The young boy glanced behind him nervously to reassure himself that he was alone, then resumed peeping through the small break in the translucent glass of the bathroom window. It was early morning, he had just returned from servicing his paper route with the morning edition and the two women in the apartment across the wide areaway were engaged in the usual morning routine of preparing for work.
The lad's excitement mounted with a rush as one of the two casually opened her robe and began to struggle, with suggestive motions of her body, into a tight girdle. His senses received an added fillip when, once into the garment, she reached down to cup herself between the thighs, snugging and adjusting the tight elastic. Dropping the robe, she next proceeded to massage, briefly but somehow caressingly, all the while facial expressions and lip movements indicated that she was continuing a running and, evidently, casual conversation with her apartment mate. All the boy could see of the latter was her legs, encased in her robe, stretched in relaxation, ankles crossed, on an ottoman. Occasionally a hand would enter the picture, gesturing or managing a cigarette over the ash tray on the table beside her.
The girdled woman sat down and carefully began to draw on long, sheer nylon hose, taking care to stretch and snug them to her legs. This was the moment the lad had been waiting for. Unfastening his slacks, he withdrew his erect organ and, excitedly began the ritual of heated and vigorous manipulation. Swiftly then, to his disappointment, she quickly stepped into her high heeled pumps and disappeared from view. As the peeping boy's eyes stayed glued to the window across the way, she returned, her former partial nudity concealed in a full length slip, then pulling her dress on quickly. She vanished from his sight as the boy's excitement subsided. The other woman got out of the chair but got into her clothing out of sight of the young peeper.
Restoring his clothing, he idly watched until the two of them appeared at the front of the apartment building to get into a cab and drive off. In order to see them emerge, he had left the bathroom and gone into the living room of his parents' apartment.
This was almost a morning ritual with the lad. Since moving into the apartment with his mother and father some months before, he had discovered the peep hole and the two women. He had, over the months, been treated to a wide range of vicarious thrills in his watching and had lost no opportunity to gratify his desires.
One morning, the woman he'd just watched dressing herself, had been alone with a man in the apartment across the areaway. Evidently, the other woman was away. When she'd started dressing, the man, dressed only in his shorts, let her get as far as her undergarments (that morning she hadn't put on the girdle) and when she was clad only in panties, hose and shoes, he got up from the chair to take her in a close embrace, freeing his shorts quickly to expose his erection.
The boy could detect that the woman was protesting but not vigorously. As he watched in breathless excitement, the man kept kissing and caressing the woman; then moved her toward the bed. He removed her panties and the watching boy almost choked as he knelt between her gleaming limbs, brandishing himself, boastfully. The boy could hardly suppress his own cries of excited sensation as he moved his hand, watching the man's naked body move forward over the woman on the bed; seeing her legs and arms wind around him in avid co-operation.
During the length of time the participants were obliviously engaged in their vigorous thrusting and writhing, the young lad attained two orgasms....
Tony Y., a nineteen-year-old first year college student, hurried from the subway entrance toward his place of employment. During his summer vacations, he was being given the opportunity to learn his uncle's business-shoe manufacturing-and had been doing so since his fourteenth birthday when he started as a helper in the shipping department. Now he was engaged in helping as he learned in the cutting room and this hot, July morning, was striding quickly along the crowded Manhattan street, his light suit coat carried over his arm.
Tony had a busy eye. As attractively formed and dressed young women (as well as older ones) flowed by him on the sidewalk, he was quickly and happily noting outstanding and exceptional conformations. A proud bust here-a tiny waist and the impudent thrust of rounded thighs beneath the short skirts-a saucy pair of legs there with an enticing curve to the instep. Now and then, he paused, unobtrusively to look (or pretend to look) into a shop window in order to get a rear view of an enticing set of legs and enjoy the enticing movement of firm, agile buttocks....
This young man enjoyed his voyeuristic activity. It was a ritual with him. Since his first employment at his uncle's plant (always in summer) he had enjoyed the parade of women in their light, summer garb and the feeling of excitement it roused in him as his eyes cut and darted to encompass it all. Some lucky mornings, the sun silhouetted the outline of thighs through the thin material of dresses and he always got an extra sensation of excitement out of this-as though he'd stumbled upon a fleeting treasure.
Tony liked girls and they liked him. He took the relationships he established with them in stride, shrewdly aware that the girls were husband shopping-and Tony was nowhere near ready for taking a wife. He enjoyed the game of sex, the acts of it, and he enjoyed looking at women: attractive, exciting, vivacious, or demure. His eyes brought him myriad, fleeting pleasures as he walked the few blocks from the subway to his job....
