During my second year of university life I had two love affairs in the course of which I found that my interest in any particular member of the fair sex disappeared as soon as it was returned. The pursuit was fascinating enough, but I cared nothing at all for the prize when once it was within reach. I may add that the interest I had in the girls was purely ideal. While at this school I do not think I masturbated half as often as while at the preparatory school.
When I left this college for ---- University I took with me a formidable catalogue of good resolutions, first among which was the determination to abandon all kinds of "self-abuse." I think I kept this one about a month. As I had gone from a comparatively small school to one of the largest of American universities the change was great and the revelations it brought me frequently humiliating. I was lonesome, home-sick, and my bump of self-esteem was woefully bruised; and not unnaturally I soon began to seek a partial solace in day-dreams and masturbation. After I had become somewhat adapted to my new environment I indulged less frequently in either, and from that time to the present I have masturbated very irregularly, sometimes but little and again to excess.
Not long after I came to this place I met a young lady with whom I soon became quite intimate. For over a year our friendship was strictly platonic and then swung suddenly around to a sexual basis. We were ardent lovers for a few weeks, after which I tired of the game as I had before in other cases, and broke off all relations with her as abruptly as was possible. Since then I have almost wholly withdrawn from the society and companionship of women and have almost entirely lost whatever tact and assurance I once possessed in their company. Things pertaining to sexual life have interested me rather more than less, but have occupied my attention much less exclusively than before this episode. Though I have never intended to marry, my breaking off relations with this girl affected me much. At any rate it marked an abrupt change in the character of my sexual experiences. The sexual impulse seems to have lost its power to rouse me to action. Hitherto I had practiced masturbation always under protest, as it were--as the only available form of sexual satisfaction; while now I resigned myself to it as all that there was to hope for in that field. Of course I knew that a little effort or a little money would procure natural satisfaction of my sexual needs, but I also knew that I would never, under any ordinary circumstances, put forth the necessary effort, and fear of venereal disease has been more than enough to keep me away from houses of prostitution.
Some months ago I refrained from masturbation for a period of about six weeks and watched carefully for any change in my health or spirits, but noticed none at all. The only impulse to masturbate was occasioned by fits of restlessness accompanied by erections and a mildly pleasurable feeling of fullness in the penis and scrotum. I think that over 75 per cent, of my acts of masturbation are provoked by these fits of restlessness and are unaccompanied by fancy images, erotic thoughts, lustful desires, or marked pleasure. At other times the act is occasioned by erotic thoughts and images, and is accompanied by a considerable degree of lustful pleasure which, however, is never so intense as in my earlier experiences and has steadily decreased from the first. Usually the orgasm is accompanied by a strong contraction of all the voluntary muscles, particularly the extensors, followed by a slight giddiness and slight feeling of exhaustion. If repeated several times in the course of a single day the acts are followed by dullness and lassitude; otherwise the feeling of exhaustion passes away quickly and a sense of relief and quiet takes its place. So natural or rather habitual has this resort to masturbation as a means of relief from nervousness and restlessness become that the act is almost instinctive in its unconsciousness.
I am extremely sensitive to all kinds of sexual influences, and have an insatiable curiosity regarding everything that pertains to the sexual life of men or women. I am not, however, excited sexually by conversation about sexual facts and relationships, no matter what its nature, though in reading erotic literature my excitement is often intense.
The tendency to day dream has never left me, but there are no longer any elaborate scenes or long-continued "stories," these having been replaced by vaguely imagined incidents which are usually broken off before they reach a satisfactory climax. They are always interrupted by the intrusion of other matters, usually of more practical interest; and the long-continued habit of satisfying myself by masturbation has made erotic dreams rather tantalizing than pleasurable. I dream very seldom at night--at least I can scarcely ever remember any dreams upon waking--and practically never of sexual relations. I have not had a nocturnal emission for over three years, and probably not more than twenty-five in my life.
