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Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939

"Sexual Inversion"

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.


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