My Secret Life

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, what-ever 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, 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 be-came 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 favorably 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 hum-bugging 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 hand-somer than others, just as undoubtedly there are ugly and handsome cunts.

Chapter XVII

Irish Kate.-Drink, heat, fleas, and French letters. • The bricklayer afterwards. • I give luck. The lost breast-pin. • The cholera's victim.

One hot night in summer I slouched along one of the streets, and stopped in front of a woman who stood lolling against the door-post. I recollect her and my first sensations perfectly well, her white face, and dark hair hanging behind her in a net, her low dress, low in front, — showing a luscious neck and bust as white as her face. Her dress was of a very light colour, so her neck and face must have been white indeed to look so white by contrast. The street-door was close to a street-lamp, which shed a strong light on her face as it was turned upwards, and with her hand and arms folded behind her she lolled, her back against the door-post. She was a full-sized woman, but young, and exactly what pleased me then; black and white, young and full of flesh. I stopped, and gazed at her. She fixed her eyes vacantly on me, but neither moved nor spoke to me.