and 19, respectively, at the time of his birth. Both parents are healthy, and the two children (both boys) have good const.i.tutions, though the elder has the better. He is of medium height and slender limbs, proud carriage, handsome and intellectual face (cla.s.sic Greek type), excellent complexion, charming manners, and good temper. The p.e.n.i.s is large, the foreskin very short. He is fond of philosophy, natural science, history, and literature. He is reflective and patient rather than smart, but strong-willed and very active when roused, never resting till he has accomplished what he wants, even if this takes years. He sings excellently, and is fond of cycling, boating, swimming, and mountain-climbing. He enjoys excellent health, and has never had a day"s illness since he was 12 years of age. He says the only time he cannot sleep has been when in bed with some one who could not or would not satisfy him. He requires satisfaction at least once a week, twice or thrice in the hot season. He never smokes, nor drinks beer or spirits. He is still single, but believes that marriage would meet all his needs.
"X. is also an oldest child, of young and healthy parents (between 21 and 24 at his birth) of different cla.s.s; father a builder. He is of pleasing, but not handsome, appearance; very sensitive, very neat, and methodical in all things; not very strong-willed, and very reserved to women. He is of very studious disposition, especially fond of philosophy, politics, and natural science; a good musician. Takes moderate exercise, but rather easily fatigued. Is generally healthy, but not overstrong. He is a vegetarian, and was brought up as a free-thinker. Until two years ago he was never attracted toward a girl; indeed, he disliked girls; but he is now engaged. For about eighteen months, he has relinquished h.o.m.os.e.xuality, but has suffered from dreams, bad digestion, and peevishness since. He thinks the only remedy is marriage, which he is pushing on. He regards h.o.m.os.e.xuality as quite natural and normal, though his desires are not strong, and once a fortnight has always satisfied him. He was led to the practice by the reasoning of A., and because he felt a certain vague need, and this comforted him. He thinks it a matter of temperament and not to be discussed, except by scientists. He says he could never perform it except with his dearest friend, whose request he could not resist. He has a long foreskin, flesh like a woman"s, and is well proportioned.
"Both men are ardent for social reform, the one actively, the other pa.s.sively engaged in it. Both also regard the law as to h.o.m.os.e.xuality as absurd and demoralizing. They also think that the law prohibiting polygamy is largely the cause of prost.i.tution, as many women are prevented from living honest lives and being cared for by someone, and many men could marry one woman for physical satisfaction and another for intellectual.
"They were devoted to each other when I first knew them; they are still friends, but separated by distance. Both are exceedingly honorable, and the latter is truthful to a fault."
According to later information X. had married and his h.o.m.os.e.xual tendencies were almost completely in abeyance, partly, perhaps, owing to the fact that he now lives quietly in the country. A. has surprised his friends by his ardent attachment to a lady of about his own age to whom he has become engaged. He declares that he loves this woman better than any man, but nevertheless he still feels strong pa.s.sion for his men friends. It is evident that the h.o.m.os.e.xual tendency in A. is distinctly more p.r.o.nounced than in his friend X. As is found more often in bis.e.xual than in h.o.m.os.e.xual persons, he is of predominantly masculine type, possesses great vitality, and desires to exert all his faculties. He has a sound nervous system and is very free from all "nervousness." He has written a scientific treatise and can study undisturbed amid violent noises. His voice is manly (in singing deep base). He can whistle. He is not vain, though well formed, and his hands are delicate. His favorite color is green. The demonstrative warmth of his affection for his friends is the chief feminine trait noted in him. He rarely dreams and has never had an erotic dream; this he explains by saying (earlier than Freud) that all dreams not caused by physical conditions are wish-dreams, and as he always satisfies his s.e.xual needs at once, with a friend or by masturbation, his s.e.xual needs have no opportunity of affecting his subconscious life.
There may be some doubt as to the cla.s.sification of the two foregoing cases: they are not personally known to me. The following case, with which I have been acquainted for many years, I regard as clearly a genuine example of bis.e.xuality:-
HISTORY x.x.xI.-Englishman, independent means, aged 52, married. His ancestry is of a complicated character. Some of his mother"s forefathers in the last and earlier centuries are supposed to have been inverted. He remembers liking the caresses of his father"s footmen when he was quite a little boy. He dreams indifferently about men and women, and has strong s.e.xual feeling for women. Can copulate, but does not insist on this act; there is a tendency to refined, voluptuous pleasure. He has been married for many years, and there are several children by the marriage.
He is not particular about the cla.s.s or age of the men he loves. He feels with regard to older men as a women does, and likes to be caressed by them. He is immensely vain of his physical beauty; he shuns pedicatio and does not much care for the s.e.xual act, but likes long hours of voluptuous communion during which his lover admires him. He feels the beauty of boyhood. At the same time he is much attracted by young girls.
He is decidedly feminine in his dress, manner of walking, love of scents, ornaments, and fine things. His body is excessively smooth and white, the hips and b.u.t.tocks rounded. Genital organs normal. His temperament is feminine, especially in vanity, irritability, and petty preoccupations. He is much preoccupied with his personal appearance and fond of admiration; on one occasion he was photographed naked as Bacchus. He is physically and morally courageous. He has a genius for poetry and speculation, with a tendency to mysticism.
He feels the discord between his love for men and society, also between it and his love for his wife. He regards it as, in part, at least, hereditary and inborn in him.
