Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 · Chapter 17Chapter III.—Sexual Inversion in Men. (8)
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"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 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 God. 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 sexual 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 puberty, though never ill, I suffered greatly from delicate health. I was abnormally sensitive and all my affections and passions 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 passion 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 passion, 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 passed, 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 passably, but sports never interested me much. Literature became and is the passion of my life and for some years has remained my sole occupation.
"At 8 years the sexual 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 sexually. We masturbated 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 fellatio 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 passion for all young boys and very old men. Boys after 14 or 15 ceased to attract me, more particularly when the hair of the pubes began to develop. From 8 to 14, when first I had sexual emissions, I masturbated 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 passion 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 passed between us. All my life I have been possessed with the passion for paternity, I could almost say maternity. Willingly would I have suffered the pains of hell 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 passion I have never been brutal, nor save under the influence of wine have I had connection with men over the age of puberty. In Southern Europe my experiences have been the same, a predominant passion for a boy exhibiting itself in every species of protecting care, and though terminating so far as sexual passion 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 masturbate 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. Prostitutes 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 puberty I have attracted sexually not only women but men. Women, oddly enough, though I care nothing for them sexually, 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 Classics showed me how common was the taste of sex for the same sex. 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 passion for children and animals, and I am never happier than when in their society. Both adore me.