These two situations delineate the scope of voyeurism-the first is the extreme or consciously spying or peeping upon others in a recurring situation. Actually, this is best (and most widely) described as the action of a peeping Tom. Tony's case is at the other end of the scale: casual, fleeting, enjoyable. In the case of the young paper boy, spying on the women in the adjacent apartment, here is involved a breach of the law-just as in the case of one who lurks in-likely areas after nightfall, seeking targets of opportunity for his spying. The peeping Tom is an offender against the established customs of the social order. The casual devotee of girl-watching on the streets is participating in a completely innocent or socially-acceptable activity.
The latter type of voyeurism is indulged in, to some extent, by both males and females. However, voyeurism, as we shall see, is pretty largely restricted to the male of the species. The female, because of her difference-especially in sexual response-is little affected by it.
The sexuality of women, briefly, is so much a basic component of their total entity that the superficial does not attract her. Though it may sound difficult to believe, sex means almost two entirely different things to the female and the male. It has been said that love is a woman's whole life. Being made as she is: bearing the responsibility and possessing the physical investiture which charges her with the responsibility for the reproduction of the species, the female seldom takes a casual view of sex; nor is she much impressed with its peripheral manifestations. Thus, peeping is not, usually, an attraction for her. She is, herself, a sex symbol if she needs to look at one ... a true voyeur is one who can become excited to the point of enjoying orgasm while watching others engaged in the act--few women may be placed in this category.
Voyeurism is a little-understood manifestation of the complex sex make-up of the human species. In the lower animal forms it varies in its appeal. Instances have been cited of dogs being excited to attempt or initiate sexual activity, inspired by the spectacle of two other dogs, so occupied. Conversely, the eruption of copulative activity in the center of a herd of cattle seldom produces any sympathetic excitement in the surrounding animals.
Voyeurism is, thus, almost totally a human ability, depending not alone upon the eye as an extension of erogenous zones, but also dependent upon the exercise of the imagination concurrently with the act of looking or peeping.
The casual voyeur, checking the shapes of the girls who pass him on the street, will now and then encounter one who meets his standards of sexual desirability. He will simultaneously enjoy a fleeting run-through of fantasy in connection with her. The animals of lower order-not being equipped with mentalities capable of fantasy-are not impressed, probably, by images the eye gathers. In the few instances of animals who do respond to sexual activities of their kind, the senses of smell and hearing are most likely responsible for their imitative reaction.
Brian L., an unhandsome young man in his mid-twenties, although possessed of a normal sexual drive, had never been adept at getting along with girls. Through childhood, school and work years, he had failed to attract associates of the opposite sex. Brian's appearance, while unprepossessing, was far from repulsive but he never developed the knack of making the best of his physical attributes. Brian was undoubtedly burdened with an unfavorable mental image of himself; consequently he was never at ease with girls and could not get on any sort of footing with them which was attractive to them and satisfactory to him.
His sexual gratification was achieved through self-manipulation with "girlie" magazines, which he chose selectively. Brian's standards of attraction were high and he had many words with store owners and clerks over his minute examination of those that were offered for sale. He told one store owner who chided him about the length of time he spent in looking over the magazines:
"Look, Mister Clayton, if I'm gonna pay a buck V a quarter or two 'n' a half f one, I don't want pictures uh pigs-who needs 'em?"
"I don' wanna run business away, Brian-but why doncha go out an' getcha self a girl-that's what you need!"
Brian only shrugged. He earned a living income in a routine job and kept to himself almost entirely. His only emotional outlets were his sessions with his magazine pictures, highlighted by a rare sight of a girl (who met his standards) on the street. Sometimes he would change his direction to follow one of these, eyeing her hungrily as he noted the movement of her limbs and body beneath her clothes. Then, he would hurry to his room and lock himself in to masturbate with the recollection and fantasy centered upon her....
Thus, voyeurism covers the entire spectrum of optical activity in its relation to things erotic. Some question has been raised, in obscure areas, as to the validity of the term as one which should be applied exclusively to sexual considerations. The word comes from the French verb voir, which translates "to see," the form voyeur meaning one who sees, the implications of its Gallic origin, plainly, adding the dash of spice which gives the meaning "one who looks." Opposing the use of voyeur are those who insist that, on the face of it, the word might just as well designate the individual who enjoys all optical delights-the fanfare of color in a spectacular sunset-the rolling motion of waves breaking on the sands-a masterpiece of painting or sculpture.