In my "love passages" with girls there has been no serious thought of coitus on my part, and I have never had intercourse with a woman--unless my early experiences with the servant girl be called such. Like all masturbators I always idealized "love" to the utter exclusion of all sensual cravings; and the notion that the physical act of coitus was something degrading and destructive of real love rather than its consummation was, of all prejudices I have ever formed, the most difficult to escape--a circumstance due, I suppose, to the fact that all I had ever been taught on the subject tended to the complete divorce of what was called "love" from what was stigmatized as a "base sensual desire." Judging from my own experience and observation I should say that "ideal love" is a mere surface feeling, bound to disappear as soon as it has gained its object by arousing a reciprocal interest on the part of the one to whom it is directed. So little did I "materialize" the objects of my "love" that I have never cared for kissing or the warm embraces in which lovers usually indulge. I have never kissed but one girl, and her with far too little enthusiasm to satisfy her. My last sweetheart was a very passionate girl, the warmth of whose embraces was somewhat torrid and, to me, both puzzling and annoying. The intensity of feeling which demanded such strenuous expression was beyond my knowledge of human nature. A somewhat peculiar circumstance in connection with these experiences is the fact that I often found myself trying to analyze my emotions with a purely psychological interest while playing the part of the intoxicated lover in his mistress's arms.
There is but little left to say on the subject of my sexual development. During the last two or three years my knowledge of the facts of the sexual life has been very greatly increased, and I have become acquainted with phases of human nature which were wholly unknown to me before. The part played by things sexual in my life is still, I suppose, abnormally large; it is undoubtedly the largest single interest, though my outer life is determined almost wholly by other considerations.
Of course I know nothing of the effect which long-continued masturbation may have had on my ability to perform normal coitus. I do not think I am subject to any kind of sexual perversion, for all my indulgence has been _faute de mieux_ and, at least since I began masturbation, all my desires and erotic day-dreams have had to do only with normal coitus. The mystery which surrounds the sexual act seems at times to be regaining its former influence and power of fascination. I have no doubt, however, but that I should be greatly disillusioned should I ever perform coitus; and I greatly regret that I have not been able to test this conviction and so round out and complete this "history."
It may be worth while to say a word about my religious experiences, as, in many cases, they are closely bound up with the sexual impulse. I was never "converted," but on a dozen or more occasions approached the crisis more or less closely. The dominant emotion in these experiences was always fear, sometimes with anger and despair intermixed in varying proportions. A complete analysis of these experiences is, of course, impossible, but the various pleasurable feelings of which converts spoke in the revivals which I attended were a closed book to me. Following my revival-meeting experiences came a few days spent in a sort of moral exaltation during which I eschewed all my habits of which conventional morality disapproved, save masturbation, and felt no small satisfaction with my moral conditions. I became a first-rate Pharisee. Toward the women who had figured in my day dreams I suddenly conceived the chastest affection, resolutely smothering every sensual thought and fancy when thinking of them, and putting in place of these elements ideal love, self-sacrifice, knightly devotion--Sunday-school Garden-of-Eden pictures with a mediæval, romantic coloring. These day-dreams were always sexual, involving situations of extreme complexity and monumental silliness. Masturbation was always continued and usually with increased frequency. The end of these periods was always abrupt and much like awaking from a dream in which the dreamer has been behaving in a manner to arouse his own disgust. They were followed by feelings of sheepishness and self-contempt mingled with anger and a dislike of all things having to do with religion. My inability to pass the conversion crisis and a growing contempt for empty enthusiasm finally led me to a saner attitude toward religion, from which I passed easily into religious scepticism; and later the study of philosophy and science, and particularly of psychology, banished the last lingering remnant of faith in a supernatural agency and led me to the passion for facts and indifference to values which have caused me to be often called "dead to all morality."
