Girl-boy Playmates.
I was the only girl-boy of my immediate neighborhood, and from the seventh to the twelfth year of my life, was looked upon by all the other children as more girl than boy. When, after the age of seven, I made acquaintances farther off than in my own block, I became acquainted with three other girl-boys on three adjacent blocks, and a number of others in the village. It was common knowledge among the boys of the school. After they became adults, three became notorious among the sporting adolescents of the village, as I learned through a brother who belonged to that class.
The only one with whom I was intimate became, between the ages of fifteen and twenty, a regular fille de joie. A coterie of particularly virile adolescents who had no other means of satisfying their libido, and who were disinclined to visit an evil resort, had recourse to him regularly that he might take the humiliating role in fellatio. Young inverts who do not repress their instincts have relations ordinarily with their young male friends. I was an exception in this respect, as well as in respect to conscientious scruples against following instinct.
My other two girl-boy playmates became, respectively, an organist and an orchestra leader by profession when they became adult. During their late teens and early twenties, they had many liaisons (fellatio) with sport-lovingyoung men—according to my brother—but having more money than the invert just described, they played the wooer, being the seeker, and choosing their intimates, instead of being sought out by the many. They spent a considerable part of their earnings on their beaux. I know nothing about the sexual conduct of any of these three inverts after they passed the age of twenty-five. But the first mentioned developed into a notorious dipsomaniac toward middle age, and the other two, when past the age of forty, are healthy, prosperous, and I believe well esteemed in their community. Most of their business associates have never heard anything against them. Of course none of the three ever married awoman.
Inversion Promotes Music.
Of this group of passive inverts who grew up together, I alone had the scholarly instinct and was unusually religious. Of the six who lived to be adults, three—including the organist and the orchestra leader—had extraordinary talent as musicians. No growth of beard ever showed itself on the face of one of the three, and he looked remarkably like a woman.
My knowledge of these inverts leads me to remark at this point that in general those who have relations with a passive invert are normal young men who later marry a woman, but in whom the fire of lust has been kindled by nature subsequent to puberty and for whom circumstances prevent marriage between eighteen and twenty-five years of age.
Every large city block and almost every small villageof the world has its girl-boy, so far as my wide observation goes. After a life extending over nearly half a century and spent in many countries of the world, it is my own careful estimate that approximatelyone physical male in three hundredis born with this nature.
Frequency of Androgynism.
Physicians possibly have not discovered inverts in such numbers: First, because the majority of the medical profession have been in almost entire ignorance of the existence of this variety of thegenus homo, and have therefore neglected to search around for them; and secondly, because of the fact that through humanity’s misunderstanding and persecution of them, these inverts hide their idiosyncrasies and secret practices as no other class of mankind. They can be discovered only by careful search, and recognized only by those having an intimate knowledge of the invert’s character and habits. They are often unsuspected even by their own families.
In a class of fifty boys in a school, there was one passive invert. In another class of forty, there were two. In a club of thirty young men, there were two. In an office staff of fourteen, there were two. In a community of twelve hundred inhabitants, six were known to your author. Havelock Ellis has stated that among the professional and most cultured classes of England, the number of “homosexualists”—which term includes active pederasts as well as passive inverts—may rise as high as one in twenty. Moll has stated that he knew of from 850 to 1,050 in Berlin alone, which would make the ratio one to every 1,666 inhabitants. Of course Moll couldknow of only a small proportion of the total number in Berlin.
Author’s Rather Diminutive Size.
All inverts do not give way to their instincts, since the strength of these instincts varies in different individuals, as does the degree of effeminacy, just as there are corresponding differences in normal individuals. Your author’s is an extreme case of passive inversion. His case is also unusual because of the strange combination of appetencies in one individual: the instincts of the fairie, the thirst for knowledge of the savant, the yearning after God and holiness of life of the zealot, and the impulse toward altruism of the missionary. My intention from the age of fifteen to nineteen to pass my life as a foreign missionary and preacher of the Gospel was relinquished because inconsistent with the much stronger appetency of the fairie, which finally carried all good resolutions before it.
I grew up slowly, and when adult was the shortest of my parents’ eight children. Six-foot men are common among my near relatives, especially my brothers, but I am five feet five inches. At six years of age I was smaller than a brother of four. In college I was noticeably small and of slight build, weighing only 110 pounds stripped when I graduated.
