My Secret Life (26 page)

I tried to like, to love her. It was impossible. Hateful in day, she was loathsome to me in bed. Long I strove to do my duty, and be faithful, yet to such a pitch did my disgust at length go, that laying by her side, I had wet dreams nightly, sooner than relieve myself in her. I have frigged myself in the streets before entering my house, sooner than fuck her. I, loving women, and naturally kind and affectionate to them, ready to be kind and loving to her, was driven to avoid her as I would a corpse. I have followed a woman for miles with my prick stiff, yet went to my wretched home pure, because I had vowed to be chaste. My heart was burning to have an affectionate kiss, a voluptuous sigh from some woman, yet I avoided obtaining it. My health began to give way, sleepless nights, weary days, made me contemplate suicide. It seemed as if I never could have happiness again, yet my physical forces, or so much of them as lay in my generative organs, seemed unimpaired. I neither drank nor debauched, and my prick stood incessantly; neither random frigs nor night-dreams stopped it.

My only relief from misery was in thinking over the pleasures I had had, yet all seemed such a long time past, that it was like a dream. Then a desire to have other women became invincible. I had no means to get those I had been accustomed to, and seemed to have no idea of going economically to work for my pleasures, but at length began to walk through streets inhabited by very poor gay women, in a neighbourhood I had known in my early youth. Then I found out other poor quarters, and one night with but a few shillings in my pocket, after thinking of throwing myself into a canal, I found myself at a spot where women of a somewhat better class lived in its centre, and on its outskirts very poor harlots.

“I will, — have I the money? — can’t help it, — if one won’t another will,” and I slunk into a street, half ashamed of entering it. Saw girls standing at doors, never paused for selection, nor to see if one looked nicer than another, it was cunt I wanted. The moment I turned the comer of the street, I cared not who or what, as long as she had a petticoat, and what it hid from sight. I took the nearest.

“Will you let me have you for five shillings?” was all I uttered. I recollect it as well as possible, hanging my head, ashamed of my offer, and not looking at the girl, ashamed of being seen in the neighbourhood.

“All right,” said she, turning round. I followed her through the little narrow passage of a four-roomed house into a little room with a bed on one side of it. I looked at her, and she at me for an instant only. “Here are the five shillings,” said I. “Shall I undress?” “No.” “Shall we get on the bed?” “No, at the side,” — and whilst speaking I had half lifted her on to it. Laughing with a peculiar chuckle she fell back, pulling up her clothes. I saw plump thighs, dark hair, felt giddy, could not see, recollect opening the lips, and began to spend as the tip of my prick touched her cunt. Following the spunk as it shot up the passage as it opened its way with one thrust I was up her, and had finished. Fifty times in my life up to the time I pen this, has a similar rapid ejaculation occurred to me when randy.

“Didn’t you want it!” said she. They were the first words I recollect being uttered as I bent over her. How divine she seemed. “Let me do it again.” “Oh! You ought to give me a little more.” “I’ll give you a shilling, it’s all I have, I fear; but more if I have it.” “Very well then,” said a soft voice. Oh! What a heavenly few minutes they seemed to me, — they still seem to me, — as I fucked her again. First and second fuck must have been all over in five minutes. I had not uncunted.

“Pull it out,” said she, after an interval, my cock still keeping in her; but I kept close to her, and up her. “Be still dear, do, pray,
—
I’ll see what money I have.” My hat and my great-coat were on, it was cold, I had only unbuttoned my trowsers enough to get out my prick. Keeping still up her, I thrust my hand into my trowsers pocket, pulled out all the money I had, and put it on the bed beside her. “See, it is all I have, every farthing, a little more than I said, — let me do it again, — there is more than seven shillings,” — and pressing well on to her haunches, I began wriggling my prick.

She turned her head, looked at the money, but did not touch it. “Very well,” said she, in a low voice, “but take it out, — don’t make my chemise in a mess, I have not another clean, — don’t make a mess on the bed if you can help it.” “I shan’t.” “Yes you will, you have spent such a lot, it’s running out now.”

