Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/480

 für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen," for the year 1900, under the signature "Max Kalte"—a pseudonym. It shows the effects of a blackmailer's operations on a man of high education and excellent social position, but of timid temper—betrayed by sexual accident. After describing how he had been obliged to break off an intimacy with a friend of his own class and type, because the latter could not satisfy high psychic ideals, the history continues thus:

"… I was again orphaned. And yet, after all the deceptions which I had passed through, my heart demanded love ever more ardently, wished to be surrendered to some noble-minded human being, who would understand me—my psychical side as well as my intellectual aspirations. But before I found any such person, I had an experience worse than any one. before it. For—I fell into the hands of a blackmailer of a type that I had never known anything about, and who could hardly have been more abominable and dangerous than lie was."

"At a social gathering, in the organization which I have mentioned, one evening when a theatrical performance was given, I met a young assistant in a friseur's shop, with whom I arranged a "meeting" for the following day. I admit that it was not the right sort of thing to do. But what do the heterosexual men do? Do they not often make acquaintances with girls with whom they are willing to keep up very intimate relations without being willing to marry them? My inner self was solitary and lonely, and sought some mere substitute for the sort of love really longed-for … When next day we were together, I recognized by all the outward traits of my new companion that he was not suited for me. He was trivial and lacking in conscience, as was plain from what he himself told me of his former relations, with a tailor whom he had known. We talked of another meeting, but I wrote him and broke the appointment. Thereupon the young man tried to find out my name, condition in life, and place of residence, Which I had not given to him; a thing however he could easily do, by applying to the direction of the social club above mentioned. After that, he came to my rooms, in company with another young man whom he called his brother, but who was not so; and asked me to help him with money, as he had lost his employment. I replied that I could not do so. He answered that he did not intend to be put off in that sort of way: and made a reference to our previous rendezvous. Just at that moment my charwoman came into my room to put it in order,