HISTORY II.--C.A., aged 25, unmarried; tutor, preparing to take Holy Orders:-- My paternal ancestry (which is largely Huguenot) is noteworthy for its patriotism and its large families. My father, who died when I was a year old, is remembered for the singular uprightness and purity of his life from his earliest childhood. The photograph which I have shows him as possessed of a rare classic beauty of features. He was an ideal husband and father. At the time of his death he was a Master of Arts and a school principal. My mother is an extraordinarily neurotic woman, yet famed among her friends for her great domesticity, attachment to her husbands, and an almost abnormal love of babies. She has nobly borne the ill-treatment of her second husband, who for several years has been in a state of melancholia. My mother has been "highly-wrought" all her life, and has suffered intensely from fears of all kinds. As a young girl she was somnambulistic, and once fell down a stairhead during sleep. In spite of her bodily sufferings with indigestion, eye-strain, and depression she retains her youthfulness. She has slight powers of reasoning. She has had times of unconsciousness and rigidity, I have never heard any mention of epilepsy. She has a horror of showing prudishness in regard to the healthful manifestations of sex life, and is always praising examples of what she terms "a natural woman."
I have heard that during my first year my mother detected my nurse in the act of putting a morphine powder on my tongue for the purpose of keeping me quiet. I was subject to convulsions at this period, and narrowly escaped a permanent hernia. My family tell me that from the beginning I was a well-developed and boyish boy, full of mischief, impulsive, good to look upon, unusually affectionate, beloved by all.
In my third year I took pleasure in crawling under the bed with my boy-cousin who was nine months my senior, and after we had taken down our drawers, in kissing each other's nates. I do not remember which of us first thought of this pastime.
At the age of 4 I gave myself a treat by gazing upward through a cellar window at the nates of a woman who was defecating from several feet above into a cesspool that lay beneath. It was during this summer also that I frightened myself by pulling back my prepuce far enough to disclose the purple glans, which I had never seen before. But this act gave me no desire to masturbate.
When 5 years old, and living in a great city, I drew indecent pictures in company with a little girl and her younger brother. These pictures represented men in the act of urinating. The penes were drawn large, and the streams of urine plainly indicated. One afternoon I induced the boy to go to the bath-room, lie on his back, and allow me to perform _fellatio_ on him. I did not ask him to return the favor. I remember the curious tar-like smell of his clothing and the region about his genitals. It is possible that I gained my knowledge of _fellatio_ from an unknown boy of 10, who had induced me, during the preceding summer to enter a sandy lot with him, watch him urinate, and then, kneeling before him, commit _fellatio_. A year later, as I was walking home in the rain to our summer cottage, with an open umbrella over my shoulder, a boy of 15, who was leaning against our fence, exhibited a large, erect penis, and when I had passed him urinated upon me and my umbrella. I never saw the boy again. I felt peculiarly insulted by his act. Back of the house there lived a 12-year-old boy who invited me to watch him defecate in the outdoor privy, and during the act told me a number of indecent stories and words which I cannot remember.
About this time I fell in love with a little Jewish boy next door. Often I cried myself to sleep over the thought that perhaps he was lying on a sofa alone and crying with a stomach-ache. I longed to embrace him; and yet I saw little of him, and made little of him when I was with him.
Living in a Western city a few months later, some girls of 12 and 14 led me to their barn, where they dressed themselves in boys' clothing and made believe that they were cowboys. One of them told me to "shut my eyes, open my mouth, and get a surprise." When I opened my eyes once more a piece of hen-dung lay in my mouth. I have a vague remembrance of one of the girls asking me to enter a water-closet with her. She uttered some indelicate phrase, but I performed no act with her. In the house where I lived I once entered the bedroom of a half-grown girl while she was dressing. She knelt to kiss me innocently enough, and I, by a sudden impulse, ran my hand between her bare neck and her corset as far as I could reach. Apparently she took no notice of my movement. Although I did not masturbate, yet during this winter I experienced a tickling sensation about my genitals when I placed my hand beneath them as I lay on my stomach in bed. One evening I pulled up my night-dress and, holding my penis in my hand, I danced to and fro on the carpet. I imagined that I was one of a line of naked men and women who were advancing toward another similar line that faced them. I imagined myself as pleasurably coming in contact with my female partner who possessed male genitals.