My first impression of the stern realities of life came at the age of six when my parents insisted on putting me in breeches. I wanted to wear skirts all my life. I shrunk from going out in distinctively male garb, and dodged behind the trees when I discovered an acquaintanceapproaching. The sensation was almost as painful as if I had been compelled to walk the streets naked. Until I reached my early thirties, I did not cease to regret being compelled to taboo feminine apparel, and was constantly being criticised by members of my family for choosing bright colors and as fancy apparel as a male can possibly wear. Androgynes have a predilection for such apparel, just as gynanders prefer the severely plain. Dress is one of the best signs by which to judge whether any suspected individual is or is not an invert. From the age of seven to twelve I occasionally masqueraded in a sister’s dress, coquetting with my boy acquaintances the same as if I were physically a girl.
Yearning for Feminine Apparel.
After reaching the age of seven, I abstained from fellatio on account of shame, as well as because I now habitually played with girls. Nevertheless, as just indicated, I was more crazy after the boys than any of my companions, and was a great flirt. When, promenading with a party of girls, we would encounter boys of our acquaintance, I would incite them to chase myself and the girls. With the girls I would discuss the merits of the various boys and name my favorites. The girls did not look upon me as a boy. Only one ever asked me to take the normal boy’s part in coitus, and I answered naïvely and without embarrassment that I did not know how. My family would ridicule me for playing with the girls, but that did not stop it.
Up to the age of twelve I continued to tell my most intimate schoolmates to call me “Jennie,” encouraged them to hug me, and right in the school-room reclined intheir bosoms because of amorousness. Several would hug and kiss me right in school, and in private request fellatio, but I always turned from the latter proposition in shame. To yield would have been my highest earthly pleasure, but I could not bear the disgrace. Mean-spirited boys would call me a girl in derision, and twit me about my conduct of early childhood, thus awakening a violent desire to commit suicide.
Bent for Feminine Activities.
I was as fond of dolls as is a little girl. Two other characteristic pastimes were playing preacher and playing school, generally all by myself. I spent a large part of my time in the house singing, but have never been able to learn to whistle. Inability to whistle is a general characteristic of passive inverts. I learned to sew and crochet, and naturally took to most other feminine lines of activity, so that my mother has remarked that I was “the best daughter” she had. Indeed none of the family looked upon me as a boy, all unconsciously. Nevertheless there is little evidence that any of them ever suspected that I was attracted toward the male sex.
As a child and youth I was rather odd even apart from my androgynism. For example, from my eleventh to my thirteenth year, while sitting at my desk or walking the streets alone, I would, without raising the head, direct my eyes upward for about two seconds at intervals of from five to ten minutes in order to breathe a short prayer for acquaintances or for pitiable looking individuals whom I passed. It was probably a sort of St. Vitus dance of the muscles about the eye. Another peculiar action, and one which I have never seen in any other person, is thelife-long craze that I have to press the flesh bordering the finger nails against some sharp hard corner, as that of a book-cover or a pillow-case, which repeated action renders the skin horny along the edge of the nail, so that I have often been able to peel it off.
School Life—1883 On.
From the age of nine to sixteen, my parents sent me to a large boys’ private school. At first the experience was painful to me. I felt out of place, and would have preferred attending a girl’s school, or at least a co-educational one. Through my school life up to the age of fourteen, a sense of shame kept me from going to the lavatory except when the need was most urgent, and until the age named, I never sat down there. I never lingered on the play-ground, and mingled with the boys only in the class-room. I particularly avoided them when they were tossing a ball, being very much afraid it might roll near me, and I would have to throw it. The few times that this did happen, the boys laughed, because, they said, I threw just like a girl.
Through all my school life, I hardly had a rival in respect to high standing in all my studies. Near the close of my school career, I was proclaimed before the whole school by the principal as the model student, and the average of all my marks for the last four years of the course was the highest ever attained by any student at that school up to that time.
