Chapter 2
We moved back into town and I saw Lizzy no more, though we sent each other Christmas cards for a year or two.
Most of my childhood's sexual pleasures, apart from the rare Vera and Lizzy episode, were either solitary or homo-perforce. I can't remember how old I was when I was initiated into the joys of masturbation, but I remember very well how it happened. I had become the friend, or devoted fag, of an older boy, a hulking fellow of fourteen or so, an athletic, swaggering, ad venturous character named Jim, who loved smutty jokes, and made up impossible tales about women, friends of his mother, who he said paid him to fuck them. It was not believed, but it made delightful listening.
He tolerated me, liked my flattery and laughter, I dare say. He did not show me much sign of affection, but took me to his home sometimes and showed me the model steam-engines he had built. He even let me walk home with him after school if he was not going with a gang from his own form.
But one spring evening he let me tag along, even with his classmates, three roughnecks of whom I was considerably in awe. Jim started boasting of what a "bright babe" I was, how I knew all about cunt and could swear like a trooper. I tried to live up to this reputation, and they all laughed a good deal. O yes, I knew a lot! Up to this time, mind you, I had .never had an orgasm.
The eldest one quizzed me: where do babies come from ? how long does it take ?-like a schoolteacher, and I answered to his satisfaction. I had been told all that by a girl named Dolly whom I sat next to in the little mixed school, not long after the Judy adventure. (Wasn't that true "co-education?") My kind, cold parents of course never mentioned "the facts of life" to me.
The fact that Jim was showing me off, as though I were his pupil or his slave, and the idea that I was on trial in some way, heightened the tension on my nervous system. I half-skipped, half-ran, keeping up with these big fellows, with their long, "swanky strides.
The eldest boy, my chief inquisitor, who was darkeyed, fine-featured, with a wide mouth, was named Jack Allen. I had never spoken to him before, but had seen him swim and run. He now said mockingly: "Bet you've never seen a cunt, youngster."
"I have!" I said, eagerly, indignantly.
"Not since you came out of your mother's."
"I tell you I have, any amount of them," I said.
"When did you last see one?"
"Last week."
"Whose was it?"
"The girl next door."
"Did you fuck it, or throw your cap at it and run away?"
They all laughed, at my expense.
"I had a feel," I said.
"Is that all? Why didn't you poke her?"
"Her mother came in."
They laughed some more, disbelievingly. But what I had told them was true. All the same, if they had known the facts, they would have ridiculed me more than ever.
The girl next door happened to be ten months old. Her brisk, busy mother, quite a young woman, half my own mother's age, seeing me idling in the garden, asked me over the fence if I would like to come and help bathe baby. I went, rather bashfully, and stood with pink ears, staring at the happy, naked little girl in the bath and thinking what a wonderfully broadminded mother this was. I swear it was actually the first time I had seen any female of the species completely naked! When it came to drying time, the mother actually invited me to help dry those rosy, infinitely creased thighs, and said, "Come on, young man, powder her bottom and between her legs!"
I did these awesome services, and saw the child napkined and dressed again. Next day, Sunday, I took care to be in the garden at the same time, and again was invited over. The business was just about to begin. The air smelt of ammonia. The mother took off the napkin, drenched in pee, then lifted the creature into the warm water.
After the washing the baby was lying on her back on a towel, and the mother went to get some lanoline, leaving me alone with her infant. The baby began to cry. I knew the risk, I suppose, but I had an overpowering desire to see and touch the cunt which looked so disproportionately big, because of the deep crease it was buried in. I parted the flesh, wormed my finger in, touching the prominent little clitoris. I discovered something that naughty young nursemaids know: the baby stopped crying and gurgled with pleasure and satisfaction. I moved my finger in and out, wickedly excited. There I was, my finger stuck right in the baby's hole, when the mother came back.
"What do you think you're doing?" she said, flushing.
She took me by the collar and conducted me to the door. I do not know whether she saw my ever-ready horn bulging my trousers, my storm cone hoisted, so to speak, though she easily may have done. But she said firmly: "I shan't tell your mother this time, but never you come near my baby again." (The baby had changed gear from a gurgle to a cry, to show she did not agree with her mother.)
But I did not tell these humiliating facts to Jack Allen, Jim and the others.
We were walking across the park, a short cut.
"Coming for a smoke?" red-haired Derek asked.
