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 circumstances 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
penis 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 appetite. At this time, as I have since seen, my
companion was gaining knowledge from the ancient classics. For a
time some charm was imparted by his instructing me to adopt a
superincumbent face-to-face embrace. The beginning of his puberty
was enormously attractive to me; had he been less cold-blooded I
could have responded passionately to his endearments; but he
always insisted on rigorous passivity 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 orgasm 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 passion 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 prone 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 abasement 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 passion took hold of my instincts. Even then--and,
indeed, up to my 13th year--I had no idea of normal sexual
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 sex 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 puberty, 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 passion. The announcement that one was about
to leave surprised me into a passionate 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 passed 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
sniggering novices) the actual facts of sexual 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 associated 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
analyze 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
buttocks, 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 circumstances 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 sexual 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 succumb 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 passing 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 passing 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 prostitute, 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 Napoléon (the incident of his
anticipation of the nuptials with his second wife attracting me
by its impetuous brutality), of Edward I, and of Julius Cæsar.
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 coarse and
repulsive, but I now began to regard him as a lovely monstrosity,
and for many nights embraced the vision of him passionately, 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
associated 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 sexual 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 puberty, 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 passed. 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 anticipated 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 repetition 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 sex were a
diversion of the sex-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 br