Chapter 7
During my travels throughout the world and the United States to search out the hidden secrets of service wives, I ran across only one case of a woman who committed an infidelity because of a perverted maternal instinct. Because of various difficulties, I was unable to interview the woman. In fact, the details of the case came out only through a long correspondence with her. The case is unusual and filled with many peculiar psychological difficulties.
In order to lay bare every detail of this strange case, I am reproducing below a synthesis of all the correspondence I received in the case. The woman who lived those facts and who wrote me, was rigorously honest in detailing every event. All in all, her letters add up to an extremely bizzarre case but one which will shed important light on the problems of military wives.
First let me give a few facts. Ellen and Karl M. had been married twenty-five years when the situation developed. He had served in the Army for almost thirty years and was close to retiring. In fact, he had postponed retirement to serve a second tour in Vietnam. His wife lived in Japan while he was in Vietnam, waiting patiently for the short Rest and Recreation leaves her husband received to return to Japan. Husband and wife had a close relationship on all levels. They had been through many difficulties together and lived in various uncomfortable Army bases throughout the world. This shared discomfort had played an important role in the relationship. Ellen, however, was much less self-sufficient than her husband. Her whole life was bound up with her husband. She had few interests other than pleasing him and almost no relatives to expend her ample affection on.
Her first letter to me was as follows:
"I have heard through various sources that you are engaged in a research project concerning the indescretions of wives at military bases, particularly when one of the protagonists is a young boy. Would you be interested in hearing my story? I must assure you that it has many strange and erotic components but if it will help other wives who have been in similar situations, I would be glad to disclose the complete chain of events."
It was a short letter and right to the point. I wrote her back that I would be extremely interested in her story and I promised her to protect her anonymity by using an assumed name.
The next letter from her went right into the events. It is an extremely valuable and revealing document.
"I promise you that I will withold nothing no matter how incriminating and painful it is to revive certain memories. My husband was on his second tour in Vietnam. We had rented a lovely home outside of Tokyo. My days were spent in writing him every day and walking about the lovely countryside trying to familiarize myself with the people and their customs. Though I had been in Japan once before, while my husband was fighting in Korea, I had never had such leisure to study the remarkable culture and society of Japan.
"The days passed. Each day was filled with new insights and new pleasures. I even began to try to learn the language. But each day my loneliness and desire for my husband increased.
"One day, as I was sitting on the veranda, watching a lovely Japanese family going to market, I suddenly felt a terrible emptiness.
"At first I didn't know what had caused it. But I analyzed my reaction and realized it was the sight of the children in the passing family. For the first time in my life, I knew that the fact that I was childless had created a terrible emptiness in my life. An emptiness that had been only felt at a subconscious level but was now coming out in the open.
"We had gone to many doctors but it was no use. My husband was sterile. At first I played around with the idea of artificial insemination, but the idea was too ghastly for me to go through with it. Then we tried to adopt a child but since we were obliged to move from base to base, no adoption agency would give us a child.
"I became resigned to my fate until I saw that happy Japanese family.
"Soon, my days and nights there became a nightmare. The fact of my childlessness became the most pressing fact of my life. I neglected writing to my husband and I lost all interest in the people and the customs.
"Then I met Toshiro. He came to my house, a small, innocent boy of twelve years, with the large black eyes which make Japanese children so irresistable. He knocked meekly on the door and wanted to know if I need someone to take care of my rock garden which had fallen into disrepair.
"He was so earnest and polite that I immediately agreed to hire him as a part-time gardener. If only I had known that my decision was to lead to a horrible sequence of events, I would have closed the door in the child's face."
I had to wait about three weeks for the second letter and I was afraid that she had changed her mind and did not wish to disclose the intimate details of the case. But the letter did come and it was quite revealing.
"Please forgive me for the delay. You have probably guessed the reason. It is painful to recount details that one is trying to forget. But I must go through with my original intention, to tell all, no matter who it hurts and to what extent.
"Toshiro was an excellent gardener. In a few weeks time my rock garden had blossomed into a remarkable show-piece. Strangely shaped stones with religious significance were set against those beautiful and difficult to maintain bonsai trees-dwarfed trees that lend an erie atmosphere to any place they inhabit. I would often watch the child as he worked, without saying a word to him.
"But then this fantasy began to control me. I felt somehow, in some peculiar manner, that Toshiro was my child. I knew even as I hallucinated that it was ridiculous but I could not wrench away that imaginary weight.