Between my eighth and my thirteenth year, I several times saw boys in solitary onanism. It gave me a violent desire facere id iis, and also for fellatio. But shame conquered, and I would not betray my desire to my nearestboy friend. For years I slept with an intensely masculine brother. Several times he requested fellatio, but even when in bed, I turned away in shame. Because he was my brother, I had never felt drawn until finally, about my thirteenth year, he committed solitary onanism before my eyes. From this time on, no sleep would come to my relief until I had followed out my instincts. After he fell asleep, I would simply labra mea peni ejus for one second. I never disturbed him enough to awaken him, or even to cause him to have an orgasm, except once, when he asked me to proceed, but for shame I would not. On the other nights, the mere contact for a second would induce a paroxysm. I immediately had the most dreadful sensation imaginable, so that the thought held complete possession of my being: “I’ll never do it again! I’ll never do it again!” I closed and unclosed my hands convulsively. My memory is that there was an emission, but not until two years later did I know the nature of the discharge. Immediately after the paroxysm I always fell asleep as if from exhaustion.
Renewal of Fellatio at Twelve.
Thus my habit of early childhood was renewed after about five years continence. Up until past the age of forty, I believed that the early fellatio was without injurious effect on mind and body, but that that of my thirteenth year was decidedly baneful to both. After passing the age of forty, I am doubtful as to whether the indulgences at either period were injurious.
But happily the period of these thefts lasted probably less than six weeks. My parents possibly learned of it.Any way I was soon assigned a room and a bed all to myself, which I have continued to have down to the time when this autobiography goes to press. Subsequently, between my thirteenth and seventeenth years, emergency destined me to sleep only three times with a boy friend, when also instinct triumphed surreptitiously.
Youthful Reveries.
Beginning at the age of twelve and continuing two years, I could not sleep for approximately two hours after retiring. My thoughts were entirely of boys and of myself as a girl. I imagined all sorts of flirtations and amours with every decidedly good-looking boy with whom I went to school. I would sugere finger or plum or other similarly shaped object, and imagine it was the membrum virile first of one acquaintance, and then of another. I would imagine myself breaking into their houses after they had gone to bed, and attaining my desire. I would imagine a dozen of them standing behind a long screen, with erectis sticking through apertures, and myself going from one to another, according to instinct. I would imagine myself walking on a lonely road and meeting a handsome youth, a stranger, who would force me to fellatio. I would imagine boys keeping me a prisoner in a secluded place and compelling me every day to fellatio. I would imagine myself a beautiful girl skating in the rink, and having a bevy of boys frolicking with me—I falling down and having several of them pile on top of me. In many of these reveries, indeed, I imagined myself clad in feminine apparel. I also indulged in this kind of revery while taking long walks alone through the country. My present judgment on my entertaining sucha current of thought is that I was for the most part irresponsible, and that these reveries were due to my being driven in a measure insane by the lack of any outlet for an innate excessive amorousness.
Prayers for Feminization.
These reveries in bed were accompanied by an orgasm, but I never had any inclination toward solitary onanism. Though knowing the difference between male and female pudenda, I did not until later, about my fourteenth year as I remember, know their function, reproduction. As I lay abed, I would wish and pray that my pudenda might be changed to those of a girl, largely with the thought that I might be enabled to receive boys. I knew what went on between some boys and girls, but I did not know that anything ever resulted from the act. The fact that I was a boy—or rather that my body was that of a boy, because in mind I was thoroughly a girl—occasioned me an immense amount of regret and chagrin, and continued to do so down to the age of forty, as I approached which age, my sexual life was retreating more and more into the background, so that I became rather indifferent as to my physical and psychical sex.
I have been doomed to be a girl who must pass her earthly existence in a male body. How dreadful it is to a young woman to have a slight growth of hair on lip or cheeks! Only one mark of the male! How much more dreadful for a young woman to possess almost all the male anatomy as I do! How I have bewailed my fate! During my early teens, being in a frenzy sometimes over it, I would meditate taking my father’s razor and castrating myself in order to bring my physical form more in accordwith that of the female sex to which I instinctively yearned to belong.
Early Opinions of Fellatio.
Once during the wishes and prayers spoken of above, I reached my hand down and momentarily believed I had been miraculously provided with a cunnus. It is my present impression that my hand came in contact with the scrotum, and that it was my first perception that I had such an appendage. Possibly this indicates late descent of the testicles. As I remember it, up to about my thirteenth year, I never knew there was a scrotum on any male. All my intimates of early childhood had been fully dressed, and thus this organ was concealed.
