Because of my exhausted condition, I remained seated for several minutes. In the meantime, two of my assailants had followed me up, and expressed their regret that one of their number had stolen my cap and coat, promising to get them back, and assuring me of their friendly feelings. “You are only a baby,” they said, “and so we will fight for you and protect you.”
I was so touched by their gallantry, so enamoured of them, and so sure that the assault was not committed through malevolence, that I accompanied them back to our first meeting place on the warehouse steps. I still had great fear of violence at their hands—rape, not a beating—but I was powerfully drawn toward them. Fellatio was welcome; pædicatio, horrible to my moral sense, and physically, accompanied by excruciating pain. The “gang” received me kindly, petted and soothed me as one would a peevish baby, which I resembled in my actions, fretting and sobbing in happiness as I rested my head against their bodies. To lie in the bosom of these sturdy young manual laborers, all of whom were good-looking and approximately my own age, was the highest earthly happiness I had yet tasted. With all my money gone, and cap and coat stolen besides, I finally had to walk home, a distance of several miles. Obtaining my keys in their hiding place, I succeeded in reaching my room without attracting attention.
Psychical Infantilism.
The next day I wrote in my journal: “What a strange thing is life! Mephistopheles last night carried me through one of the experiences through which he carried Faust.... My carnal nature was aroused as never before. I groaned in despair. Never before in all my experience have I seen such a conflict between the flesh and the spirit.... How like an animal is man! Thus God has seen fit to make him.”
A few days later I again wrote: “My present psychical state is most strange. I cannot yet repent of my conduct last Friday night, yet on the Sunday following I had one of the happiest experiences of nearness to God that I ever had. That afternoon I presented the Gospel in love for my Savior and for perishing souls. I have in my heart an intense desire to save from their lives of sin those in whose company I was Friday night, especially my Bill, so young, and yet so deep in sin. I want to rescue him, and make of him a strong educated champion for Christ. My heart yearns to carry blessings and peace to all those who are suffering in the slums of New York.”
In a letter received shortly afterward from a venerable doctor of divinity and former pastor, whom for years I made my confidant, he expressed his judgment of my conduct as follows: “I believe God will overlook in you what He would not in others.”
Verdicts of Pastor and Alienist.
The judgment of the alienist, to whom also I confided the occurrences, was approximately as follows: “It was a physical impossibility for you to have withstood longer. The only thing for you to do is to follow out your instincts in moderation. If you do not, you will continue to be a nervous wreck, and may even become insane. The majority of men can live celibate lives without suffering in mind or body, but you are extraordinarily amorous, and celibacy with you is out of the question. Only don’t go into the slums any more. Confide in some stalwart young man of your own class. You run great risk of being killed, or at least contracting disease, in running around after strangers in the slums.”
On now making my decision henceforth to follow Nature’s behests, I gave up the city mission work I was engaged in, and also finally gave up my purpose of entering the Christian ministry. The presentation of religious truths spoken of above, on the Sunday following my third nocturnal ramble, was unavoidable, unless I wished to disappoint others by failing to keep an engagement. I gave up religious work, not because of lack of religious faith, but because I felt myself unworthy and unfit by reason of my recent change in habits, and because I might bring reproach on the Church.
I could not bring myself to follow the physician’s advice to confide in a stalwart young man of my own class. I felt too much ashamed of my abnormality. So I formed the habit of visiting my Mulberry Street friends once a week, the visits continuing altogether for about a year. I preferred the society of these adolescent roughs to that of all other human beings, and woe to the friend of my ordinary circle who should hinder or delay me on the evenings on which I had planned a visit to Mulberry Street! If necessary to get rid of him, I would even insult any friend who happened to call at this inopportune time. At first exceedingly nervous for fear something would interfere with my setting out, I became, when safe from interruption after I had boarded the elevated train, blissfully intoxicated at the thought of meeting my beaux again.