The following summer I lived in the woods. My next-door playmate was a little girl of my own age--6 years. She sat down before me in the barn and exposed her genitals. This was the first time I had seen female organs, or had thought for a moment that they differed from my own. In great perplexity I asked the little girl: "Has it been cut off?" She and I defecated in peach baskets that we found in the upper part of the barn.
When I was 7 years old and back in the Eastern city I lived in the house of a physician. Alone with his 3-year-old daughter one day, I showed her my erect organ, and felt a delicious gratification when she stroked it with the words: "Nice! Nice!" I confessed my fault to my guardian that night after I had said my prayers. I had complained to my mother a year before of the inconvenience I found in my penis being "so long sometimes." She said that she would "see about having the end taken off." But I was never circumcised. Her words gave me the doubly unpleasant impression that my _glans_ was to be cut off.
There came occasionally to the kitchen of Dr. W.'s house a foul-mouthed Irish laundress who used coarse language to me concerning urination. I loathed the woman, and yet one night I dreamed that I was embracing her naked form and rolling over and over with her on the bed; and in spite of my sight of female genitals a few months before, I thought of her as having organs of my own kind and size. At my first school I watched a red-haired boy of 12 expose the penis of a 7-year-old boy as he lay on his back in the bath-room. I do not remember that the sight gave me sexual pleasure.
I spent the summer before I was 8 in a double house. The adopted daughter of our neighbor (a neurotic, retired physician) was a girl of 13 who had been taken from a poor laboring family. She got me to show her my parts, touched them, and asked whether I urinated from my scrotum. She also induced me to play with her genitals as we sat on a sofa in the twilight, and to spank her naked nates with the back of a hair-brush as she lay on a bed; but from none of these performances did I derive physical satisfaction. The girl E. and I took delight in "talking dirty secrets," as she expressed it. Her young cousin H. (nephew of her adopted mother) never heard me use the word "thing" without suggestively smiling. E. recalled the pleasant hours that she had spent with her cousin when they were in their night-gowns. She did not particularize these sexual relations. Under the board-walk the boy H. and I once defecated in bottles. Some little girls who lived opposite us pulled up their dresses one night and "dared" each other to dance out beyond the end of the house, in full view of the road. We boys merely looked on.
I now fell passionately in love with a remarkably handsome little boy of my own age. I longed to kiss and hug him, but I did not dare to do so, for he was haughty and intolerant of my attentions. I even allowed him to stand with one foot on me and remark in a loud tone: "I am Conqueror!" I endured no end of petty insults and much ill-treatment from this boy. I reached the height of my passion on the night that he appeared at our cottage in a tight-fitting suit of pepper-and-salt. I gloried in his perfect legs and besought my guardian that she would buy me a similar suit of clothes.
For the summer after I was 8 years old I lived in a cottage in a country town. The servant maid M. was a young girl of 16 who listened eagerly to my accounts of the "secrets" and actions in which the girl E. and I had taken delight a year before. I think that M. arranged a meeting between a little black-haired girl and me in order that we might take a walk and play sexually with each other. Just as we were starting on our walk one of my relatives said that I must not leave the yard.
The little girl and I had see-sawed together and I had been interested in her legs as she rose in the air. (When I was 13 years old and see-sawing at a picnic with a stout girl, the motion of the board and the sight of her straddled form filled me with longing to embrace her sexually.) One afternoon M. took me to the house of an acquaintance of hers. M's brother was in the room and made a number of unremembered remarks which struck me as being rather "free," and M. told me later that she and the girl once dressed as ballet dancers and danced before M.'s brother. I felt that he was lascivious. I was always remarkably intuitive.