I withdrew. She took a towel which was close at hand, wiped her cunt, and spread another for her bum. I threw off hat and coat. Soon now we were both on the bed, I up her, and leaning on my elbow, for the first time really looked at her. Up to that moment cunt, cunt, nothing but cunt was in my mind. Now I saw that her eyes were blueish, her hair dark and wavy, I recollect our staring in each other’s faces for a minute or two without speaking. A candle on a little table close to the bed showed a strong light on us sideways; then we both fucked with vigor, and Mary Davis spent with me, — she spent with me, that poor little gay woman.

“You are a nice poke,” said the girl. I got off the bed, sat on a chair by the fire, and looked at the merry face of the little gay woman as she smiled at me whilst washing her quim. The pleasure I had just had, the entrancement of the carnal pleasure contrasted so strongly with my misery at home, that I burst into tears, and sobbed like a child. She rubbed her quim dry, then silently came up to me, put her hand on my shoulder, and stood without uttering a word till my passion was over. “Are you unhappy?” said she in a gentle tone. Yes I was. “Never mind, I dare say it will be over some day, — we have all got unhappinesses.”

Having broken my virtuous resolution, I never regained it, and for a week fucked Mary from six in the evening till two the next morning. My week’s amusement cost me about two pounds, but then that modest sum was too much for my pocket, so I left off for a while, and gave Mary a chance of keeping her other friends. They were mostly poor clerks, she told me, and married men better off, who gave her a pound, or at times paid her rent if in arrear. She paid I think but twenty-five shillings a week for her board and lodging together. My too exclusive attentions for a week had prevented her regulars from coming. There was lots of cheaper cunt in the neighbourhood so to send them away with full balls was dangerous.

The house was kept by an old man and woman, he a carpenter almost too old, yet who went to daily work. He used to fetch gin and beer for us. There was no other lodger in the house. They were a decent couple, and after a time I used to talk to the old woman, and when Mary once went away ill, she got me a beautifully shaped girl. I had offered her money to get me a girl of about fourteen years of age, a virgin. The streets about there swarmed with girls and boys who played about at night, I could hear their smutty language as they ran after each other yelling, laughing and quarrelling. She tried, but never could; she was not a woman who undertook that sort of thing, but the money tempted her. “There are lots of girls about,” said she, “their mothers don’t care what they do, but you want a virgin, — Lor! Where’s she to be found? — when they’s about thirteen or fourteen years old they won’t be kept in, they is about the dark streets at night and Lor! If you heard what I have in the streets where the costers’ barrows is, of a night!” And so the old woman intimated that all the young girls of that select neighbourhood, were got into by the coster boys, and that a virginity was a rarity at fourteen years old. I afterwards groped several young girls in those dark streets, and there was certainly no obstacle to my fingers searching their cunts.

Lots of children were about, who played in the streets at day, but disappeared if quite young towards dusk. If a man stopped and talked to a gay woman at the door, the children of the house usually went in, always did if more than about ten years old. They drew back as if they knew that a bargain for fucking was to be struck, and I believe knew all about it. They were mostly girls who sleeping in the same room with their parents, I dare say had seen the game of mother and father played often enough. The bigger girls frisked about the streets of an evening with boys of the same age, or not much older.

If a woman could get you to enter the passage, she almost pulled you into her room. “Come in, — don’t stand there, — come out of the way of the lodgers, — I’ll tell you if you come in, — well, make it half-a-crown, — I’ve got such a nice cunt, — such a fat arse, — feel my bubbies, — look here, — come in, and let me feel your prick.”

My experience with this poor class of women was soon considerable. Satiated, sick of them, yet I continued to frequent them for the simple carnal pleasure of coition. There was no sentiment about it, no liking for the women, for though their manners sometimes amused me, they more frequently shocked me, and the poverty of some distressed me; but I had no money for choicer entertainment. My vigor was great, my pleasure in copulation almost maddening, a cunt was a cunt, and I got my pleasure and relief up it, whatever its owner might have been. A sensuous imagination aided me. When once my prick was up a woman she was for the time more or less invested with charms, and her imperfections forgotten. I used to shut my eyes, and fancy I was stroking a houri with the finest limbs and ivory flesh, and could fancy all this up to the moment of ejaculation, the woman I was enjoying was then to me some one I had had before and elsewhere, and I fancied thighs and cunt which were not those of the woman who was at that moment doing her best to please me.

