A Diary of the Senses

Interesting as an example of the sort of pornographic publications issued at Paris in the 1950s in competition with the Olympia Press, bearing with it the usual stylings. No. 6 in the Oceanic-Press series. A translation of LA CONFIDENCE SENSUELLE, originally published under the pseudonym Andre Suffren (Isidore Isou) by Eric Losfeld c. 1955. 

An interesting and rare work with transgenderism as its theme; Isou had earlier gained some degree of fame and notoriety in the late 1940s as a founder of the quasi-Dadaist 'Lettrisme' movement. 

Reprinted / pirated in the US in 1968 by Collectors Publications and Greenleaf Classics.

I am sure that no one has ever written a confession as the one you are about to read. The confession is my own. It would be difficult to imagine that anyone could or would live a life as scattered and as dramatically sensual as the man before this typing machine.

Generally, even the most perverted creature can only assimilate the knowledge of his own sex and sooner or later he is faced with the limitations of his real personality, whether it be feminine or masculine.

But by some strange twist — to which my ambiguous leanings should not be too unfamiliar to a few eminent medical authorities — I submitted my being to an operation and changed from one sex to the other. This fatality has permitted me to discover the so-called unfathomed depths of sexual knowledge. I became able to decipher the love life of the participant of one sex and that of the other. Ah, what I have not learned in that domain.

The operation was made much easier by the evolution of my sexuality. I was already ambigene or “Double” to begin with even when my body first took on the normal appearance of a man.