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
puberty, 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 circumstances, 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 circumstances for the indulgence
of my passion. 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 buttocks 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, coarse,
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 shagged 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 assistance in the buttoning
and unbuttoning 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 passive 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 passive participant, 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 circumcised 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 circumstances
(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
circumstances. 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 passed 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
snatched 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 passionate
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
anticipated 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 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 Napoleon (the incident of his
anticipation 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 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.

"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 passed 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
sexual side of them, and when I love, though passion 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.

He was brought up in England, and went to school at the age of
13. At a very early age, between 6 and 8, was deeply impressed by
the handsome face of a young man, a royal trumpeter on horseback,
seen in a procession. This, and the sight of the naked body of
young men in a rowing-match on the river, caused great commotion,
but not of a definitely sexual character. This was increased by
the sight of a beautiful male model of a young Turk smoking, with
his dress open in front, showing much of the breast and below the
waist. He became familiar with pictures, admired the male figures
of Italian martyrs, and the full, rich forms of the Antinous, and
he read with avidity the _Arabian Nights_ and other Oriental
tales, translations from the classics, Suetonius, Petronius, etc.
He drew naked models in life schools, and delighted in male
ballet-dancers. As a child, he used to perform in private
theatricals; he excelled in female parts, and sang the songs of
Madame Vestris, encouraged in this by his father.

The sexual organs have never been fully developed, and the
testicles, though large, are of a flabby consistence. He cannot
whistle. He thinks he ought to have been a woman.

At school he was shy and reserved, and had no particular intimacy
with anyone, although he once desired it. He learned self-abuse
from his younger brother, who had learned it from an older boy.
He has never had erotic dreams. He never touched anyone but his
brother until later when travelling in Italy, and then only his
fellow-traveller. When travelling in Asia Minor he had many
opportunities, but always put them aside from fear, afterward
regretting his fearfulness. He yearned for intimacy with
particular friends, but never dared to express it. He went much
to theaters, and what he saw there incited him to masturbation.
When he was about 30 years of age his reserve, and his fear of
treachery and extortion, were at last overcome by an incident
which occurred late at night at the Royal Exchange, and again in
a dark recess in the gallery of the Olympic Theater when Gustavus
Brooke was performing. From that time the Adelphi Theater, the
Italian Opera, and the open parks at night became his fields of
adventure. He remarks that among people crowding to witness a
fire he found many opportunities. His especial intimates were a
railway clerk and an Italian model. In more recent years he has
chiefly found gratification among footmen and policemen.