Mike Phillips - The many tongues of love

I learned fast and I practiced what I learned. In the next two years I sucked just about every girl in Italy, including a few older women who were every bit as exciting as the young ones. Alberto and I remained pals, and we fucked and sucked our way across all of Europe one summer, just before I came to the United States.

"Oh yes, I came to the U.S.. Directly to Cicero, Illinois, where the family was and still is. And I am here too. Chicago isn't bad, but there is a morality that exists here in the Midwest that doesn't mix well with my ideas on sexuality. I had a rough time finding girls who would even let me feel their cunts, much less touch them. For the first year here, I almost had no sex at all. I masturbated myself silly, dreaming of eating all the cunts who were around me, but never within reach."

Although Frieda was an American Negress and Tony is an Italian, they both suffer from a similar perversion, an intense oral fixation. But Tony's disposition is more complex. Voyeurism, traces of homosexuality, ejaculatio praecox (premature emission), and a near total misconception of the feminine sexual physiological functions comprise his case history.

Tony's first real sexual encounter occurred when he watched his friend Alberto and Alberto's lover engaged in oral-genital relations. Tony was secreted behind the closet door, occupied in genital masturbation, as he watched.

The instinct of scopophilia – voyeurism/exhibitionism – is a component of the total erotic composition in every individual. Like the other components – sadism/masochism – it was a passive and active aim. Opposing sexual forces are always present simultaneously. In other words, anyone who is a voyeur is at the same time an exhibitionist. Looking and showing are preparatory acts which many normal people linger over during the attainment of the sexual goal. But the pleasure becomes perverse only when it supplants the normal sexual aim instead of augmenting it.

The forces which oppose scopophilia are shame and disgust; shame inhibits exhibiting, and disgust counters looking. These forces are set up as resistances to any sexual impulses and act as guides for sexual development, restraining it within the cultural norm. They develop in the normal individual before the sexual instinct has reached its full strength, and from this point they more or less determine the course of erotic evolution. When the sexual instinct wins in its struggle against these resistive, factors (shame and disgust) a situation which modern psychology designates as perverse, the individual is at the mercy of his libido – at least in reference to this one lust.

When the sex drive remains attached to immature phases of erotic development and fails to be subordinated to coitus, it is probably the result of a fixating experience. These experiences can be the outcome – of either an internal or external trauma – that is, an imagined or real experience – caused by seduction, observation of parents having intercourse, or the threat of castration. These are the primal scenes.

If Tony had been a child when he witnessed Alberto and Alberto's lover engaged in oral-genital intercourse, it would have been a very traumatic event for him. But Tony was already seventeen years of age when the incident occurred. Therefore, Tony's predisposition to voyeurism was probably determined by an earlier experience, which placed him passively in a position which he has been actively repeating ever since.

But as mentioned before, voyeurism is only a part of Tony's sexual disposition. Traces of homosexuality are also to be found in Tony's case. Tony became so excited when he watched Alberto masturbate that he eagerly consumed Alberto's semen. In this instance, Tony's resistance of disgust was overruled by his libido. This occurred similarly when Tony witnessed his aunt urinating and was compelled to consume some of her urine. At this point it would be easy to assume that the absence of disgust in Tony's character is the prime factor in his perversions. And no doubt it is a major factor. However, I am led to another conclusion. Tony is completely ignorant of female sexuality. He thinks that women ejaculate externally the same as men. In this way he gives himself away. He fantasizes that he sees the male genital on his women, imagining that they are ejaculating externally. And in his imagination he is exhibiting a strong sign of overt bisexuality.

In a contribution to the study of inversion, regarding a memory from the childhood of Leonardo da Vinci, Freud writes:

There was once a time when the male genital was found incompatible with the picture of the mother. When a male child first turns his curiosity to the riddles of sexual life, he is dominated by his interest in his own genital. He finds that part of his body too valuable and too important for him to be able to believe that it could be missing in other people whom he feels he resembles so much. This preconception is so firmly planted in the youthful investigator that it is not destroyed even when he first observes the genitals of little girls.

And so little boys begin to imagine that women have smaller penises that will grow in time. When the little boy grows up and sees with his own eyes that this is not true, fear strikes him. He deduces, that girls have been punished and had their penises cut off leaving a wound. Many times he has been threatened with castration for masturbating. He is now convinced that this could really be true and becomes frightened for his masculinity. And at the same time he will despise the unhappy creatures on whom the cruel punishment, as he supposed, has already fallen.

Thus Tony, in reaction to his castration fears, refuses to notice true feminine sexuality. He is forced to deny that beings, so similar to him, lack a penis because this implies the horror of castration.

It was determined earlier that Tony's fixation upon voyeurism was caused by a childhood trauma, real or imagined. We have every reason to believe that this was caused by desires brought on by thoughts of his parents having intercourse. To a child, seeing and doing are the same thing. Therefore Tony's voyeuristic fixation was related to his desire for his mother. Freud tells us that the desire for incest always evokes fear of castration. Therefore, like the little boy Freud described, he is compelled to imagine that women have penises in order to overcome his fear of castration.

The only portion of Tony's perversion which is left to be examined is his tendency toward premature emission. This again reflects his attitude towards women. By depriving his women of sexual pleasure he is expressing his aggression and hostility, which are ultimately the result of his fear of castration.

I've been here two and a half years. When I first got here, I was unaccustomed to the ways of this country, and I spoke almost no English at all. Now I'm a regular American, and I walk and talk like it and I still live in Cicero with my aunt and uncle.

I must tell you about my aunt – I call her Madge – because she has played an important role in my life. And in my sexual life as well.

When I first got here, as I said earlier, I almost had no sex whatsoever – I didn't know anyone and didn't know how to find girls the way we did in Italy. And of the women I knew were either married or well-protected by their parents. So what was I to do? I fell asleep with an erection each night, and woke the same way in the morning. My thoughts were constantly on sex – especially oral sex.

Once, after an English class at night, I met a girl. She was not the best looking broad in the world, but after starvation, who cares? I came on to her very strong, and she didn't resist – she was feeling my cock as soon as we started kissing. We went to her apartment – a dingy little place I remember – and took off our clothes. It had been months since I had touched another person, and I was dying for it.