"Yes, let's," the others said. They put their caps in their pockets, and I did the same. If you were caught at some illegal act, it was better not to be wearing the school cap: that was the code.
A winding path with steps descended to the men's piss-house among the bushes; it was practically underground, but was unroofed, and had nothing but the usual wall of glazed tiles, with water running down it into a trough. There were no "stalls" or divisions to protect privacy: everyone could always see everyone else at work.
He's too young to smoke, he can keep cave" Derek said, nodding his head towards me.
"But I want to go, I want a pee," I said, going down the path.
"Let him come down, we can hear if anyone's getting near," Jack said.
They produced half-fags from matchboxes, lit up, took deep draws. Jim offered me a couple of puffs from his Woodbine. My head seemed to whirl. It might have been hashish.
To be smoking, with my seniors! and with a vague but strong sense that something else was going to happen, I didn't exactly know what. It would be something, to taste again that mystery and excitement.
Having said I wanted to make water, I had to make it good, so I stepped up to the wet, yellow-encrusted wall and pulled out my dribbler. Jack, my questioner, promptly stepped up on the right of me, and Derek on the left. The other two, Jim and little Pip, went on with their smoking. I have not yet said anything about Pip. He was thirteen, but not even as tall as I was, and round-shouldered, with a pale face and a sharp nose; always grubby, most unattractive. But he was quick-witted, cunning, good at providing cribs for homework and willing to be the servant and jester of the big boys, for the sake of their company. He was always with Jack and Derek; I was soon to know more about the reason for that.
Derek looked down at himself as he piddled, but Jack looked at me. I stole furtive looks at both their weapons. Derek's was like my own, only a little bigger, the water coming out of a curly leaf of skin. Jack must have been circumcised, for it looked very like a mushroom, and he seemed to be tugging and tormenting it, even while his stream was shooting out. It was flabby but at least twice as big as mine.
"Bet I've got the biggest cock in here," Jack said. "Come on, all show."
"Well, I won't win," I said, blushing but smiling. They all laughed. Jim and Pip did not take up the challenge. Derek said to Jack, "It's bound to be biggest when it's half hard, stop frigging it."
"But I want to," said Jack. "Let's all have a wank. Hey, Bobbin"-he had picked up my nickname-"can you fetch spunk?"
I understood him, though I had never seen the famous stuff. But I did not like to admit my immaturity.
"I don't know," I said.
"Don't you know how to?" Jack asked. "Shall we show him?"
"All right," said Derek, who had been playing with his a little and already enlarged it. It's wonderful with young boys, how quickly they can get a cock-stand; they work on a hair trigger, and get stiff in a matter of seconds.
"Come on, Pip," Derek said.
Pip understood very well what was expected of him. With an impudent wink at me, he went to Derek, fondled his prick, drew his balls into view, and stroked and frigged with quick, light caressing movements. He must have had a lot of practice! He stretched out the other hand towards Jack, evidently capable of doing two at once. But Jack moved away from him, shaking his head.
"Come on, I'll teach you, Bobbin," he said. Still very much the teacher, but obviously more than interested in me; it must have been like having a virgin, for him.
I couldn't help shrinking away at the first touch of his hand, but he was determined. He pushed me into the corner, seized my wrist and put my hand on his prick. His other hand got hold of my small rod, stiff enough for anything by now, and I had the virgin's feeling of submitting to the inevitable, the "O well, this is it, here goes" feeling.
My pale foreskin ran back off the purple head and pink shaft, then forward again, with thrilling strokes. I tried to do for Jack what he was doing to me, but it was difficult, I was distracted by my own pleasure and by the sight of Pip pulling Derek off. (Jim was simply standing by, grinning, looking embarrassed.) Also I did not know how to deal with a cock with no foreskin.
I suddenly saw Derek grab Pip by the ears and bend his head down. Pip took Derek's penis in his mouth. Derek gave two great spasmodic jerks, and Pip pulled his head away and went to spit in the trough. I was revolted. "That's something I'll never do!" I thought, wondering how Pip could do it without being sick: but perhaps it tasted nice? At the same time I was disappointed at not having seen what I wanted to see, the actual shooting of the spunk.