However, it seems that the proponents of this meaning for voyeur are ranged on the losing side.
For one reason-and this is not said to be entirely facetious-the word is most often pronounced with a tacit 'accent leer'-which would dispose of the former contention.
Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary(1962) defines a voyeur as "a person given to voyeurism; a peeping Tom"; following with a definition for voyeurism as: "a perversion in which sexual gratification is obtained by looking at sexual objects or scenes." This information leaves something to be desired. To classify a voyeur as a Peeping Tom and voyeurism as a perversion is, certainly, an inaccurate statement versus popular usage. While a voyeur's activity may offer no offense to socially acceptable practices, this cannot be applied to the actions of a peeping Tom.
Further, the statement that "sexual gratification is obtained by looking" is certainly far wide of the mark if gratification is accepted at its usual face value, accorded the term in matters touching the area of sex. It is apparent that the term voyeur has been absorbed into that considerable segment of the American language containing words which are nebulous or foggy in their definition. Small wonder that the difficulties of communication continue to grow, with our own tongue working against us in this way.
Professional men are no less obscure in assigning terms to the activity of looking or peeping. The Greek verb scopeo-"I look," and phileo-"I like," have been combined to variously produce a term which means "I like to look." The variety is encountered in the fact that some like it "scopto-philia," while some prefer "scotophilia." It has, in origin, no sexual flavor nor implication. More definitive in this area, however, is the term "mixoscopia" assembled from (again) scopeo and mix is the latter term meaning both "mingling" and "intercourse"-producing a word which means "I like to look at intercourse."
It appears that the judicious course then, with the existence of some evident disagreement (in addition to the previously indicated confusion) which exists in the attempts to define the activity of looking for titillation's sake, is not attempt to label it but to stick to the procedure of describing it. A more laborious process, to be sure, but it is effort dedicated to clarification.
Probably the world's most famous sexologist, Havelock Ellis, says of voyeurism: "To a certain extent, this tendency is absolutely normal; that manifestation of it should be considered shameful is due simply to the rigid secrecy which convention attaches to the naked body. Many respectable men have, during their youth, sought secret opportunities to surprise women in their bedrooms; and more than one honorable woman has looked through the keyhole of a man's bedroom, though she would not, today, be prepared to admit it ... landladies and servants put their eyes to the keyholes of rooms where there were couples they suspected of being in love ... These manifestations have sometimes attracted the attention of the police, notably in Paris. Women I know have discovered that men were looking at them through the openings in the roof of the toilets in the Tuileries Gardens."
Ellis, notably, does not assign any blame to such activities; further evidence of confusion as to sharp definition of areas of permissiveness vs areas of offense is provided by the colleagues of the Kinsey institute for Sex Research, FOUNDED BY ALFRED C. KINSEY. IN THEIR BOOK, "SEX OFFENDERS," CHAPTER 16, titled "Peepers," begins:
"Peepers are adult males who, for their own sexual gratification, looked into some private domicile or into some area or room reserved exclusively for females with the hope of seeing females nude or partially nude, the observation being without the consent of the females concerned. The term peeper, as thus defined, is not quite synonymous with the term voyeur, which is broader. A voyeur is a person who, according to the dictionary ". . .attains sexual gratification by looking at sexual objects or situations." Thus, a lounger on the street watching passing girls, or a person watching a strip-tease act could qualify as a voyeur, or so could the peruser of "cheesecake" magazines. One might say the peeper is a voyeur who has no legal right to be at the location from whence he observes, but even this definition is imperfect since a man has a right to be on a public street at night, but is liable to arrest if he stands on the sidewalk looking into the window of the adjacent apartment house." So much for confusion.
Dr. George Henry does the best job of "sorting out" the basic facts to define the various facets of voyeurism. In his book, "All the Sexes," Dr. Henry notes:
"The impulse to look at other persons for the purpose of appraising sexual qualities and propensities is a universal experience. Response to this impulse is found in the desire to be admired by others, in the display of the body and in the use of adornment. Peeping, or scotophilia, or voyeurism is just as common as exhibitionism and is indulged in equally by both sexes. Inspection is a part of all amorous engagements, but it is often regarded as immoral when it is obviously sexual, and it is illegal when it invades the privacy of others in the form of peeping.
"Scotophilia is really a counterpart of exhibitionism. Both tendencies are often closely associated, and both are manifestations of insecurity and narcissism. A man who places himself in a position to view the partially clad or nude body or the genitals of a woman is often one who has been unable to satisfy himself sexually by closer contact, and who would be embarrassed if he had the opportunity. like exhibitionism, scoptophilia is a juvenile form of sexuality the purpose of which is self-gratification.
