From Psychopathia Sexualis, Doctor Krafft-Ebing. Vienna, Austria 1886.
Case 135.
V. was very talented. He learned easily and had a most excellent religious education. At a young age, he began to masturbate without instruction. Later in life, he recognized the danger of this practice and fought with some success against it.
Soon after, he began to rave about male statuary . . .
Imagine then a ruin. White pillars against a spectral dusk. We are in Rome, Palatine Hill. Here is Flavius, done in marble. Note his musculature: swollen pectorals, firm abdominis. His cock is, of course, uncircumcised. See the flaccid shaft curled against full testes, a thatch of pubic hair. Flavius has no head, no face. It doesn’t matter. We can invent such things for him. Adonian curls, high forehead, aquiline nose. Perhaps there is a cleft in his chin. His lips are full, nearly pouting.
Imagine now brushing against Flavius in a darkened hall. We excuse ourselves, politely. We nearly continue on our way. Then we realize just how lovely—how ancient. We take Flavius down from his pedestal. We bring him to our bed. His alabaster flesh is hard and cold. His body is so heavy it nearly breaks the bedframe. Imagine kissing those stony lips. Rubbing our own cock against his timeworn beauty. Flavius speaks to us. His voice is an echo. His throat is some two thousand years old. We can barely hear him. And we don’t know Latin. Still, we understand. Flavius doesn’t love us. He can hardly perceive us at all. Yet he will do this thing we’ve asked of him. When Flavius ejaculates, his semen is a fine white powder.
Case 137.
Homosexual feeling, perverse in origin. R. is sexually excited by men’s boots. Patient dreamed of handsome jockeys wearing shining boots. Servants’ boots affect him. Men of his own position, wearing ever so fine boots, were of absolute indifference. In the society of ladies, R. has been reserved; dancing always tires him . . .
He collapses at yet another gala. Gaslit dance floor in a gilded hall. Stringed instruments play a waltz.
All around him, boots of every stripe: Dealer and Jodhpur and Paddock. Tight fitting, ankle-high. The smell of leather. The smell of polish. Red Hessian with golden tassels, fronds brushing his upturned face. Woolen Valenki. Top Boots. Black Billy Boots, handsome and vital. He likes a painted wooden heel, a scuffed sole. He pictures men walking for miles.
He drags himself across the dance floor, wanting to slide his tongue up a boot shaft, investigate the delicate stitchery, dislodge a bit of dirt. He wants to kiss the backstay, the mule ears, the toe box. There is something ecstatic here, something magnificent.
He knows this is embarrassing. That’s the point, isn’t it?
Case 141.
X. believes himself to be the martyr Saint Sebastian. He saw a painting in a gallery—a naked young man pierced through by arrows. X. became, in a word, possessed.
Each of my wounds is a mouth. It attempts to swallow a sword. I am tied to an alder tree, wrists bound. The lashings are Roman leather, knotted by soldiers I once called friends: Atilius, Gnaeus, Sabinus. Springtime blossoms burst from branches above my head. My blood trickles down the dark trunk. I am the fantasy, trussed. Exemplary sufferer.
In the prisons of Emperor Diocletian, I fell in love with two men, my cellmates: Marcellian, who was large and rough (like an animal) and Marcus who was lithe and had a beautiful face. Every night, in the space of our small cell, I brought these men to Christ. My body was sweeter, they said, than any communion wine. More fortifying than any host. Together, we reinvented the Trinity. A wheel aflame in the catacombs. When we finished our nightly Mass, we lay together in the dust. We caressed each other until morning light.
On the day of my execution, the sky was no color I could name. There was a wind from the north. The black branches of the alder tree creaked above. My lovers were both murdered. Dragged behind horses. Marcellian’s head came off. Soldiers tied me to a tree. They surrounded me in a half-circle and took turns shooting arrows. Shafts, buried in my flesh. The soldiers laughed. They talked of other things. “This doesn’t mean I don’t still love you,” I whispered, so softly no one could hear. They did not know they were making a saint of me.
Case 146.
Two persons in Vienna are examples. One is a barber who calls himself “French Laura”; the other is a butcher who calls himself “Helen” . . .
Good day to you! Good day. (Fans flutter. Bosoms rise.) This is a knitting circle in which no knitting is done. Instead of needles we have cocks. Instead of yarn we have our slippery orifices.
Aunt Patricia has baked yet another of her delicious cakes. We remark on it with enthusiasm. There is time for gossip then. Vicki has been up to her notorious tricks. And you mustn’t start us talking about Anne. We adjust our skirts and ask about the new charitable concerns. We support the Cripples’ Home, The Temporary House for Lost Dogs, and, of course, The Female Society.
What items will we donate this year to the jumble sale? We can spare nearly everything. And then there is cycling. It’s ever so popular these days. All the women in the park, pedaling about: Fanny and Ruth and Florence. But those uncomfortable leather bicycle seats. They have bruised us! Speaking of uncomfortable: here comes the duchess now. Look at her, will you? Just look at her.
Case 149.
He never felt nausea at the penis of others . . .
The causes of nausea: Perambulators. Light novels. Hoop skirts. Bourgeois work ethic. Portraiture. The Resurrection. The language of flowers. The children’s hour. Quakers. Realism. Naturalism. Strindberg. Strindberg! Allspice pudding. The unfashionable clubs. Muttonchops.
Case 170.
The hypnotic suggestions are as follows:
1. I abhor onanism. It makes me weak, miserable.
2. I no longer have a lustful inclination toward men. A man’s love of other men is against religion, nature and law . . .
We place our hand over the doctor’s mouth, silencing him. We tell him we will finish this. Who are we to speak? We are all of them, we say. Every last one.
Begin the session again:
1. We will not imagine a quiet hillside in the country where men can be together unhindered. We will not imagine these men taking off their shirts in the tall grass, revealing the sort of physiques that shepherds once had. We will not imagine these men then kissing one another on the chest and on the mouth. We will not imagine them unlacing their tight brown trousers. We will not imagine them building houses there on the hillside where they can live amongst one another. We will not imagine how they don’t pray to any gods. We will not imagine how they talk at night around great campfires, faces bright, telling the old stories. Because now there are old stories to be told.