But I was just about to see it, all the same. Jack said breathlessly, "Quick, quick!" and I obeyed. His fat, hot prick went off like a gun, six long jets of white curd, the first two of which went all over my shorts. That pungent, faintly metallic smell filled the air. I felt wildly abandoned, and Jack sensed that I was coming to a climax. Though he had come himself, he was still excited enough to want to make me, to complete my initiation. I had the sensation of racing up a steep hill, without quite enough breath for it, struggling to reach the top. Suddenly I was there, there, over the hill, the summit... but alas, nothing came. I began to sag, spunkless, a "youngster" still.
"He's too young, he hasn't any spunk," said Derek, buttoning his fly and watching disdainfully.
"Never mind, kid, did you like it?" asked Jack.
"Not half!" I said. I was touched by his kindness, and pleased that he hadn't made me take it in my mouth. I did not get used to that idea till later. I thought Pip (who is now a respected clergyman) either servile or of exotic tastes; but I must admit that I kept remembering what I had seen, and always got the horn when I thought of it, and sometimes imagined myself Pip and sometimes Derek.
"What's up with you, Jim, have you run dry?" asked Derek. "Toss him off, Pip."
Jim, with a sheepish glance at me, and seeing that my innocence was now beyond repair, flicked his fag end aside and unbuttoned his fly.
"Hurry up!" said Jack, who stood with his arm round my shoulder in a comforting manner.
Watching, I saw that Jim's pleasure was different from Derek's. He opened Pip's fly, and frigged himself with one hand, Pip with the other. He did not let Pip touch his at all. There was something eminently refined about Jim's performance. He stroked the smaller boy's tousled hair as though he were a girl. Then, when he wanted to come, he pushed his prick inside Pip's fly, against his bare belly, put his arms round Pip's body and clasped him tightly, one hand on his bottom. It was very brief, much quicker than the rest. His face looked like someone in a trance, with eyes tight shut, as he came. I think Pip spent too, but I could not be sure: they were in a nice jellied mess about their shirts and flies, I hope they had unsuspicious mothers.
The orgy was finished, without any interruption. Jack distributed chewing-gum, and we trooped out. Only as we left did I, looking back, see the face of a man, with thick glasses, peeping down through the long grass: the hidden spectator who had watched it all.
I did not tell the others. We parted company and went our ways. Then I doubled on my tracks and went back to the scene of the crime. I was trembling with fright, but in the grip of my ruling passion, curiosity. I saw the man had gone from the place where he had been lying and looking down on us. Was he a detective, a father, a murderer, or what? Anyway, I went back into the lav and had another piss; and looked at the spunk on the pavement, where Jack had come.
As I was going out again, I met the man. He had a shabby mackintosh on, and a thin face. He was quite young, in his twenties. He said "Here!" and instantly pulled out his enormous prick, which was erect. But my courage failed me. I dodged past him and ran all the way home. That was the last I saw of him, except in dreams, in which he frequently turned up. With a prick like the Tower of Pisa.
I was too young to "fetch spunk" but I had learned how to masturbate and have a climax. That was a great step forward.
Masturbation! Why does no poet praise this wonderful self-pleasure? It is wickedly miscalled self-abuse, pollution, and such slanderous names-this pure and lifelong joy. There should be a medal struck, of Saint Narcissus, bending over an endless white stream of come, rubbing the delicate flower-stem of his prick with his devout hands.
I heard of course the usual false warnings, how masturbation could send you mad, give you tuberculosis, make you unable to get children when you were married. t simply never believed them. The only moral 1 drew was not to trust parents, teachers, authorities and not to believe the kind of thing that, "for your own good," they told you. Psychologists say it is the struggle with his father that makes a boy a rebel. I had some of that, too, but it was sex that made me a rebel. I soon saw that law and custom were set against freedom and pleasure, and I learned with naive surprise that those laws and customs hardly corresponded at all to what people really did and really thought. After that I could sometimes laugh at, sometimes pity, sometimes dislike but never admire "Society," all those bishops, police, governments, armies, bosses, royal academies, public heroes, the lot "up there," whose world tends to be a cruel shambles, painted over with hypocrisy. They made me a hypocrite against my will, because I had to conceal my tastes and pleasures to live in peace. Even that does not save you. I kept out of jail, but before I was sixteen I had a "bad reputation." On the whole, though, I have been glad of that. By arousing people's curiosity, it has brought me new experiences, and has made me ineligible for stuffy respectability.