HISTORY x.x.xII.-C. R., physician; age 38. Nationality, Irish, with a Portuguese strain. "My mother came of an old Quaker family. I was quite unaware of s.e.xual differences until I was about 14, as I was carefully kept separate from my sisters and, although from time to time strange longings which I did not understand possessed me, I was a virgin in thought and deed until that period of life.
"When I was 14 a cousin some years older than myself came to stay with us and shared my bed. To my surprise he took hold of my p.e.n.i.s and rubbed it for a time, when a most pleasant feeling seized me and increased until a discharge came out of my organ; he then asked me to do the same to him. We frequently repeated the process during the following month; I was quite unaware of any harm resulting.
"The same year I went to school, but none of my schoolmates for some time even suggested such actions until a friend staying with us for the holidays one day in the bathroom repeated the process and pressed his p.e.n.i.s between my thighs, when a similar discharge took place. I shortly found out that several of my school friends and male cousins had the same desires, and an elder brother of my first introducer into s.e.xuality repeatedly spent the night with me, when we would amuse ourselves in a similar way.
"A little later, my mother being away from home, I shared my father"s bed and he took my p.e.n.i.s in his hand and pulled my foreskin back. I in return took hold of his and found that he had an erection. I proceeded to rub him when he stopped me and told me that I should not do so, that when I was a little older I should love a woman to do it and that if I did not rub myself and allow other boys to do so, I would enjoy myself much more. I am quite certain that my father was inverted, as he frequently, if sleeping with me, used to press my naked body against his and he always had a strong erection. On one occasion he rubbed me until I had a discharge and then, turning over on his back, made me take his p.e.n.i.s in my hand and rub him for a few minutes. I used to jest frequently with my father, as from my seventeenth year my p.e.n.i.s was larger than his. I will return to my father a little later. When I was 17 a college friend shared my bed, and when undressing he said that he envied me my p.e.n.i.s being so much larger than his; after getting into bed, he asked me to turn on my side and I found that he was attempting pedicatio. I was astonished at his doing so when he informed me that next to a woman this process gave most pleasure. However, nothing resulted and this is the only experience of pedicatio that I have ever had.
"When I was 18 one evening a college chum introduced me to a woman and she was the first I ever had connection with. We went behind some rocks and she took hold of my p.e.n.i.s and pressed it into her body, lying against me.
"My father evidently suspected me when I came home, and a few days afterward told me that it was very dangerous to have anything to do with women, that I should wait until I was older, that when a boy became a man he ought to have a woman occasionally, and that if I ever had a nasty disease I should promptly tell him so that I could be properly cured.
"At college I found several chums who were fond of sharing my bed and indulging in mutual masturbation, pressing our bodies together face to face until there was mutual discharge, but never again anyone who tried a.n.a.l connection.
"A short time afterward I was in Brussels and I paid my first visit to a brothel, a place close to the Cathedral. I picked a girl of about 18 from eight naked beauties paraded for my choice. She was avaricious and demanded 10 francs, I had paid 20 for my room and had only 2 left. I wanted her to play with me, but she only seized the p.e.n.i.s and pulled me to her with such vigorous action that I discharged very rapidly. I was so disgusted with the result that I m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed when I returned to my boarding house.
"A year later I paid Portugal a visit and my friends there frequently brought me to brothels and also introduced me to ladies of easy virtue. I had connection with them; the Portuguese prost.i.tutes never suggested anything unnatural and in no instance did a male approach me for s.e.xual purposes.
"When I became a medical student, I used to visit a Turkish bath frequently; on one occasion I playfully slapped a friend on the b.u.t.tocks, when my father, who was present, told me not to do so as it was not proper conduct in public, that if I liked to do so to him or one or two others it was no harm in private. Until I was 21, in the bath my father always covered his p.e.n.i.s from my view, but after I attained my majority he always exposed himself and repeatedly showed me pictures of naked women; he also taught me the use of the condom.
"In my twenty-fourth year, a tall, handsome man who used to frequent the baths one day sat down beside me and playfully knocked my toes with his; he then pressed his naked thigh against mine and a little later in the cooling room slipped his hand under my sheet and grasped my p.e.n.i.s; he then asked me to meet him a few days later in the baths, saying I would be pleased with what he would do.
"I kept the appointment and he took me into the hottest room, where we lay on the floor; in a few minutes he turned on his side and threw one of his legs across me; I got frightened and jumped up; he had a powerful erection, but I refused to lie down again, although he pulled his foreskin back to excite my desires; I was afraid of being surprised by another bather. Twice on future occasions I met this man and he made advances. I believe that I would have yielded then if we had met at a private house.
"Shortly afterward I met an elderly gentleman at the baths who also made advances to me, but from fear I resisted him. I also disliked him as he had a foul breath and bad teeth; besides I was now able to go to the Continent and enjoy female charms to my heart"s desire.
"After qualification I joined the army in South Africa and to my astonishment found many of my comrades fond of male society; one officer who had been wounded shared my bedroom at a military hospital and when undressing frequently admired my p.e.n.i.s; we used to play with each other until we had powerful erections, but we never m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed or tried any unnatural vice.
"I used to have connection with women as frequently as I could, and I frequently visited the Turkish baths and found that several clients were abnormal, including one of the ma.s.seurs; the latter enjoyed playing with my p.e.n.i.s, kissing and tickling me.
"I married at 28. My married life has been normal and my wife and I are still in love with one another; we have had several children.