I fell in love with a handsome, stout, black-haired boy who lived on a farm; but he was not a "farmer's son" in the common sense of the word. I visited him for two or three days, and we slept with each other, to my boundless joy. For his freckled girl cousin I did not care the turn of my wrist, although she was a nice enough little thing. One night when we three lay on a bed in the dark, and neither of us boys had eyes or words for her, she silently left us. He and I never committed the slightest sexual fault. I left him with tears at the summer-end, and I often kissed his photograph during the following winter.
In the flat-house where I began to live when I was 8 years old, I once practiced mutual tickling of a very slight character with a boy of my own age. We sat on chairs placed opposite to each other and we inserted our fingers through the openings in our trousers. Just as we were beginning to enjoy the titillation we were interrupted by the approach of one of my family who, however, was not quick enough to discover us. Down cellar I often saw the genitals of the janitor's little girls--they were fond of lifting their skirts and they did not wear drawers--but I had no desire to attempt conjunction. I once caught an older friend of mine (he was 13) in the act of leaving one of the girls. The pair had been in a coal-compartment. The boy was buttoning his trousers and I guessed what he had been doing. When I began to sleep alone in my tenth year I had no desire to masturbate, and was loath to do so by reason of ample warnings given me by my guardian and by the family physician. One afternoon a stunted friend of mine sat down in the back yard and astonished me by tying a piece of string to his penis. At a large private school which I now attended I made the acquaintance of the principal's son, and wondered why he had such a fancy for dressing his 5-year-old sister in boy's clothes. He closed the door on me while he was thus engaged. At my house we went to the bath-room together, and he showed me his circumcised and much-ridged penis. Neither of us made any mention of masturbating.
At this period I fell slightly in love with a 5-year-old boy with intensely black eyes. I would kiss him whenever we were alone, but I had no wish to seduce him. I was always interested in watching the urination of younger children. When I was 5 years old I went on my knees to a strange little boy in order to whisper in his ear an inquiry as to whether he wanted to urinate. I experienced a pleasurable thrill when I was 10 years old in leading a small girl cousin to the outdoor privy, in helping her on and off the open seat, in buttoning and unbuttoning her drawers, and in gazing at her vulva.
The summer before I was 10 I lived a wild life in the mountains. My companions were a negro girl, the two daughters of a clergyman, the two sons of a questionable woman hotel-keeper, and the daughter of the Irish scavenger. All of these children were extraordinarily sensual. Their leading pastime, from morning until night, was varying forms of indecency, with the supreme caress--which they termed "raising dickie"--as the most frequent enjoyment. The 5-year-old daughter of the scavenger explained to us how she had seen her father approaching her stout mother with an erect penis, the pair standing up before the lamplight during the act. This curly-headed, rosy-cheeked child handled her genitals so much that they were inflamed. I once saw her sitting in the road and rubbing dust against her vulva. I saw little of the elder daughter of the minister (she was 12 years old). She persuaded me to expose myself before her in the cellar of a partially-built house. In return for my favor she allowed me to look at her genitals. She did not ask for _conjunctio_. The two younger daughters were my intimates. With the middle one I was forever performing a weak conjunction that consisted in the laying of my member against her vulva. Notwithstanding all the entreaties of my little friend, I could not be persuaded to protrude my penis against her vagina; and not on one occasion can I remember obtaining an erection or extreme pleasure. Up in the garret she straddled slanting beams with her genitals exposed, and I followed her example. The negro girl and my little friend both urinated on a tent floor at my request. I did not fancy the odor of a girl's genitals, nor the appearance of the vulva when the labia were held apart.
The following summer, when I was almost 11, I took a long walk one day with my old friend, the girl E. We entered a patch of woods and ate our lunch, but no sense of sexual drawing toward the girl came over me and she did not offer to entice me. I slept with her boy-cousin one night, and her neuropathic aunt, a retired lady physician, bothered us by repeatedly creeping into our room. I felt intuitively that she was watching to see whether we would commit mutual masturbation--which we had no thought of doing. Three years before I had opened the door of her bedroom suddenly and saw E.'s naked form. The physician had been examining her, E. told me later. My guardian also annoyed me by repeated warnings not to play with myself.