After my initiation by Jim's friends, I masturbated often, but still no spunk appeared. The stories I made up in bed at night changed from Red Indian themes to sexy ones; I would fall asleep holding the inflamed member, quite sore with rubbing, but without having reached even the illusion of a climax that Jack had given me. Jack himself showed no more interest in me, having taken up with a girlishly handsome lad in his own class. The only one of the gang with whom I had anything more to do was Jim.
He stole a book from the market which had diagrams of the male and female bodies, a medical work. We studied it together in his room, where the model steam engines were. We whispered, so that his mother, whose footsteps we could hear, should not overhear us. By and by his hand crept into my fly and he hugged me close. I knew that he wanted to repeat the performance he had done with Pip, and I decided to let him, though dreading the mess it would make. 1 tried to touch his prick, but he put my hand firmly away. His prick was his own, he liked to play it his own way! Neither of us said a word. He frigged me rather clumsily, not giving me much of a sensation. Then he shut his eyes and began to quiver. We were sitting side by side on his bed. He suddenly threw me on my back, got on top of me, pushed his hot rod up inside my shirt, then adjusting his position got it between my legs. I understood what was needed, and tightened my thighs on it. He came in two swift pushes. The stuff swam into the seat of my pants, alarmingly; but I did not turf Jim off me till he had panted back to normal and opened his eyes again.
"That was just like fucking Mrs. Manton, next door," he said. "But I wish you could spend, too." I smiled, being perfectly sure that only in imagination had he had Mrs. Manton, next door, or any other woman.
The same thing happened again when we went on bike rides in the country sometimes.
But when the hell would I be able to come properly? I pined for that, even though the other boys in my class mostly couldn't do it, either. (There were a few prudes who would not even talk about it. I was always inquiring!)
In the end it was kind Miss Nature who masturbated me: I had my first wet dream-I think I must have given up frigging for a time, in despair. I shall never forget. the dream. I walked into a room and there kneeling on the hearth-rug in front of a blazing fire was a beautiful girl, naked, glowing in the firelight. I went up behind her, pushed my cock into her right armpit, leaned over her shoulder and held her breast, taking the nipple between finger and thumb. She turned her face up to kiss me, and I came, in the armpit, without seeing or touching her cunt at all. I had a great sense of triumph, in which I awoke. Warm, slippery wetness everywhere, pyjamas, bedclothes, thighs: I was on my back, and even my navel was full. I nearly leapt out of bed to tell the world the wonderful news. But I didn't have to do that: the starchy patch would tell my mother next morning. I wondered what she would think. She never gave a hint of that. I wonder what she thought the earlier times, of Jack's seed on my shorts, and Jim's in the seat of my breeches. Perhaps she did not allow herself to think anything at all. Perhaps she was silently embarrassed. As a dear now-dead friend of mine used to say, "To the pure, all things are embarrassing."
Before I leave the dry days of my childhood, when only curiosity can be satisfied, and enter the great Wet Era that starts with puberty, I must chronicle one more episode. It concerns the Major, my father's old friend.
I was a rosy-cheeked boy of about twelve, lively, and fond of the open air. The Major, still a regular visitor, had not dared, I suppose, to give any sign of sexual interest in me for a long time; judging perhaps that I had got to an age when I might react against it, and perhaps tell tales. However, he found me in distress one evening, because a family trip to the seaside had been cancelled, my younger brother having caught chicken-pox. On an impulse, the Major volunteered to take me, alone, to the sea. I was pleased, and my parents, without any misgivings, were very grateful.
We took sandwiches, which my mother made, afed the Major bought a botde of lemonade. It was only a half-hour's train journey to the little resort. I carried a towel, for paddling (I could not swim). We did not stay near the crowd and the promenade. After I had had a couple of penny-in-the-slot games the Major said we would walk to a "more secluded" part. The sand was firm and it was a perfect day of early summer. We walked joyously along at the foot of the cliffs.
I kept saying, "Shall we stop here?" and he kept saying no, further along. We left the last holidaymakers behind.
Presently the Major said, "Don't you want to pump ship?" (a fig-leaf metaphor, to cover shame).
I did not know this expression, so I said, "No."
He said, "I think you do, by the way you keep holding your willy. I do, anyway"-and he walked up to the foot of the cliff, undoing his buttons. Was that all he meant? I did want to, certainly, and stood alongside him to piss. He half-faced towards me and looked at my "willy," which he had not seen for years. I looked at his, too, having rarely seen a man's, and got the impression that though not very big it was halfway to an erection. He had very little pec to do, and finished first, but did not put his away till I had done the same. He had such an air of wanting and not daring to do something more that I remembered in a flash all the times he had "interfered" with me when I was small.
