Anonymous - The altar of VVenus - The Making of a Victorian Rake

I shall insert here a few episodes which though out of the chronological order of events I have attempted to follow in this biography, will nevertheless not be amiss as illustrations of the peculiarities I have made reference to.

Once, under a temporary domestic arrangement, I lived with a girl of very ardent disposition, who lent herself enthusiastically to every erotic fancy our youthful passions could suggest, and we were neither of us novices exactly. There was, therefore, no logical reason for the slightest degree of prudery between us.

It was my custom to arise at seven o' clock in the morning, and in order not to awaken her I always dressed and shaved quietly, and slipped out with the least possible noise. One morning I left our apartment at my accustomed hour, ate my breakfast in a nearby restaurant and was about to proceed t my office when I discovered that I had left papers in the apartment which I should have brought with me. So I retraced my steps and, supposing that Gabrielle, my companion, was still asleep, I turned the key quietly, intending to slip in and get my papers without disturbing her.

The door to the bedroom was slightly ajar and as I put my hand on it to open it wide enough to permit my entry, a sight was unexpectedly revealed which caused me t remain where I was.

Gabrielle was awake, but she was not aware of my presence.

She had thrown back the covers, and with her night robe drawn up over her breasts was lying on her back, knees drawn up and legs separated. One round white arm was resting at her side but the other, not so innocently occupied, was extended down over her abdomen, her wrist was moving vigorously – and the tips of two fingers were lost to sight amid the glossy tendrils of hair at the base of her stomach.

In plain, vulgar, everyday words, my little Gabrielle was jacking herself off.

The sight reacted instantly and violently upon my own emotions. My first impulse, after observing the spectacle for a few moments, was to take off my clothes and delay my return to the office for half an hour or so, but it occurred to me that it might hurt her pride to know I had witnessed her act, thinking possibly I had intentionally spied upon her. But even as I hesitated undetermined, the episode came to a sudden conclusion. I heard a subdued gasp, the movement of her wrist was accelerated for a moment, then ceased and she relaxed languidly, closing her eyes. I slipped away from the door and quietly left the apartment.

The really curious termination of the incident referred to came a fortnight later. Business matters required that I make a trip from the city which signified three or four days absence from home. While I was discussing the matter with Gabrielle she remarked in a joking way that she didn' t know how she was going to " get along without it" during the period of separation, to which I replied:

" Well, honey, you can do what you did before you had me, can' t you?"

She looked at me in a startled way, and said:

" What do you mean, Gilbert?"

" I mean, you' ve still got your fingers, haven' t you?" when the significance of my words dawned on her in a wave of crimson passed over her cheeks and to my astonishment she exclaimed with great indignation:

" Why, I never did that in my life!"

" What! Never?"

" No! Never!"

" Not even once, honey?"

On another occasion I was discussing with a feminine acquaintance the subject of suppressed longings and inhibitions. She was twentyfive or twenty- six years old, had been married, but was separated from her husband.

I had expressed my belief that there was no person living, who did not carry in his or her heart a secret longing for some particular form of sexual gratification which had never been indulged, either because of lack of opportunity or inhibition through fear or shame. Something in the look she cast at me, or in the way she quickly averted her eyes, told me that in her case at least I had hit the nail on the head. Curious to confirm the supposition, I urged her to confess.

" Come now! Own up! Isn' t there something naughty you' ve wanted to try for a long time, but never dared?"

She made no immediate reply but the color of her cheeks wsa proof enough of the accuracy of my surmise. It took a lot of coaxing and encouraging, but I finally got the story.

When she was seventeen, she had known a young man who courted her assiduously for a brief period. The courtship had not resulted in anything serious, although he was a likable young fellow. Later he moved from the neighborhood and she had never seen him again, though she remembered him with some affection.

Some years later and while married, she had a dream in which this young man figured prominently. In this dream she was standing naked before a tall mirror brushing her hair. While so engaged, he appeared in the room and kneeling on the floor before her, he separated the lips of her genitals with his fingers and sucked her clitoris until she had or dreamed she had orgasm. And ever since, had suffered an inordinate longing, a longing she had never before voiced, to have a man do it to her exactly as in this dream – she standing named before a mirror, and he kneeling at her feet while she brushed her hair.

Needless t say, I volunteered to help her convert the dream into immediate reality, but no quicker were the words off my lips than with flaming cheeks she fled from the room, and locked herself in the bathroom, and it was half an hour before I could coax her to come out.

Here was a girl who for years had ardently and passionately longed for a certain form of sexual gratification and yet, when the opportunity was at hand, shame prevented her from taking advantage of it.

Later, I put my cave- man tactics of " take it first and ask afterward" into effect, and had satisfaction of " bringing" her several times in rapid succession by the famous French method, although unsupplemented by mirror or hair brushes.

Another instance of feminine curiosity which for naive simplicity and ingenuousness certainly took the prize, comes t my mind with the recollection of a little sixteen year old, whom I succeeded in coaxing into my room on several occasions while living in a boarding house her widowed mother presided over. Subsequently our meetings were effected late at night after the mother had gone to sleep, the girl slipping into my room when all was quiet in the house. She was an innocent appearing little damsel and I hesitated to take full advantage of the situation until I heard from her own lips that she had already been initiated, and by no other person than her own uncle – a man of fortyfive, and who lived under the same roof.

According to her story, from the time she was eleven years old he had been in the habit of fondling and caressing her, and fingering her genitals. One morning, some months before I had made her acquaintance, she had gone to his room to awaken him. He seized her, and pulled her down on the bed by him.

" He pulled my dress up," she confided, " and unfastened my panties and then he threw the covers off, so that he was all naked. His thing was sticking up, and he rubbed it between my legs. I tried to get away from him but he held me tight. And then he made it go clear inside me. It hurt awful at first, but pretty soon it began to feel kind of good, too. When he let me up there was blood all over my legs an on the bedsheet. He made me get a clean sheet and put it on the bed. And then he wrapped the bloody one up in a bundle, and hid it so mama wouldn' t see it. And another time, one day when mama was gone, he did it to me again. He sat down in a chair and unfastened his pants and made me sit on his lap so his thing went up inside of me."

After hearing this interesting history I lost no time in breaking in on uncle' s preserves, and thereafter on an average of once a week I enjoyed her company in the still hours of the night, while the rest of the household was wrapt in slumber.