Up to about my fourteenth year, I regarded fellatio as a wicked shameful habit which evil-minded children fell into, and the desire for which I would outgrow as I became older. From my fourteenth to my seventeenth year, I regarded it as the very worst kind of a habit, which must be overcome by a hard struggle. I had no idea the desire was to continue into and through my adult life.
Up to about my fourteenth year, I also thought normal coitus, which I knew some boys and girls of my acquaintance were guilty of, was equally heinous. When at about the age of thirteen I was told by boys that babies thus came into being, I at first refused to believe it. When I was finally convinced, it was with a realization that every member of the human race was as vile as myself. Subsequently, down to my middle twenties, I considered the subject of love between the sexes as one which should never be mentioned in polite society, a subjectwhich ought to bring deep blushes to every cheek.
Fear of Pregnancy.
After the age of twelve, I no longer masqueraded in feminine apparel or openly flirted with boys because restrained by the sense of shame. Because all the lexicographers wrongly insist on thefeignedcharacter of flirtations, I am moved to explain here once for all that my flirtations, in every period of my life, weresincere, and prompted by adoration for those flirted with. The same explanation applies to my use of “coquet.”
But while no longer openly and energetically flirting with boys, I still adored them, enjoyed their occasional petting attentions, and even sometimes put myself in the way of receiving such consideration. For a brief period during my fourteenth year, I used powder to make my cheeks more rosy with a view to impressing my schoolmates, with several of whom I was in love.
About the time of my learning the secret of reproduction, circumstances brought me one night to sleep with a boy friend, and my instincts prevailed while he slept. On this occasion the terrible paroxysm accompanying fellatio two years earlier, as already described, and putting an end to it almost before it had begun, was not experienced, and the act continued for some minutes. I did not yet know of the existence of semen, but believed the simple presence membrum virile in membro femineo induced pregnancy. Even if I had had an emission myself two years before, I knew absolutely nothing about its nature. For several months after this night’s experience I was somewhat worried for fear of pregnancy, thinking it might result from buccal coitus.
Early Teens.
During my early teens also, a few schoolmates hinted at fellatio. Because of shame I gave them no encouragement, although almost insane for love of them. Moreover, about this time, several old and middle-aged men would find occasion to clasp me, cum peni adversum fundamentum meum. They evidently entertained thoughts of pædicatio, but on account of our position in society, they did not go any farther. I abhorred their conduct.
As a consequence of my comparatively solitary life, my association with boys being confined to the school-room, I was very backward in acquiring normal sexual knowledge, never used slang, and was in general a “goody-goody.” Other boys called me an “innocent.” Adults regarded me as exceptionally guileless and pure-minded. The reader will discover in these pages what manner of person I was, but down to my middle thirties my “childlike and bland smile” and my “frank and open countenance” have been harped upon by my every-day associates. Down to the age named they have described me as “mild-eyed,” “inoffensive,” “childlike,” and “lamblike.”
I was probably more a prey to sensual imaginations than any other boy of the community, and yet, without any attempt to deceive on my part, I was judged to be the most pure-minded! Nevertheless, though naturally one of the most sensual, I probably practiced the most self-denial. Later, college associates remarked that they never met any one else with so little of the animal in him, when actually I was then perhaps the most given to venery of them all. I had in myself the germs of two as widely opposed careers as it would be possible to name.I was a born religious and philanthropic worker. On the other hand, no girl was ever more clearly cut out for the life of a fille de joie than was I.
1889—I Become a Religious Prodigy.
The genitals became pubescent as early as the completion of my fifteenth year. Is this not unusually early for a male, but the proper age for a female? Whether or no as a partial effect of this beginning of pseudo-puberty, I simultaneously developed into a religious prodigy, leading the congregation in church in extempore prayer at this early age, and spending a full two hours daily in private religious exercises for the next two years. At this time I definitely chose the Christian ministry in a heathen land as my field of labor when I had finished my education. This greatly increased interest in religion fortunately put a stop to my morbid reveries. I now looked upon my yearning for fellatio as my “besetting sin,” and until the age of nineteen fought against it as few others have struggled to be freed from lustful desires. A popular medical writer has described the girl-boy as “congenitally depraved,” and “secretly vicious.” I would refute this and other slanderers of the girl-boy, cursed by Nature and cursed by his fellow man. Lofty ethical ideals, including self-abnegation, are as common among youthful inverts as among those normally sexed.