"One afternoon, while Toshiro was working in the garden, my madness overwhelmed my reason. I walked to him and taking him by the hand led him to a small bench in the garden. We sat together for a long time, not speaking.
"I turned to him but he would not look at me. I turned his face toward me with my hands. His eyes seemed to burn through me. His eyes sent a shiver down my body that was both erotic and maternal.
"I ran from him, realizing that I had had what can only be described as an incestuous feeling. In other words, I wanted him as both my son and my lover. For the next few days I tried to fight this growing passion. But in the end I succumbed. Please do not consider me a weak woman. I was completely overwhelmed.
"There is a small pagoda in the garden and it was there that I took him. We drank tea together and said a few words to each other about the garden.
"Then I could no longer restrain myself. I fell upon him, covering him with kisses and calling him my child. Toshiro did not respond. He just stood there, his beautiful eyes wide opened, watching the strange antics of a Westerner.
"I opened my kimona. I was wearing Japanese dress in order to please him. Since he was my child I wanted him to take milk from my body. He did not approach my breast. Slowly but firmly, I pushed his head into the heat of my straining nipples. When his mouth touched them, I almost fainted from the exquisite contact. His lips parted. My hands were inside his garment and moved down his smooth childish flesh.
"His mouth took it. I began to weep. His lips were like a divine instrument bringing every supreme joy of motherhood to my nipples. I kept calling to him, telling him to take nourishment from my flesh, begging him to such the wells of maternal lust dry. Toshiro dropped the nipple and buried his head in the valley between the breasts. His tongue began to circle my breasts, drawing a ring of fire around the white hillocks, a lovely contrast to the gleaming color of his skin.
"My hands were searching out that exotic maleness, trying to make contact with the shoot which joined branch and root. My fingers then touched the delicate globes hidden so well between his well-formed legs.
"Grasping them, grasping my son's globes, Toshiro bit into my breast. How beautiful it was, my blood mingling with his saliva and my hands finding the core of his maleness. But I wanted more. I wanted to hold that piece of flesh which defined him. My hand wrapped around it length. It was soft and limp. I began to stroke it. Slowly I felt the life pouring into it, the muscles and sinewings awakening from their long sleep.
"May God forgive me for what I did. Throwing open his robe, I kneeled before him as all mothers kneel before the image of their son. Opening my mouth like it was a ritual urn, I let that surging maleness slide in. Never has my body wanted anything so much. Never has my mouth been assailed with such a vibrant flesh.
"Now the child was pleading with me to let him go. But I would not listen. The hallucination had become paramount. He was my son and I controlled him. Grabbing the tip delicately between my teeth I watered it with a beserk tongue. I was both solemn and hysterical. The fact that it was taking place in the rock garden seemed to give the event a religious aura. But then a change took place.
"I wanted it in my body. I wanted my son to perform perversions. Using all my strength, I pushed him against the wall of the pagoda, releasing his now stiffened organ. Then, running backwards, I impaled my buttocks on his maleness. I screamed. I screamed out my shame and my lust as that mighty weapon thrust between the buttocks and impales me, like a delicate bird split asunder by the beak of a voracious bird. A moment later, the seed of his ancestors poured into me, sending me forward into the earth, sobbing and exhausted.
"An instant later, I got up and ran into the house, sobbing hysterically, my body and mind suffering the most horrible guilt. I threw myself on the bed. It was hours before I could think rationally.
"The next day, when I reflected on my actions, I knew that I had passed some important divide. I knew that a dramatic change had taken place in my relation to the world. I was a woman who had constructed an artificial son and seduced him."
The next letter I received from Ellen delved more deeply into her erotic relationship with the Japanese child. It is unfortunate that this letter did not really attempt an analysis of her mental state, but stuck pretty close to the facts. It was as if she was trying to get together enough clinical information to prove her wickedness. If that was the intent it certainly is successful. What follows is one of the most lucid descriptions of a woman caught up in the throes of a perversion which entails both child-seduction and simulated incest. Of course, the word perversion is extremely relative. Her acts were perverse only because she considered them perverse. And she thought that way because she was raised in a rural atmosphere.
"I vowed never to see Toshiro again. My vow was a farce. Soon, he occupied my thoughts every hour of the day and night. The seconds ticked away like eternal epochs while I planned my next move. He did not return to the garden immediately. But soon he did return and began tending the garden in his stoic manner, as if nothing had happened between us: but he knew in his soul that what had happened could not be forgotten.
