was so much an original invention of
his and mine that there was no likelihood of it being practised
by anyone else in the world. But this consideration did not
restrain me in constructing love scenes with all those whose
appearance attracted me. At this period nearly every man with
whom I came in contact won at least my transient desire; only the
quite old and deformed lay outside the scope of my wishes. Many
of my amours developed in church; the men who sat near me were
the objects of my attention, and the clergyman, whose sermon I
did not listen to, supplied me with an occasion for reverie on
the charms his person would have for me under other
circumstances. It must have been at this time that I began to
elaborate ideas of a serried rank of congregated thighs across
which I lay and was dragged. I would arrange them in definite
order and then imagine myself drawn across from one to the other
somewhat forcibly. Admiration of strength was beginning at this
time to have a definite part in my conceptions, but anything of
the nature of cruelty had not then appealed to me. (I except the
original dream of my childhood, which seems to me still to stand
fantastically apart.) In the inventions to which I now gave
myself the sense of being passed across limbs of different
texture and color was subtle and pleasurable. I think the note of
constructive cruelty which now followed arose from an imagined
rivalry among my lovers for possession of me; the idea that I was
desired made me soon take a delight in imagining myself torn and
snatched about by the contending parties. Presently out of this I
began constructing definite scenes of violence. I was able in
imagination to lie in the thick and stress of conglomerated
deliciousness of thighs struggling to hold me; I was able to
imagine at least six bodies encircling me with passionate
contact. At the same time I had an ingrained feeling of my own
physical smallness in relation to the limbs whose contact threw
me into such paroxysms of delight. A new and sufficiently
ludicrous invention took possession of me; I imagined myself
strapped to the thigh (always, I think, the right one) of the man
on whom I chose, for the time, to concentrate my desires, and so
to be worn by him during his day's work, hidden beneath his
garments. I was not conscio