From my fourteenth to my seventeenth year, I passed a rather sad and lonely life. I was ashamed longer to mingle with girls as one of them, and still shrunk from companionship with boys. My recreation consisted of long solitary walks through the country during which I brooded over the real and imagined ills of life. Beingdelicate, I hardly expected to live to reach manhood.
My Gethsemane.
Erotic dreams, with emissions, began at the age of fifteen, and in a few months reached a frequency of twice a week. The fraudulent advertisements in the newspapers held out to me the strong probability of my soon becoming an idiot as a result of these losses, and occasioned me much despondency. Only males have figured in these dreams. They related only to fellatio, never to pædicatio.
It was during my seventeenth year that I first became fully conscious that my unwilling craving for fellatio was deeply rooted, and not to be outgrown; that my feeling for my schoolmates was the procreative instinct, in me misdirected. The realization that I was differently constituted from nearly all other males, and such an individual as during the whole history of the human race—so far as I was then acquainted with the history of the phenomenon—has been abhorred, reviled, and regarded as the lowest of the low, a monster of wickedness, and an outcast, was accompanied by the bitterest sorrow, causing me about once a week to go forth at night to a lonely quasi-abandoned graveyard, throw myself on the grass-covered graves, writhe in an agony of tears and moans, and beseech my Creator by a miracle then and there to take away my perverted instinct and make a virile man of me. These seasons of anguish would exhaust me mentally and physically for twenty-four hours afterward. This was the beginning of three such melancholy years as few are called to pass through, and I meditated suicide repeatedly.
Family Physician Prescribes.
For several months I bore my sorrow alone, shame preventing my making my spiritual adviser my confidant. I was at last driven to him for consolation, and on his advice, with the greatest shame and in broken language, made my secret known to my family physician. The latter advised me to enter into courtship with some girl acquaintance, and said that this would render me normal. Like most physicians in 1890, he did not understand the deepseated character of my perversion. Although it was counter to my inclinations, I cultivated the society of a girl friend. But after months of effort, feminine beauty proved powerless to attract me in the least, while male beauty was constantly increasing its sway over me.
In September of 1891 I entered a university in the City of New York, which was only an hour by train from my home. During the first two years I was regularly engaged in mission work in the slums as an avocation. I preached about twelve times from the pulpit, besides being the leader of about a hundred secondary church services.
Life in a great city soon made its impress on my constitutional femininity, which, for several years practically suppressed as a matter of conscience, was now calling louder and louder for expression. Moreover, in a great city, the temptation to a double life is exceptional. One can so easily hide a disgraceful act. It was especially unfortunate that I saw so much of the loose morals of the slums. The adolescents there attracted me powerfully, and suggestions came into my mind repeatedly toaccost them with an indecent purpose.
Year 1891—Freshman in University.
I was also constantly in love with athletic classmates. In the lecture rooms I found it advisable to take a front seat since the sight of an athlete would hypnotize me, making me stare at his form and disregard the lecturer. If one seated himself beside me, shameful thoughts would come into my mind at once. While seated in the lecture room, some of them have put their arms around me and said “Child.” They have taken my hand in theirs and said it was just like a girl’s hand. When my sleeves were rolled up they have said that my arms were just like a girl’s arms. Their laying their hands on me was ineffably sweet, and always occasioned an orgasm, but modesty forbade betraying my feminine feelings. None ever even hinted at anything further than what I have just narrated.
On my visits home during this first year in college, I was supersensitive to my family’s criticism of me for lack of manliness. I sometimes felt like never visiting home again because of my shame at being an effeminate man. I shunned all social gatherings because I detested the idea of courting a female and putting myself forward as a man. I would nevertheless weep at seeing other young people enjoying the ordinary legitimate pleasures of love without my ever—as I then thought—being privileged to have a share in them, since love and courtship in my case must be with one of my own physical sex. I often wished I might get away from the world and live as a monk or, better in my own case, a hermit. Then I would be in a way unsexed, and would be so regarded by theworld. As to be a monk one must be a Roman Catholic, I contemplated going over to that religious body.