Just before I turned 11 I was sent to a small and so-called "home" boarding-school. Eight of us lived in the smaller dormitory. The matron roomed downstairs. There was no resident master--a serious error. We small boys were told to strip one evening. We were then tied neck-to-neck and made to dance a "slave-dance," which was marked by no sexuality. A boy of 15, R., one afternoon gave me the astonishing information that my father had taken a part in my procreation. Up to this moment I had known only of the maternal offices, information of which had been beautifully supplied to me by my guardian when I was 7 years old. At that time I talked freely about the coming of a baby brother in a distant city; I watched the construction of baby clothes; I named the newcomer, and I was momentarily disappointed when he proved to be a girl. This same R., a strong boy with a large penis, got into the custom of lying in bed with me just before lights were put out. He would read to himself and occasionally pause to pump his penis and make with his lips the sound of a laboring locomotive. I felt impelled to handle his organ, for I was fascinated by its size, and stiffness, and warmth. Rarely he would titillate my then small and unerect penis. R. never ejaculated when he was with me; hence not until my third year was I acquainted with the appearance of a flow of semen. Sometimes R.
would stop during his dressing to manipulate his penis, but was such a picture of rosy health that I doubt whether he brought himself often to ejaculation. R. told me that he had been to a brothel where his genitals were examined to determine whether they were large enough and not diseased. He also related how he "played cow" with a girl of his own age, she consenting to perform _fellatio_ upon him. A dark-skinned, unwashed, pimpled but fairly vigorous boy of 16, with an irritable domineering manner, told me the delights of coitus with a girl in a bath-house, and I overheard his conversation with another "old" boy concerning the purchase of a girl in a big city for the sum of five dollars. No details were given.
I will now pass to my third year, when I was 13 years old. A large, well-set-up boy of 16, A., became my idol. His toleration of my presence in his room filled me with endless love. When I lied about a matter in which he was concerned, his denunciation of me brought me to a state of shuddering and weeping unspeakable. When our relations were established again A. allowed me to creep into his bed after the lights were out, and there I passionately embraced him, but without performing any definite act. When I turned over on my side with my back to him he drew my prepuce back and forth until I experienced orgasm, but not ejaculation. I would return his favor by pumping his erect penis, but with no ejaculation on his part. He did not propose _fellatio_, and I did not think of it. One night when he was in my bed I began to masturbate very slightly, whereupon he laughed, saying: "So that is the way you amuse yourself!" As a matter of fact the habit was not fastened upon me. He always laughed when the rubbing of his finger on my exposed glans caused me to shrink. Another boy, H., now began to show me his erect penis and we practiced mutual manipulations. A. laughingly told me how me had caught H. in the act of masturbating as he stood in the bath-tub. A. told me a number of sexual stories--how he enjoyed coitus in the bushes with a girl on the way home from entertainments; how half a dozen boys and girls stripped in the basement of a church and performed coitus on the velvet chairs which stood behind the pulpit; and how he and a younger boy, who camped out together, played with each other's genitals. F., a boy of 11, was highly nervous, subject to timidity and tears on the slightest provocation, often morose, and under treatment for kidney trouble. His penis was erect whenever I saw him undress. He told me that a partially idiotic man taught F. and his companion how to masturbate. The man invited the boys to his tent and there pumped his organ until "some white stuff came out of it." F. also told me that an Indian princess in his part of the country would permit coitus for fifty cents. A. sometimes slept with F., and I could imagine their embraces. S., a secretive, handsome boy of 13, wetted his bed with urine every night. The only sign that he gave of an interest in sexuality was his laughing remark concerning the coupling of rose-bugs. Of his chum, my beloved C., I will speak later. My small room-mate handled himself only slightly. I never had a desire to lie with