Frank Harris - My Life And Loves, vol 5

One night I nearly gave way.

“Why do you wish to return to your country?” the headsman asked me. “Are you not happy here?”

I had no answer.

“So you will stay?”

I almost said yes. But suddenly, and not for the first time in similar situations, I remembered the long preparation that had gone to dedicating myself to a useful and noble life. Was I to put all that behind me? To forget my duties to my fellow countrymen, to the civilization from which I had derived so much? There could be no question. I must leave at once before it is too late, I remember thinking. It was difficult to explain my attitude to the headsman who had become my dear friend. What did he know of the values which I held so dear? I apologized for my determination, but insisted that I had to depart.

“When?” he said.

“Tomorrow,” I replied, for the decision once made, could not be revoked. It was now or never.

Nevertheless, when on the following day I took my leave, I did so with a heavy heart. I shall never know whether I did wrong not to dedicate my life to the betterment of those friendly natives.

A few general remarks before I pass on. Again and again, I have been amused by the vagaries of modesty. I found more than one tribe in central Africa in which the women and girls went completely nude in front while covering their behinds sedulously.

But different people have different ways. Egyptian and Arab women, when surprised by men, lift up their solitary garment to conceal their eyes while exposing the cunt. The natives of Tasmania move about, even among the white race, in their nudity seemingly unconcerned; but when they sit down with men, they take care to put their right heel so that it conceals their sex. In Constantinople, I observed women continually take all their clothes off and be no more ashamed of their nudity than of their bare hands. I did not find these differences in India, though modesty was never very marked there. In China, however, it was conspicuous by its absence. In China, sensuality was studied more than anywhere else in the world.

I'll finish first, though, with Africa, and my experiences with the women of the Arab world. The experiences I had there were many and various, ranging from the simple act of lovemaking to the amazing “bed of crucifixion” to which, one evening in Alexandria, I allowed myself to be strapped.

An acquaintance of mine, a member of the British Military Commission in Egypt, first described this delicate instrument of “torture” to me. He assured me that never had he experienced such wonderful orgasms than when strapped to the “bed of crucifixion.”

I have no means of knowing whether this is the name it goes by throughout North Africa and the Middle East, or whether it was merely the name which my friends and his acquaintances applied to it. There is nothing at all technical about it. It is simply a bed with ordinary leather straps for the hands and for the feet and with one broad waistband which prevents the body from rising off the bed. One is strapped to the bed and the remainder of the operation is carried out by two young girls who have been specially trained for the purpose.

First, the body of the victim is smeared with coconut oil from head to foot. He is, of course, quite naked. Then he is strapped into position on the bed. Subsequently, the girls appear, also in the nude, and they proceed with the most gentle of little tongue movements to lick every trace of the oil from the victim's body. They begin at the extremities, one at either end, and working slowly and thoroughly, they come to meet at the body's center. Eventually, by means of the skillful manipulation of their tongues, they cause the helpless male to have a mighty orgasm without having indulged in sexual intercourse.

I was naturally anxious to have the experience, the more so because the house guaranteed to make each victim ejaculate in this manner. Thus, if they were not successful, no payment would be expected.

I felt at the time that I would be quite capable of controlling myself. Alas! I had not counted on the superb skill of the two young enchantresses.

They were expert in all respects, particularly in their oral ministrations. While I was bound helplessly, one straddled my face so that I had to lick her delicious little cunt, while the other sucked my upright cock in her mouth without a second thought. It seemed as though she took me entirely down her throat, for the channel in which I was lodged was tight and moist and I could feel her tongue working the sides of my shaft. Then they would change positions so that the other could taste the salty drops oozing from my straining tool, while the other enjoyed the pleasure of my tongue.

Of course that was not the whole of it. They each of them lowered themselves onto my cock and had me fuck themor did they fuck me? I was theirs to use as they wished; I could no more deny them than I could get up and walk out of the place. Nor did I want to, but I was starting to have misgivings.

Before an hour had passed, they were threatening to raise me to my third orgasm. I begged them to stop. They did so only on the condition that I would give them an extra tip. I capitulated at once. The extreme tension of the past hour had really been almost unsupportable. My friend laughed when I met him in the vestibule. He said that he underwent the “crucifixion” regularly, once a month!

Of course I had many other experiences in Egypt. I had the incredible experience of seeing a Nubian woman thrust a liter milk bottle into her vagina and make it disappear completely. Naturally, having seen her thus do injury to herself, I had no desire whatsoever to fuck her.

Another time, a belly-dancer was prevailed upon to dance naked on the table of a dive in Cairo. Having completed her superbly sexual dance, she was set upon by all the males present and had to submit until all the lust in the room had been quenched. She took one immense cock in her cunt, one in her mouth, one in her bottomhole, and grasped one in each of her hands. Before or since I have never seen such a shower of sperm. I was the only man present who refrained from having intercourse with her, not that I did not enter into the spirit of the thing, but simply because I did not think it wise to take the risk of contracting a venereal disease.

I mention these experiences, not because all my experiences in the Arab countries were so crude, but simply because the Arab female in general is not unlike our European woman, especially the Spanish who have almost the same complexion, the same dark hair, and a similar temperament.

Though they sometimes like to consider themselves Europeans, North Africans belong to a geography that is essentially part of the Middle East, and that term has not only a geographical but also a cultural and political reference. Taken as a whole, the Middle East has for the past epoch at least been a sphere of political ferment. As such, it lies there as a pearl to be annexed by whatever European power has the appropriate ambition and politico-military power. As such, it has provoked international jealousies which in large part contributed towards the Great War. I cannot attempt a detailed analysis of the causes of that war. I shall content myself now with the consideration of a few of its aspects.

The talk of all the first years of the new century was the change in feeling between England and Germany. The feeling in England towards Germany grew steadily worse ever since the Kaiser's letter backing up Kruger in 1896. Every brag by the German Emperor about the growth of the German fleet intensified the bitterness in England.

Curiously enough, almost all the chief London journalists worked persistently to increase the bad feeling. Colonel Maxse and his friends in the National Review let no opportunity pass unused and Mr. Strachey and his staff in The Spectator were just as venomous. Sir Rowland Blennerhasset, too, in The Fortnightly; Dr. Billon in The Contemporary and Mr. Arnold White as a free lance did all they could to fan the flame of hatred.