Religion Unavailing.
One day I happened to be left alone in the room of an athletic classmate. I spent the whole time in passionately kissing his pillow and articles of clothing. Especially did corduroy braccas feel most exquisite labris as I osculated partem prope locum membri virilis. If he had not been fair to look upon and decidedly virile, it would have been nauseating even tothinkof doing what I did.
Afterward, repentant, I wrote in my journal: “Religion, reputation, life itself, ready to put all at stake for a few moments enjoyment! I never felt so much like a wretch as I do now! If only I had thought more of the love of Christ to me, I might not have so far yielded! For a month nearly all my reading has been of a religious character; I have for a month been in close communion with God; yet in a moment I can so fall away! O to understand more fully salvation from sin through Christ, and to experience more of it in my own life!... I feel this morning that I can never enter the ministry. I feel that I must give up all my plans, and that maybe I shall come to a miserable end.”
All my life corduroy trousers and rubber boots have attracted me sexually more than any other articles of civilian dress. I have always considered both articles too masculine for me to wear. It would have filled me with shame to be seen wearing boots. At the age of ten I would go secretly to the closet where a brother’s corduroy braccas hung and do as described above. On other occasions prior to my fifteenth year I have arisen at nightand similarly osculated braccas puerorum who were our guests, creeping stealthily into their rooms in a highly excited state and trembling violently. On only two occasions I approached their bed and touched them, but did not dare go further for fear they would awake. I have no doubt now that I was irresponsible, and any girl-boys ever found guilty of similar conduct should be dealt with compassionately.
Fetishes.
Speaking of fetishes,—from boyhood the military uniform has been a magnet. During my twenties the sight of it would bring on a sort of babyish and effeminate dance of various members of the body and a sort of pouting. It would rivet my gaze, I would halt and turn around as the soldier passed, and mark his every movement until he disappeared. I would consider his gait and his every sway and swagger as marvellously manly and in every way wonderful.
Of those under thirty years of age, nineteen out of twenty soldiers or sailors in uniform have captivated me, but hardly one out of twenty civilians. But I generally had to get used to the uniform. When the olive drab was first adopted for American soldiers, I had only disgust for it and its wearer, while fascinated by the older blue uniform. But after the olive drab had been worn for two years, it appealed to me far more strongly than what I now regarded as the “old-fashioned” blue, though the latter was still often worn by soldiers.
The following was written in my diary about the middle of my freshman year:
Dawning Sense of Irresponsibility.
“I sometimes think I am an irresponsible being. De Quincey is exonerated from censure for his opium habit. May God not also pardon my cherishing amorous thoughts of the kind peculiar to me—abnormal for others, yet for me normal? I am by nature very amorous, and have been all my life, even in infancy, when I could not distinguish between good and evil. Further, all my life I have been thrown in with what is to me the opposite sex—compelled to mingle and live with them. I had nothing to do with the bringing about of this peculiar nature and environment of mine. Has it been my fault that my amorous desires have run into the channel they have, the channel opened to them when I was in the state of innocence and ignorance of a three-year-old child? I am really a woman, and a very amorous one at that, although regarded as a man because the majority of my physical traits are those of the male sex. Did society ever compel any other woman, except those like me, to live, eat, sleep, frequent the same comfort-rooms and baths, lie sometimes in the same bed, with men, and sometimes to listen to the unclean talk of men? I am driven wild by instinctive cravings more than any other human being ever was....
“I wish I was not of an amorous nature. It makes my life miserable. If I had my choice, it would be a life entirely free from all sexual phenomena—complete sexual indifference. How gladly would I be free from all passion, so that I could make a name for myself in the world! My highest ideal is to be a Christian philosopher, and to preach the Gospel to those who are living in sinand sorrow. An amorous person can hardly be a philosopher, a scholar, and a preacher....”
Dawning Doubts as to Sinfulness.
Shortly afterward, in a letter to my family physician, I wrote as follows:
“I would like to know if you think there is any possibility of my ever following my instincts without sin? It is right for the normal individual to appease natural craving in wedlock. Is it not also right for me to do the same if the opportunity should offer? For instance, I will suppose an almost impossible case. If I should ever come across a young man whom I loved and who would marry me, would it be right for me to live with him as his wife? This supposition is probably highly repulsive to you, but absolutely, looking at it philosophically, it is no more unseemly and monstrous for me to be joined in wedlock with the man I would love above everything else in the world, than for a normal individual to enter into the state of matrimony.
