“By this time I must have been 8 years old.  The cold and secret relationship of which I have given an account had continued without instructing me in any of the ardent possibilities it might have suggested; no force or cruelty was used upon me, no warmth was lavished.  It made little difference that my companion had now discovered the act of masturbation; it had no meaning to me, since it led to no warmth of embrace.  His method was to avert himself from me; I had to fawn upon him from the rear and also to invent indecent stories to stimulate his imagination.  I felt myself a despised instrument, the mere spectator of an act which, if directed toward me with any warmth, would have aroused the liveliest appetite.  At this time, as I have since seen, my companion was gaining knowledge from the ancient classics.  For a time some charm was imparted by his instructing me to adopt a superincumbent face-to-face embrace.  The beginning of his puberty was enormously attractive to me; had he been less cold-blooded I could have responded passionately to his endearments; but he always insisted on rigorous passivity on my part, and he explained nothing.  One day, by a small gratuity, he induced me to offer him my mouth, though I still had no comprehension of the result I was helping to attain.  Once the orgasm occurred, and the effect was extremely nauseous; after that he was more careful.  My companion was approaching manhood, and his demands became more frequent, his exactions more humiliating.

“At the same time my passion for male love was growing stronger.  I was able to construct from the unsatisfactory bondage in which I was held images of bodily embrace which I had not before had sufficient sense of human contact to form, though I seldom imagined any of the acts that in actual experience repulsed me.  One day, however, I shirked a particularly repulsive humiliation which my companion had forced upon me.  He discovered the deception, rose from the prone position in which he lay, and throwing me across his knees thrashed me violently.  I submitted without a struggle, experiencing a curious sensation of pleasure in the midst of my pain.  When he repeated his order I found its accomplishment no longer repulsive.  One of the few pleasurable memories this intimacy, extending over years, has left for me is that moment of abject abasement to one who, with no warmth of feeling, had yet once had sufficient energy to be brutal to me.

“It must have been from this incident that the calculated effect of flagellation began to have weight with me when I indulged my imagination.  A wish to be repulsed, trampled, violated by the object of my passion took hold of my instincts.  Even then—­and, indeed, up to my 13th year—­I had no idea of normal sexual connection.  I knew vaguely that children were born from women’s bodies; I did not know—­and when told I did not believe—­the true facts of the marital relationship.  All that I had experienced—­both