in love for me--to call me by endearing pet names--of his own
accord to throw his arms around my neck. This second actual boy
disappeared from my horizon by presumably moving away from the
vast city neighborhood. I took a fancy to a small boy at school,
who possessed the requisite delicacy, timidity, and sweetness, if
not the physical requisites, of my beau ideal. I walked with him
in the park and planned to have him at the house; but the matter
was not arranged. At boarding-school I had associated much with
younger and weaker boys, and had been ridiculed much for my
cowardice in sports, but at the city school I moved with my
equals and won their recognition. Our gymnasium director was
middle-aged and of an indolent disposition. He liked to recall
his youthful erections and to answer my sexual queries too fully,
and cheerfully volunteered information on brothels. Yet I doubt
whether he had an evil purpose in conversing with me. I thought I
should never dare or want to enter one. I always conjured up the
picture of a row of naked women from whom I could take my pick,
and the smell of the women I imagined to be identical with the
smell of my big friend A. at boarding-school. When I was
traveling down town on an elevated train one afternoon the
brakeman asked me whether I had ever been in a brothel, and told
me that disorderly houses abounded in my neighborhood. "I have
had connection with women," said this red-haired young man,
waving his hand in greeting to a woman who nodded at him from a
window, "since I was 15 years old. Not long ago a fine-looking,
young woman in black offered to pay all my expenses if I would
live with her and connect with her."

When a girl of perhaps 7, a distant cousin of mine, visited us
for a few days, I gratified my lust by placing my hand under her
genitals and swinging her to and fro. She giggled with pleasure.
That summer I began to experience the evil effects of the
masturbation which I had practiced daily for a year and a half.
Pimples began to break out on my chin (my complexion up to this
time had been white and delicate). The family ascribed my
condition to digestive difficulties. In playing with the boys and
girls I found myself seized with a terrible shyness and a
tendency to look down and weep. I had lost all the courage I
had--it had n