“I long to be made the pet of my classmates. Would it be unbecoming to show my girlishness to them occasionally, and welcome and encourage their caresses which I sometimes receive? I still often pray God to deaden these desires to receive tokens of a reciprocated passion on the part of those whom I sexually worship, but I am beginning to add, ‘If it be Thy will;’ because maybe it is for my highest good and happiness to have these feelings toward my associates.
“I desire to know the mysteries of my peculiar life. It seems to me I have a right to know. I spent several days recently in ransacking the college library for the informationI desire, but found almost nothing. If the science of medicine knows anything about my peculiarity, I demand of you to know it.
First Knowledge of Other Adult Inverts.
“Lately from a conversation of some students that I heard, I chanced to learn more about my peculiar affliction than I ever knew before. I heard brief accounts of four persons cursed as I am, ‘With their procreative instincts centered in their heads instead of in the usual organs,’ as one of the students expressed it. These four victims were all intellectual men; one, a young clergyman; one, an elderly judge; and two, principals of schools. They were found out by their communities. The clergyman committed suicide, and the others had to flee from the stern hand of the law....
“You thus see that I may some day have to flee from the wrath of men by suicide, or by self-imposed exile in a distant land, where I doubt if I could stand the misery I would suffer, forever removed from all my dear ones, and worse than dead to them. No one would have any mercy on me, and my name would be held up as that of a consummate hypocrite and the most degraded of men. But more than anything I would suffer, I would bring my parents in sorrow to the grave.”
About this time I read the eminent theologian Lange’s comments on St. Paul’s teaching about marriage, and through these, as well as through my own deep reflections, I was becoming more than ever persuaded that since it was God who had planted these instincts in me at birth, they could not be so horribly sinful as I had been led tobelieve. Nevertheless I was not finally convinced. A month later I stayed up all of one night in order to reconsider the question, desiring and purposing to convince myself of the sinfulness of an invert’s harboring the suggestions of instinct to the slightest degree. I weighed carefully all the passages of sacred scripture bearing on the case, and finally determined to fight harder than ever to annihilate in myself all the movings of the sexual nature. In the following weeks, I occasionally did not leave my room all day, fasting, praying, and studying the scriptures.
Paroxysms of Melancholia.
During this winter of ’91–’92, paroxysms of melancholia occasionally came upon me at night. When I felt their approach, I could not stand it to remain in my room, where I must be noiseless, but went out to a deserted spot in a large park near which I lived, where I would shriek repeatedly. All my muscles seemed to be rigid, and my fists were clinched. I would dig my finger nails into my palms, and wave my arms wildly. Within a few minutes, my strength would be completely gone. I looked upon these paroxysms as fits of insanity, and feared I would become permanently and violently insane. I now attribute these attacks largely to unsatisfied, involuntary yearnings for the mate which Nature had designed me to have. If society had permitted me one, and I had been taught that it was right for me to have one, I would have been saved an enormous amount of suffering, as well as perhaps my subsequent career as a fairie.
About the middle of April came a characteristic experienceof an invert’s life. Shortly before my usual hour of retiring, an old schoolmate, a stalwart and handsome youth, who had spent the day in the city, called and asked to remain over night. I experienced a shock, knowing the temptation such an arrangement would be to me. For several weeks I had been living a life almost free from amorous thoughts, due to the lengthened seasons of religious exercises spoken of above.
Typical Temptation of Inverts.
Out of considerations of hospitality, I could not but grant my friend’s request. How could I bring myself to explain to him that I was essentially a girl, and so our spending a night in the same room was not to be thought of? I inquired if there was not a vacant room in the house, but that night there was none. Of course I could have given up my room and gone to a hotel, but I had to be saving, and such a course would humiliate my friend. So I arranged for him to occupy my bed, and for myself to sleep on the floor. Sleeping alone on the floor, I felt strong enough to resist, as I had done before when forced to sleep in the same room with a youth to whom I was attracted, and I would have probably resisted on the present occasion if it had not been for an unusual and unforeseen incident which inflamed me as never before.