"I asked him into the house. I had prepared everything previously. My idea was to make our next joining equal in delicacy and ritual to his religious ceremonies. We sat together on a straw mat. I undressed and he followed my wish that he become naked. There was a pot of tea on the floor beside us and we both drank from the same cup. The child seemed much more relaxed. I took a sponge and began to clean his body in the native manner, talking to him softly about my past life. He closed his eyes as I ran the sponge over every surface of his willing body. Still, his mind was a mystery to me, but I did not care. Toshiro, in my madness, was my son-lover come home and I did not have to understand. All I was required to do was act out my incredible hallucinations.
"Then I gave him a vial of just melted wax that was still hot and requested him to annoint my body. Lying down, I waited for his hungry hands and that annointing liquid.
"First he placed some of the wax on a finger and began to annoint my lips. The delicate touch of his finger sliding over the sensitive flesh, combined with the wax, sent tremors through my whole body. I bit his finger playfully. Then the wax was applied to my nipples and rubbed into the base of my breasts. The child had entered whole-heartedly into the religious game. My nipples were like nightingales perched precariously at the apex of the breasts, looking for a chance to leap beyond them.
"Toshiro moved between my legs. I spread them wide to make his work easier. I spread them for my unnatural son, given to me by the gods of the Orient.
"I saw him bend over and place some of the wax on the tip of his tongue. The moment he did that, I knew Toshiro had, himself, been infected by my hallucination.
"Closer and closer that darting thing came to the gates of my body. Then it touched, flicking across the lips of my vagina, resting there for a moment as my body shivered from the delicate but brutal touch. His lips were against it now, opening the flower wide so that his child tongue could enter.
"My body was sent into a fit of hot and cold spasms. The entry of his tongue seemed to be the high point of my strange interlude. It was as if the child was telling me without words that his tongue was the cement of our mother-son relationship. He began to flick it back and forth within me. As it swept across that narrow, yearning space, going from wall to wall in the flesh, it seemed that the thousands of miles and thousands of years which separated our cultures were dissolving as each bit of my bodies moistures adhered to his tongue. The more he was within me, the more my flower seemed to open, like a desert that is suddenly and miraculously transformed by a rainfall.
"His palms slid beneath my buttocks. Oh, how my words flowed into his ears, though he probably did not understand or hear.
"I could make out the child's frenzied eyes as my thighs closed about him and his tongue reached an incredible height of action. But suddenly, as the turmoil in my body was reaching a climax, he moved quickly away from me and stood glaring only a few steps off the straw mat. I became panicky. What had happened? Had his erotic and hallucinatory state been dissolved?
"I spread my legs wide and began to move my buttocks from side to side, waving my flower at him, trying to overcome him with the sight of my womanhood, calling to him.
"He wavered. I called out my most profound needs, asking him to fulfill them, begging in the name of everything sacred to come to me. Slowly he began to approach again. Just the sight of his body coming nearer drove me into a frenzy of excitement. His maleness was straight in front of him, poised on the threshold of greatness.
"Inch by inch, foot by foot, the body came closer. Then he made his decision. He could not escape from the draw of my body. He flung himself on me and in one magnificent moment, his maleness entered me.
"Only for one instant was there a calm, then the universe seemed to explode. In it went, driving deep and true, bringing my body to a crescendo of lust.
"Together, we were like two demons who used their organs to breach the walls of immortality. I felt each delicious quiver of his maleness. I felt each thrust as if it was the last time my body would ever taste and receive the male flesh. Then, it exploded, rending my body with the hot seed as it cascaded into my womanhood, leaving me a weeping dissolved mass. Thus, my desires were fulfilled. Thus, my past was dissolved. Thus, my marriage was threatened by the bright, clear flame of a perverted hallucination."
I received many letters from her after this one. But they all had one theme; how she was trying to rid herself of that twisted desire. Eventually she did. When her husband returned from Vietnam, Ellen stopped seeing the Japanese boy. When her husband returned once again to the battlefield, she resolved never to see the boy again. And she kept her promise, though it was at a great psychic and emotional cost.
This case is a most illuminating one, showing how the loneliness of an army wife could be transferred into the erotic actions of a frustrated mother. While there is no doubt that this is a specialized case, it points out to what extent loneliness can be transformed when there are other more potent factors lying just at the threshold of consciousness.