Anonymous

The altar of VVenus: The Making of a Victorian Rake

CHAPTER 1

Children! Are they the same the world over – does sexual precocity break out amongst them in certain localities at certain periods, something like an epidemic of measles from which few are immune, while in other places and at other times, they escape unscathed? Certain it is that my own childhood was lived in an atmosphere redolent with sexuality and this despite the fact that my home environment was the best. My parents, indeed, held to the most Puritanical notions and doubtless would have been literally dumbfounded with horror had they ever gotten the slightest hint as to what was taking place almost under their very noses.

Either their own lives had matured under conditions quite different from mine or the passing years had obliterated all remembrance of juvenile deviltry, for assuredly no suspicion as to what was transpiring about them, almost, as I have suggested, close enough to be smelled, ever arose to preoccupy their well- ordered lives during my childhood days.

Confidences exchanged in later years with adult friends indicate that while many went through experiences similar to mine, the lives of others were singularly barren of juvenile romance or precocity. To the lips of the former, therefore, my stories may bring a smile as old memories stir, and they are carried back over the highway of years by the narration of some incident which had a counterpart in their own lives, and to the latter, a sigh of regret at something missed in life.

I do not propose to fill up space with the narration of incidents other than those in which some curious, unique or laughable element justifies their telling. With this brief prelude, I begin my story.

I was born in the year 1900. My birthplace, an English city, with some thirty thousand population. My parents, though not rich, were moderately well off and we lived in the comfortable fashion of the middle class English family. I was an only child and as such was humored to a certain extent, but I was also ruled with disciplinarian firmness, for my father, a grave, silent man, was quick enough to take note of juvenile insubordination, and as quick to chastise it. I held him in great respect, with which was mingled a certain degree of awe.

I place the age at which I experienced my first sexual excitation definitely identified with a female at somewhere between five and six. I say definitely identified with a female because I had observed a periodic hardening and expansion of that curious little appendage that hung between my legs, which phenomenon generally occurred in the early morning, or when I was being bathed. More than once I had been on the point of asking my mother for an explanation of its peculiar conduct, but some instinctive reticence always sealed my lips just as the question was mentally formulated. Certainly, up until almost my eighth year I was entirely unaware of the differences between the sexes and blissfully ignorant of all things pertaining thereto. But about the time I was six years old the association of a female was for the first time linked up with erotic sensations. It was of a rather insignificant nature and transpired under the following circumstances: For a year or more my mother, failing in health, had been confined to her room. There was in the domestic employ, an elderly woman who acted in the capacity of general housekeeper, and amongst whose varied and multiple obligations devolved that of watching over and endeavoring to keep me out of mischief. When I was about six years old, she retired from our service and in her place came a maid of seventeen or eighteen. Her appearance was attractive, her manner genial, and I soon developed a strong liking for her.

This girl had been duly authorized to punish me for disobedience, or other infractions of the household piece, corporal punishment being the prescribed remedy. But she was a good- natured, kindhearted damsel and it wasn' t until I had committed a particularly malevolent piece of mischief one day that she lost her temper momentarily, turned me across her knee, and gave me a paddling. The blows were not of sufficient severity to cause me any real discomfort, and something about the position in which she held me across her knees, or perhaps some dormant instinct awakened by the contact of her hand on my bottom, began to work on my sexual nerve centers and resulted in a muscular reaction similar to that which I had observed on other occasions already referred to. In addition, I now became aware of a decidedly pleasurable sensation which was stealing through my body, a sensation which seemed to be forming in and radiating from the regions about my groin. The condition I was in must have become apparent to her through the pressure of a hard little cock against her thigh for she abruptly discontinued the chastisement, and I perceived a smile on her lips as she stood me back on the floor.

From that time on I sought ways and means of securing repetitions of this pleasant punishment, and the obliging damsel, entering into the spirit of things, accommodated me generously. But the method first employed was improved upon. Subsequent spankings were not administered without first lowering or removing my trousers, and while the spanking was in progress the amiable girl held me in such a position that while one hand was dealing blows of just enough vim to warm my naked bottom, the other could be insinuated under my groin, and cupped my cock and testicles. The soft pressure and contact of her hand upon these organs caused me such exquisite tremors as to motivate constant efforts on my part to provide her with pretexts, which I instinctively sensed to be necessary, for more and better spankings.

Now, it might reasonably have been expected that these little incursions into the realms of concupiscence would have paved the way to others of more advanced nature. But such was not the case; she never ventured to extend the simple repertoire nor did it ever occur to me to so much as wonder what she might have between her own legs. For upward of a year the spankings continued and then, much to my regret, she took her departure from our midst. And though it concerned me not the slightest at the time, I often speculated in the years as to precisely what there had been for her in all this and what pleasure she could have derived from the performance. Possibly the mere handling and fingering of my small but eminently masculine attributes in their state of sexual excitation reacted upon her own sensibilities, provoking a species of reciprocal echo. At any rate, I remember her with the kindliest feelings of appreciation.

I was seven years old when I made an important discovery. In the yard which surrounded our home were a number of trees. Among them was one of the eucalyptus variety, slim and straight as an arrow. Some six or seven inches in diameter at the base, its verdant bark as smooth as silk and not a branch or twig to mar its lissom symmetry for thirty or forty feet above the ground. There was something distinctly feminine about this young tree. Perhaps it was the smooth, beautiful bark and its slender gracefulness which set it apart in vivid contrast with its gnarled and rugged companions.