We walked still further along the sunlit beach and we saw a wonderful thing: Venus herself, fresh from the foam.
On a large flat white stone stood a girl, about sixteen, entirely naked, entirely alone, drying her golden hair. Her clothes were twenty yards away at the foot of the cliff. She was perfection itself, to my eye, with round, fine young breasts, pink nipples, slender waist, a little golden down on her pussy but not enough to conceal the crack. Above all, she had no shame. She did not use the small towel to cover her body or any part of it, she did not turn away but stood full face to us, she did not smile or look coquettish, but watched us gravely as we approached. We passed within five yards of her. She stopped drying her hair, and let the towel dangle from her hand, with the other hand on her hip. The sun gilded her from top to toe. I glanced back when we had passed, and risked a smile, for she was looking over her shoulder at us. But she still did not smile, and went on drying her hair. When we returned along the beach, later, she would be gone, I knew. Such visions don't last.
The Major plodded on. Presumably the sight was one of complete indifference to his temperament. Me, I nearly had heart failure. My day, my year, was made.
We finally reached the absolute seclusion the Major sought. We ate our food, picked up curious shells, played ducks-and-drakes with flat stones, and afterwards took off shoes and stockings to paddle. The glittering ripples were cold and unexpectedly warm by turns.
The Major held my hand and made me jump and splash. Then he led me, quite deliberately, I know, deeper than I should have gone. His own hairy legs were so much longer than mine. In rolled a bigger wave, and ouch! I was soaked to the crotch. I yelled at the cold douche and ran back up the beach. He trudged after me, laughing.
"I'm all wet, what am I to do?" I wailed.
"There's nobody about, take your clothes off," he said.
"All right."
I did not actually guess at the time that that was what he had wanted and contrived, but if I had guessed I should probably have obliged, just the same.
He helped me to take off the wet things and spread them on a rock. "You might as well take your shirt and vest off, too," he said. I complied, and ran around bare, with him after me, dodging and larking, till we both tired. He must have felt just as thrilled at the sight of me as I was with the girl Venus drying her hair. In the end I collapsed on the sand, panting.
The Major came and sat very close to me. I let him draw me close to his body, and was quite unsurprised when his hand squeezed and felt my bottom and then my balls and prick. He put one finger in my arsehole a little way, a rather nice sensation. But owing to the sea-breeze I had no erection yet. I squirmed around dodgily, but he pursued and held on till I began to harden. I saw a strange expression on his face: it seemed to me he had tears in his eyes. Then I got a terrific shock: he kissed me, passionately, on the mouth. There were years of hunger in that kiss. He clasped me like mad, and I could feel his huge erection through his trousers.
Of course he did not put his tongue in my mouth, a practice I did not learn till later; and nothing else happened. He would not let himself pull out his prick, or even come in his trousers: his will must have been working overtime! And as for me, I couldn't come, as yet, however much he might have wished it. But I let him kiss me a score of times, and kissed him back, with candid warmth; and lay nude in his arms for a long time, in the sun. I doubt if he had a happier hour in his life. To me, too, it was all radiance and pleasure.
I am a pagan, self-evidently. I should have been born in ancient Greece, and made a Plato happy, or crept under the cloak of a Socrates.
The Major, for once, overcame his shame enought to talk sex to me a bit. He asked me, holding my erect tool, whether I played with this often, whether I let other boys do so at school, whether I liked him, the Major, to do it. To all of which I answered truthfully, "Yes." He asked about the older boys, which was my favourite, what was he like, what did we do? I described Jim, and gave him a few facts. His listened with melancholy intensity. Then he kissed and fondled me again; and suddenly dived down and kissed my navel, and my prick; just once, very swiftly, took it between his lips and at once let it go. I did not mind at all. It was not a bit like Pip's performance.
He got up and said brusquely we must be moving. Poor man, he may well have lived in panic for a week after that, expecting handcuffs. Or perhaps he knew he could trust me. I hope he did.
It was a day out of old Arcadia. I loved every sunlit minute and so did my old admirer. But, alas for him! all the way back along the beach and on the train home I was thinking of the wonderful girl, who stood and dried her hair and let herself be gazed upon without flinching.