The following two years were decidedly unpleasant. I was growing rapidly and was sluggish, awkward and stupid. At school I was more unpopular than ever and seemed to have a positive genius for doing the wrong thing. On the rare occasions when my companions admitted me to their counsels I was a willing dupe and catspaw, with the result that I was much in trouble with my teachers. Being morbidly sensitive I suffered keenly under these circumstances and, as my health was not at all good, I often made of my frequent headaches excuses to stay at home, where I would lie abed brooding over my small troubles or, more often, dreaming erotic day-dreams and making repeated attempts to produce an orgasm. But though these efforts were accompanied by the most lustful thoughts and my imagination created situations of oriental extravagance, I was 13 years old when they first met with success. I remember the occasion very distinctly, the more so because I thought of it much and bitterly when shortly afterwards I tried to abandon a habit which the family "doctor book" assured me must result in every variety of damnation. At the moment, however, I was greatly surprised and gratified and tried at once to repeat the delightful sensation, but was unable to do so until the following day. From that time to the present I think I have masturbated an average of ten times per week, and this is certainly a very conservative estimate; for though up to my sixteenth year I could seldom produce an orgasm more than once a day I have often, during the last four or five years, produced it from four to seven times per day without difficulty and this for days and even weeks in succession. During these periods of excessive masturbation very little liquid was ejaculated and the pleasurable sensations were slight or entirely lacking. From the time when I began masturbating regularly practically my whole interest centered in things pertaining to sex. I read the chapters of the family "doctor book" which treated of sexual matters; my day-dreams were almost exclusively erotic; I sought opportunities to talk about sex-relationships with my schoolmates, with whom I was now slowly getting on better terms; I collected pictures of nude women, learned a great number of obscene stories, read such obscene books as I could obtain and even searched the dictionary for words having a sexual connotation. Up to my fifteenth year, when ejaculation of semen began, there was a strong sadistic coloring to my day-dreams. Through this period, too, my bashfulness in the presence of the opposite sex increased until it reached the point of absurdity.