Studies in the Psychology of Sex (Vol. 1-6). Havelock Ellis
and I took no particular interest in hearing about them. I remember being fondled and caressed by a very good-looking boy of 16 when I was three or four years younger and had sustained some hurt at play; and I am still able to recall the thrill of delight that I experienced at his touch. Nothing took place that all the world might not have seen, but I remember being taken between his knees as he sat, and his arms being put around my neck, and the warm, soft pressure of his thighs had an unspeakable effect on me.
"About this time, too, an older boy, perhaps about 18, used to get hold of smaller boys when on country walks, to throw them down and then look at and toy with their genitals. He was himself a handsome boy, and I was greatly excited when told about this by boys who had experienced it, and wished greatly to have it done to me. It never was; and if it had been attempted I know I should have resisted with all my strength, although my desires would have set me aflame. This boy died before he was 20, with a psoas abscess, and I remember crying myself to sleep the night I learned of his death. Another boy, about three years older than myself, who had very silky hair, I used to be attracted by and I was always trying to stroke his hair, but he always objected.
"I must have been about 12 when I first was taught to masturbate by a cousin who was slightly older. At first I thought it silly, but I used to watch him at it, and practised it myself from time to time until I became old enough to experience the proper sensation. Then I have reason to think I gave myself up to it rather freely, but it was generally done in solitude, although it was long before I realized that there was anything wrong about it or that it might prove hurtful. Looking back now, I feel perfectly certain that my instincts were wholly homosexual from the very first. This cousin, who possessed notable intellectual and artistic gifts, married, but I feel sure his liking for his own sex was not normal.
"With another cousin, almost years my junior, I was always on terms of the most affectionate intimacy. My holidays at his parents' house were my greatest delight. We were always together by night or day; we slept in the same bed, literally in each other's arms. To me it afforded the keenest sexual pleasure to press close to his naked body. We used mutually to handle and caress our parts, but without any attempt at mutual masturbation, although at that period I regularly practised it on myself. I asked him once about it, but he had not been taught it by others; and to my great pride and satisfaction I can say that I never either did it to him or asked him to do it to me. This I mention as an instance of my restraint in act, although my thoughts and desires knew no such curb. I remember also an elder brother of his, perhaps three or four years my senior, once showing me (then about 12, I suppose) his semierect penis. He would not allow me to touch it, but showed me how to draw back the foreskin so as to uncover the glans. His penis was large, and the incident was not forgotten. We had no other relation and I know that both he and my own friend grew up to be quite normal men.
"I think I must have been about 17 when I got frightened about the occurrence of nocturnal emissions, which I believed were the evil result of masturbation, and for two or three years I continued in considerable mental distress until, when in my second or third year at college, I summoned up courage enough to consult our good old family doctor, who reassured me, but made, I now think, too light of my confidences, so that I relapsed the more readily, although much later on, into old habits.
"From our windows at home we looked over a bit of common or down to the beach, and I used to keep watch on warm summer afternoons; over boys who might be bathing, to observe them through our telescope. All this I kept strictly secret and I was never surprised. I might just as well, and without arousing the slightest suspicion of my motive, have walked down to the beach and seen them and chatted with them; but this I could not have brought myself to do. It gave me considerable sexual satisfaction when I was able to see them bathing without pants. I also used to watch them at play on the common, and felt rewarded when I saw, as I not infrequently did, sexual familiarities taking place. These violently excited me and sometimes brought on orgasm, always erection with pleasure. Indeed, it was an experience of this kind that made me return to masturbation after I had given it up for a while. I remember one day seeing two lads of about 16 lying on the grass in the sunshine; all at once the bigger lad put out his hand and tried to open his companion's trousers. He resisted with all his might, and a long struggle ensued, ending in the smaller lad having his penis exposed and manipulated by the other. Even at this day the recollection of this excites me. Both lads grew up to be normal men.
"Twice only have I been approached by grown-up people. When I was about 13 I used to meet often, when going to school by train, an old gentleman who courted me, as it were, used often to talk to me and asked me to come to see his well-known scientific collections, but I always had a vague distrust of him and never went. One day in the summer during a spare hour I met him in an empty room in the museum, where there were usually very few visitors at that time of day, and where large show-cases gave concealment. He came up to me and told me he had been away in the country, and that, when making his way home through hedges and thorny bushes, some of the thorns got stuck amongst his clothes and were still giving him uneasiness. 'I would be very grateful,' he said, 'if you would put your hand down and try if you can feel any thorns sticking in my underflannels and pull them out.' He then unbuttoned his braces on one side, undid his trousers and made me thrust my hand over his groin and lower abdomen. I avoided touching his genitals, but he pushed my hand down in that direction until, burning with shame, I made my escape and ran off, not stopping until I was safe in school. I scarcely understood it, but never spoke of it, and avoided him ever afterward. I learned later on that he was a well-off bachelor who took a great interest in working lads and young men and did much to help them on in life and keep them, so it was said, from falling into bad company. He died at a great age and left most of his fortune to an institution for lads, as well as large legacies to youths in whom he had been interested.
"The other time was on top of a tramcar when a grown-up man who was near pressed as close to me as he could, began to talk, praised my dark eyes, then put his hand on my thigh under my loose cloak and felt up toward my parts. At the same time he took hold of my hand, caressed it and put it over his parts (it was in the dusk). This excited me and, if we had not been at our destination, I think I would gladly have permitted further familiarities. He tried to ask me where I lived, but there was no time to answer, and the female relative who was with me (on another seat) would no doubt have prevented this from having any further sequel.
"On more than one occasion I have experienced the sexual orgasm as the result of mental anxiety. The first time this occurred was when I was hurrying to avoid being late for school. Another time was when I was about 24, and was extremely anxious to fill an appointment for which I was late. So copious was the emission that I had to go home and change.
"As a medical student, the first reference bearing definitely on the subject of sexual inversion was made in the class of Medical Jurisprudence, where certain sexual crimes were alluded to—very summarily and inadequately—but nothing was said of the existence of sexual inversion as the 'normal' condition of certain unhappy people, nor was any distinction drawn between the various non-normal acts, which were all classed together as manifestations of the criminal depravity of ordinary or insane people. To a student beginning to be acutely conscious that his sexual nature differed profoundly from that of his fellows, nothing could be more perplexing and disturbing, and it shut me up more completely in my reserve than ever. I felt that this teaching must be based on some radical error or prejudice or misapprehension, for I knew from my own very clear remembrance of my own development that my peculiarity was not acquired, but inborn; my great misfortune undoubtedly, but not my fault.
"It was still more unfortunate that in the course of the lectures on Clinical Medicine there was not the slightest allusion to the subject. All sorts of rare diseases—some of which I have not yet met with in the course of twenty-one years of a busy practice—were fully discussed, but we were left entirely ignorant of a subject so vitally important to me personally, and, as it seems to me, to the profession to which I aspired. There might have been an incidental reference to masturbation—although I do not remember it—but its real significance received no attention; and what we students knew of it was the result of our reading or of our personal experiences.
"In the class of Mental Disease there was, naturally, more detailed and systematic reference to facts in the sexual life and to sexual inversion as a rare pathological condition. But still