During all this period, M. O. had now one girl sweetheart and now another. This was conventional among the children, and was fostered by the banter of older persons. M. O.'s sexual curiosity was certainly greater in regard to the opposite sex. At this time, however, his homosexual interests appeared. With a boy two or more years older he frequently went to some hiding-place where they looked at each other's organs and handled them. He and another boy were once in an abandoned garden, and they took off all their clothes, the better to examine each other. The other boy then offered to kiss M. O.'s fundament, and did so. It caused a surprisingly keen and distinctly sexual sensation, the first sexual shock that he can remember experiencing. He refused to reciprocate, however, when asked.
Toward the end of this period there was a new and increasing development of another sort, not recognized then as at all sexual in character. He began to feel toward certain boys in a way very different and much keener than he had done thus far toward girls, although at the time he made no comparisons. For instance there was a boy whom he considered very pretty. They visited each other often and spent long times playing together. In school they looked and looked at each other until delicious, uncontrollable giggling spells came on. Sexual matters were never discussed or thought of. These experiences were, in their way, very sentimental and ideal. M. O. is sure that with himself the main consideration was always the other boy's beauty. He began to recall with great fondness a certain much older and very handsome youth who had lived near him in the first neighborhood, and had at the time shown him, various little friendly attentions. He seldom saw him now, and hardly sought to do so, yet was immensely pleased by a casual word or look from him in the schoolyard, and much interested when other people spoke of him.
A cousin about two years younger than M. O. often visited him and slept with him. They were very fond of each other, and handled each other's organs.
When M. O. was about 11 years of age the family removed to a distant neighborhood, where there were almost no children of his own age, and where any association with those in the one just left was practically impossible. From this time until the changes of puberty were well under way his sexual life contrasted strongly, in its solitude, with the former promiscuity. He remembers liking to wrestle with two or three schoolboys and to get their heads between his legs. He thinks they were not aware of his sexual impulses. He flirted, consciously flirted, with certain school-girls, but never even suggested anything sexual to them. He read a few family medical books.
One day, lying on an old uneven couch, innocently enough at first, he induced a new and delicious sensation, altogether different from any he had ever dreamed of—something far beyond the satisfaction of mere curiosity. He repeated the thing and before long produced emissions. Masturbation soon followed. Certain days he would perform the act two or three times, but again he would avoid it for days. He began at once to fight the tendency, and felt very guilty and very ashamed for indulging it. He prayed for help and at times wept over his failures to break the habit so quickly formed. For a certain period, after two or three years, he seemed to have succeeded, but he observed that he had intense erotic dreams with copious emissions regularly every eight days. Just then certain newspaper advertisements fell under his eye, and these persuaded him that he had produced in himself a diseased condition. He never resorted to the remedies advertised, but he was discouraged in his efforts to overcome the bad habit; and since the evil effects appeared to consist only in the seminal losses, he concluded that he might as well have the greater enjoyment of masturbation.
For a short time, he remembers that he had an intense but revolting interest in the sexual organs of animals, especially horses. The males were much more interesting.
Gradually he began to develop, entirely from within, the ideal of a male comrade,—a beautiful, emotional boy between whom and himself there might exist a powerful romantic passion. He lay for hours dreaming of this, and inventing thrilling situations. Suddenly, at church, he became acquainted with the very youth, Edmund, who seemed to satisfy all his longings. M. O. was then 16½ and Edmund 15. A real wooing ensued, Edmund finally yielding to the physical appeals of M. O. after several fits of misgiving. The yielding was in the end complete, however. The two spent night after night together, enjoying intercrural intercourse and sometimes mutual masturbation. Their parents may have been slightly uneasy at times, but the connection continued uninterruptedly for a year and a half or more. In the meantime M. O. occasionally had relations with other boys, but never wavered in his real preference for Edmund. For girls he had no sexual desire whatever, though he was much associated with them.
Then M. O. and Edmund went to college at different places, but they met in vacations and wrote frequent and ardent love-letters. Both had genuine attacks of love-sickness and of jealousy. As M. O. looks back on this first love passion he can by no means regret it. It doubtless had great formative influence.
After the first year at college, Edmund transferred to another school farther away from M. O. and the opportunities for meeting became rarer, but their affection was maintained and the intercourse resumed whenever it was possible. Gradually, however, Edmund became interested in women and finally married. M. O. also formed relations repeatedly with college friends and occasionally with others.
On the whole M. O. preferred boys a year or two younger than himself, but as he grew older the age difference increased. At 30 he regarded himself as virtually "engaged" to a youth of 17, one unusually mature, however, and much larger than himself.