Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual InversionEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual Inversion
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
"I was strongly attracted when not more than 13 to a lad slightly
older. It was a love story, there is no doubt, but I do not
recollect any outer sexual signs. There were other passing cases,
but in no case was there any warm response till I was 15. I then
made friends with a lad of entirely different type from myself. I
was a reader. I liked long walks and fresh air, but I was too shy
to go in for sports. Indeed I was frightfully shy. He was a great
sportsman and always at home in society. But he asked me to help
him with some work, and we took to working together. I grew
passionately fond of him. His caresses always caused some
erection. Personally, I believe it would have been wiser to have
obtained complete sexual expression. The absence of knowledge led
to two distinctly undesirable results. The first was marked
congestion and pain at times; the second was a tendency to a sort
of modified masochism. There is always, I suppose, some erotic
attraction about the buttocks, and of course also, to boys, they
afford an irresistibly attractive mark for a good smack. I found
that when this lad spanked me it produced some amount of sexual
excitement, and the desire for this form of stimulus grew upon
me. The result, in my case, was bad. It was sensualism, not love.
I can say this with confidence, because in a much later case of
deeply passionate love, I shrank from any such method, but the
mutual, naked embrace I found was for me an absolutely natural
and _pure_ expression of love. I never felt any touch of
grossness in it, and it destroyed the earlier and (for me at
least) less wholesome desire.
"The school friendship disappeared with the marriage of my
friend. I was furiously jealous, and the young man's mother was
opposed to me, but I still think of that early friendship with
tenderness. I know that my boy friend was the first who made me
capable of self-expression, the first who taught me how to make
friends at all. And if he still cared for me, I know that his
love would be dear to me still.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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