thoughtful as he. I simply wearied of lying in the dark, vainly clasping insensitive pseudo-Priapus; I despaired of ever understanding that petty morality, or ever discovering just what would undo and overcome that giant concupiscence. Therefore I would turn on the light again, and by some calculated caress keep him from speaking. Then I would see a sort of apathy, an expression of boredom and disinclination, gradually accumulate in his face, tight-mouthed, dead-eyed. Oh, that eye of his, retrospective even upon the present object, like the eye of a sea gull! If he noticed my observation of him, instantly he would respond with his little Etruscan grin, lips up, eyes up; and the impression that made was of entire insincerity, I think he must have sensed it; for he would kiss me with a fiercer approximation of appetite, or give me a special series of rapid and muscular hugs.
It was bound to be difficult, having to do with a physique such as that: a thing rather symbolic of sex in the abstract than apt to do the actual work of intercourse in any way that I know of. At a glance I could guess how long it would take, how lethargically, callously, it would function: which did not dismay me. What dismayed me little by little was to learn that it was very sensitive as well, more troubled than troublesome—like the sex of some shy wild animal, in incalculable kind of rut one minute, and a strange state of arbitrary chastity the next minute; or like the sex of a great will-o-the-wisp, shrinking away in the darkness. The abnormality, the practical or mechanical trouble, was bad enough; but it was the inability to concentrate, the subnormality of emotional temperature, which made it impossible. No matter, I said to myself; no doubt love or even lust would find a way in time; practice makes perfect …
But a certain uncomfortableness of spirit, obscurity of point of view, is likely to keep one from falling in love, and virtually discourage even the lesser or lower forms of desirous imagining; the spirit is prevented from going to work with any ardor to solve the problems of the body. In the case of male in love with male, this is serious, because homosexuality is somewhat a psychic anomaly, not exactly equipped with mechanism of flesh. At least at the start of such a relationship one must fumble and feel one’s way amid a dozen improvised, approximative, substitutive practices. From start to finish many men find this a terrible disadvantage, a continuous punishment: the worry of what to do and what not to do, and why not and what next and what else; and the dread of the other’s modesty or immodesty or other inexpressible sentiment; and the chill of sense of responsibility, the grievous anxiety of perhaps failing to do for the other what he needs to have done, even amid the fever and rejoicing of one’s own success, at the last minute. In bed with such a fellow as my poor Priapus you would have to be phenomenally unkind or perverse not to suffer from this.
That fantastic plaything might have meant nothing to me at all; it was in fact almost good for nothing; it would have seemed only a fearful, comical, mythological, theoretical thing—unless I had been able to command myself to care about it extremely, unless I had deliberately yielded to a kind of drunkenness of caring: wild exercise of the sense of touch, and spurring on of every other nerve from head to foot around it, and intentional blindness to all else, and conscious fetishism, and so on. I may say that I was quite successful in the management of myself in this respect. With a great store of sexual energy saved up in melancholy and inaction, I did care; I was drunken. But the more successful my excitement, naturally the more difficult it was to control myself, to bide my time, to keep from spending. I could continue with enthusiasm and without crisis for one hour, let us say, not for two; or perhaps for two hours, but not three. And whenever I made any special impatient
It was bound to be difficult, having to do with a physique such as that: a thing rather symbolic of sex in the abstract than apt to do the actual work of intercourse in any way that I know of. At a glance I could guess how long it would take, how lethargically, callously, it would function: which did not dismay me. What dismayed me little by little was to learn that it was very sensitive as well, more troubled than troublesome—like the sex of some shy wild animal, in incalculable kind of rut one minute, and a strange state of arbitrary chastity the next minute; or like the sex of a great will-o-the-wisp, shrinking away in the darkness. The abnormality, the practical or mechanical trouble, was bad enough; but it was the inability to concentrate, the subnormality of emotional temperature, which made it impossible. No matter, I said to myself; no doubt love or even lust would find a way in time; practice makes perfect …
But a certain uncomfortableness of spirit, obscurity of point of view, is likely to keep one from falling in love, and virtually discourage even the lesser or lower forms of desirous imagining; the spirit is prevented from going to work with any ardor to solve the problems of the body. In the case of male in love with male, this is serious, because homosexuality is somewhat a psychic anomaly, not exactly equipped with mechanism of flesh. At least at the start of such a relationship one must fumble and feel one’s way amid a dozen improvised, approximative, substitutive practices. From start to finish many men find this a terrible disadvantage, a continuous punishment: the worry of what to do and what not to do, and why not and what next and what else; and the dread of the other’s modesty or immodesty or other inexpressible sentiment; and the chill of sense of responsibility, the grievous anxiety of perhaps failing to do for the other what he needs to have done, even amid the fever and rejoicing of one’s own success, at the last minute. In bed with such a fellow as my poor Priapus you would have to be phenomenally unkind or perverse not to suffer from this.
That fantastic plaything might have meant nothing to me at all; it was in fact almost good for nothing; it would have seemed only a fearful, comical, mythological, theoretical thing—unless I had been able to command myself to care about it extremely, unless I had deliberately yielded to a kind of drunkenness of caring: wild exercise of the sense of touch, and spurring on of every other nerve from head to foot around it, and intentional blindness to all else, and conscious fetishism, and so on. I may say that I was quite successful in the management of myself in this respect. With a great store of sexual energy saved up in melancholy and inaction, I did care; I was drunken. But the more successful my excitement, naturally the more difficult it was to control myself, to bide my time, to keep from spending. I could continue with enthusiasm and without crisis for one hour, let us say, not for two; or perhaps for two hours, but not three. And whenever I made any special impatient
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