My guest was moderately addicted to sensuality. As we were about to retire, he handed me, without evil intentions, a libidinous rhyme to read, the first I had ever seen. I became intoxicated, and my companion happening to absent himself from the room for a few moments, I passionately osculated the paper the rhyme was writtenupon. My fleshly nature immediately determined to have its desire that night, but my spiritual nature counselled otherwise. It was to be a struggle of hours. “Self-praise goes but little ways,” but I believe that there are comparatively few of the human race who, with a nature peculiarly susceptible to sensuality, as mine was, would have resisted as long as I did the force of so many evil suggestions.
The Spiritual versus the Carnal.
After retiring, the young man soon slept. But I was unable to sleep, no matter how hard I tried. My mind was unusually active. I continually prayed that sleep might come and save me from yielding, because I felt that my own poor will could not resist the long pent-up force of passion. Notwithstanding all my prayers, nothing was further from me that night than sleep.
It was a night following a Sabbath spent in communion with God, and with a strong determination to live a life of self-abnegation for the sake of others. But through the long hours of wakefulness, the influence of the sexual nature grew stronger and stronger. For hours I vacillated between cherishing the suggestions of the spiritual nature and those of the flesh. My chief defence against the latter was the thought that if I yielded this once, I must from now on give up all idea of ever becoming a preacher of the Gospel.
Moreover, the young man knew I was engaged in religious work, and expected to enter the ministry, and what would he henceforth think of the genuineness and utility of religion? If it had not been for my occupying an active position in religious work and my looking forwardto entering the Christian ministry, I would have yielded much sooner on the present occasion, as well as indulged my instincts much earlier in my career.
First Full Knowledge.
As I grew more and more weary mentally and physically, I naturally grew weaker and weaker in will power. The seducer of souls finally conquered. I suddenly found myself lying on the foot of my guest’s bed. The transition seemed to have taken place in a moment of unconsciousness. Being exhausted, I had probably dozed off for a moment, walked there in my sleep, and again fully waked up as I laid myself on the bed. As the Ruth of the scriptures—but I wish to emphasize it, without premeditation and unconsciously—I had come softly, uncovered the young man’s feet, and lain down. Before long he awoke, and heartily acquiesced in my desires. For fellatio, I at the moment felt ready to forsake all plans for leading a useful and respected life—for I thought it meant that.
The next morning I was ashamed to look my guest in the face, and stammered forth an apology. I was really irresponsible for my conduct, but at the time believed I had wilfully sinned, and when the time of temptation was past, sincerely repented. In my diary I wrote:
“What harm may I not have brought on Christ’s cause by my recent action! I may have endangered the eternal welfare of my friend. I suppose he thinks I am a nice one to be thinking of becoming a minister of the Gospel. I feel ashamed to make any further profession of religion before him. O to be holy and pure! I think I am holyenough to be a clergyman if it were not for my sins arising from my abnormal passion....
Utmost Recourse to Religion.
“Miserable wretch, miserable wretch, miserable wretch, that’s all I am! I am ashamed to look any one in the face any more. I feel very much like putting an end to my life, or else going off to some place where none of my friends will know I am. I wish this morning to die speedily, to be killed in an accident on the street. I would like just now to lay down my life for others. I have nothing to live for. I am one of the unhappiest of mortals. I may be disgraced, disgrace my family, bring reproach upon the cause of Christ, be compelled to flee, be disowned by my parents, be cursed and be despised throughout the land. I will flog myself and starve myself, to see if I cannot conquer my body.
“Because of my many failures to follow Christ perfectly in the past, and because something out of the ordinary is necessary to root out my procreative instincts, I now vow before God to imitate the example of Christ, who spent much time alone in meditation and prayer, and to spend hereafter one hour every morning and one hour every evening in the study of God’s word, in meditation, and in prayer.”
For some weeks I fulfilled this vow. But my seasons of devotion gradually became less and less edifying, and at last I reached the point where the spirit of prayer—that is, of conversation and communion with the Great Omnipresent Spirit—left me entirely, and the words of sacred scripture, formerly falling upon my eyes and mind with a strange power and revealing to me, and enablingme to live, the larger, heavenly, eternal life, where sensuality has disappeared, were now read mechanically and failed to impress me except as being tedious.