There were occasions when the women when naked revolted me, my prick refused to stand, and I departed without copulating, but those occasions with this class of women are not worth noting. I have been subject to this sudden revolt and prostration, sometimes even when the woman was most beautiful. Nervousness, fear, some sudden dislike, and even most ridiculous reasons have caused it.

I should have mentioned that gradually it had taken hold of my mind that my prick was a very small one. How this notion first arose I cannot quite trace, I certainly had it in a degree when a youth, and it became stronger owing to the remarks of some French women. The men I saw fucking at Camille’s had very large pricks, and no doubt they were selected on that account for exhibition; but I did not know that then, and used mentally to compare mine with theirs, and also with those of some of my former schoolfellows, and to my disadvantage.

With many harlots of both high and low class I had talked about size; each told me of men who had big pricks, rarely of those who had small ones. Experience has since taught me that harlots like talking about big pricks, for size affects their imagination agreeably. Of ridiculously small ones they make mention for a laugh, the average sizes pass without their notice. I used to ask them how mine compared with the big ones they spoke of, and got at last into my head the erroneous opinion about my own machine. At times I would produce it with an apologetic remark. “My prick’s not a very big one, is it?” — and was much pleased when the woman’s reply was complimentary. I know now from the inspection of many men’s, that mine compares very favourably with the average, and is larger than most; but for many years I was of a very different opinion, and at times was almost ashamed of my prick, so much so that when a woman said it was as large as most, and many said that, I did not believe them, still less did I believe them when they said it was a handsome prick; then I thought they were humbugging me.

Now as I add these few words written years after the foregoing, and after having seen some dozens of pricks, both languid and erect, I know what they said was true, and I know that there is a size, a form, a curve, and a colour in pricks which makes some handsomer than others, just as undoubtedly there are ugly and handsome cunts.

These are the most noticeable events which occurred during the period of my narrowest means. In that time I must have seen the privates of fifty women, and copulated with nearly that number. Had it not been for their pleasures, coarse as they were, I think I should have made away with myself, so miserable was I. How I accommodated myself to the class I can’t imagine; for although a few were nice, prettyish, healthy women, the majority were low coarse creatures, living in poor single rooms which were often not clean; but both rooms and women were as good as could be expected for the few shillings I gave for their pleasures.

Up to this period I had tailed a neighbourhood of free cunts, as far as trifling sums would get them to me. A shilling a feel, or a look at the nudity, and for half-a-crown to five shillings at the outside for complete enjoyment was a tariff generally accepted.

Then a remnant of my former fortune which had been in litigation was settled in my favour, and I had a little ready money. Immediately I left off frequenting the poor Doxies of whom I have told, and went to a higher class, in a better neighbourhood. My money was soon gone, for I had debts among other things to settle out of it. Whilst it lasted I had some very nice women, among whom I shall always recollect a tall, superbly shaped creole, with dazzling white teeth (a feature in women which always has had a great attraction for me), and who was one of the most voluptuous women in her embraces I ever yet have had; but she was plain almost to ugliness. In the rest of my amours there was nothing to need special notice, they were all fugitive, and the women were changed frequently.

It is difficult to narrate more without divulging my outer life. I would fain keep that hidden, but it is impossible, I shall however tell as little as may be and obscure it, but without falsifying or distorting any facts relating to my amorous pranks, some of which were not sought by me. I fain would have led a steadier life, and wished a home with a woman I could love; but I had an unquiet home, and a woman there whom I hated in bed and at board. I tried at times to overcome my antipathy, abstained from women for weeks at a time, so that sexual want might generate a sort of love, but it was useless, without reward, and a life of misery was before me. I broke out under it, wonder I did not break down, and should have done so, had it not been for whores. Cunt came to my rescue, and alone gave me forgetfulness, a relief far better than gambling or drinking, the only other alternatives I could have had recourse to.