Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/281

Rh Weak, unattractive men or boys made no impression on me. At thirteen I began to masturbate. From my thirteenth till my fifteenth year, I slept with a handsome young man. That was happiness. Hours at a time at night, with erections, I would wait for his return. If in bed he chanced to touch my genitals, it gave me delight. At fourteen I had a school-mate whose instincts were like my own. For hours at a time, during school-hours, we held each other’s genitals. Ah, those were happy hours! As often as I could, I lingered in bath-houses. That was always a feast for me. The sight of male genitals induced violent erections. At sixteen I came to the metropolis. Seeing so many handsome men charmed me. In my eighteenth year I attempted coitus with a prostitute, but disgust and fear made it impossible. Other attempts were failures, until my nineteenth year, when I tried again with success; but the act afforded me no pleasure, rather inducing a feeling of disgust. I conquered myself, and was proud of my success at being a man, which I had gradually begun to doubt.

“Subsequent attempts were no longer successful. The disgust was too great. When the woman was undressing, it became necessary, on account of my feeling of repugnance, to put out the light. I now considered myself impotent, consulted physicians, and visited baths and sanitariums to cure my supposed impotence; for I still did not know what to think of it. I took pleasure in the society of ladies, perhaps out of conceit; for I impressed most ladies as being sympathetic and amiable; but I valued in them nothing more than mental and esthetic qualities. I liked to dance with them; but if one pressed against me in dancing, I experienced a feeling of repugnance, and even disgust, and felt like striking her. If in joke I happened to dance with a gentleman, I always took the part of the lady. I would press and rub against him, and take a perfect delight in it. When I was eighteen, a gentleman who came into the office, said, ‘That is a fine youth; in the East he would bring a pound sterling every time!’ I puzzled my head over that. Another gentleman liked to joke with me, and steal kisses of me as he was going away, which I would have given him only too gladly. He afterward became my lover. These circumstances excited my attention, and I waited for an opportunity.

“When I was twenty-five years old, it happened that a man who was formerly a Capucine monk became attracted to me. For me he was like a Mephistopheles. Finally he spoke to me. To this day I can almost feel the beating of my heart that he caused me; I almost fainted. He made a rendezvous for that evening at a public house. I went, but at the threshold I turned back, afraid. On the next evening he met me again. He overcame my scruples, and took me to his room. I was scarcely able to walk for excitement. My seducer made me sit on his sofa, and, smiling at me, he fixed his wonderful black eyes on me, and I lost consciousness. This delight, this ideal, divine sense of pleasure that filled my