Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/175

. This affair I have always regarded as the turning point (though if I could have turned in the other direction at all, I doubt) that made me homosexual forever. With my friend I continued "relations", meeting him at least once a fortnight, for a full year, without any damage to my health. I loved him intensely. He was an "active" type, and I was at that time passive; for matter of that am still quite such. Nobody ever suspected us, even after my family had noticed that I knew the young man well … When I was nearly sixteen, after several other episodes, I fell into a violent sexual passion for a young sea-captain that used to visit some neighbours, when on his leave. This sentiment did me real mischief for a year. It was not suspected by its object, nor could it have been in the least relished by him …, I will add that the physical type I have defined always has remained "the" one most appealing to me … At twenty, when I was at X— University, I had an awkward experience by being sexually attractive to a pretty young married woman, the relative of a friend. She once lost control of herself, enough vainly to attempt my seduction, But I had by this time a complete hatred of the idea of having to do with any woman in that way. I was engaged in regular sexual intimacy with a college-mate, and also with a young coachman, employed in a family some miles distant … I had never been able to think of a woman as a sexual partner, except with a vague dread. But at this time I did not realize that such a feeling of horror would be an obstacle to my marrying, a plan that I did not give up till some years later; at least not completely and knowing why … I have not mentioned that in school 1 used to fall into queer "states" of what I think now was a sort of premature sexualism, when I was reading of the manly beauty of warriors, or when close male friendships were talked about, or if I read a book that turned on such a relation. I have mentioned my affair with my young Jewish friend as my first really