"Exhibitionism and scoptophilia obtain free expression in nudist camps under the guise of pursuit of health through exposure to the sun. An apologetic explanation is given that public nudity lessens sexual attraction. The approximation to nudism at bathing beaches and swimming pools constitutes a major attraction to those who come to display themselves and to look at others."
There would appear to be a tacit agreement among psychologists, and medically qualified experts that the sense of sight operates as a normal source of stimulus in matters sexual. Nudism, scanty attire at bathing beaches and swimming pools, clothing which is designed to emphasize rather than conceal-all these are indications that voyeurism and corresponding exhibitionism are a widely-accepted factor in our daily lives....
"Man, they drive me out of my mind," said William O., a nineteen-year-old service station attendant. "Girls and women drive in here all the time with their dresses up so high, I've begun to think it's a deliberate tease. Oh, I know it's not true with all of them," he frowned, reconsidering, "I guess it's just so common it seems that way to me. You ought to come to work with me sometime and perch on my shoulder-you'll see what I mean.
"There's one woman who's a regular customer. She's a blonde, about thirty-something-early thirty, I'd guess-and she's a divorcee. She comes on like crazy-at least to me. I've never seen her standing up, but she must have a figure out of this world. Nearly every time she pulls in, I start to experience an erection. Not always, though; sometimes it's so busy in here there's no time to do anything but go, go, go. She'll pull up to those side pumps where there's the least traffic and when I go up to the driver's window with my big smile, the hem of her skirt usually hits her halfway between the knee and the hip. Man! she has beautiful legs and my eyes just bounce around like ping-pong balls. After I get the pump running, I have to clean the windshield-and this is where I get my big jolt. When there's a good pair of legs under the wheel, I always start on the other side of the glass and work over, to save the best for last.
"This blonde will just sit there, thighs relaxed, and all the time I'm standing over her, I can identify what she's wearing next to her skin. She doesn't try to close 'em up or cross 'em. I always wear these real dense sun shades and she wears dark glasses, too. I've glanced up several times to catch her eyes fixed on mine. I bet she's trying to see me looking, but I don't think she can. Not as heavy as the tint is in my glasses and under the shade of the overhead.
"Then, when I come around to the window again to collect her credit card, she always checks the crotch of my jeans. Most of the time I don't disappoint her-and her eyes go there, every time. She doesn't make with any conversation; she never makes a pass-she just sits there and lets me look up her skirt-and then checks me for a reaction. It's screwy. I'd like to make it with her, but she's so stand-offish, I'm scared to make a move. So, I treat her like she was the president of the company-except when she sits there with her dress up and those beautiful thighs spread.
"Lots of girl and women drivers will close their thighs and turn in the seat while I'm working on the glass. But you'd be surprised how many don't. Once in a while, I'll hit double bingo-two of them; both gabbing away, paying no attention to me, but sitting there with most of their goodies on display. I get a pretty good check on underwear. With these short skirts, most of the gals who come in are covered from the hose up. But, I'd say about a fourth of them still stick to the old open-bottom girdle. Some wear pants-but some don't. That's when the going gets rough-man, I really have to watch my step. If the boss ever caught me trotting around with an erection, he'd probably crack my head; but I can't help it. They just turn me on and it never happens less than a half-dozen times a shift..."
Asked if he managed to make any sexual contacts with the female customers, William was reluctant at first but finally admitted he did.
"Usually, the most outgoing are the younger ones, a little younger than me, but they're mostly conversation. I look for the signs in the older girls and let the kids alone. Now and then, I get a real warm smile and explore the situation. I've never hit a score the first time out. It generally takes four or five visits into the station before we can get on a kidding basis. Then I can move, and generally find I haven't made a mistake. I've developed some conversation to go along with it-and it always leaves me an out. If I see one start to cloud up over something I've said, I just keep on talking-but, from then on, it leads clear away from a proposition.
"I like the older models best, really. One of these days I hope that blonde gives me just a teeny-weeny opening. Man I dream about those thighs..."
Sex is more and more emphasized in visual manifestations in our culture. Clothes for both men and women seem to reveal rather than conceal, although there are many who are aghast at what is revealed. Brief skirts for females can be quite alluring-if the wearer has pretty legs. Otherwise, it seems a hopeless cause. Too, the current fashions in footwear more and more resemble aboriginal primitive and, should a female be possessed of attractive extremities, the footgear quite often destroys its effect.
However, the sheath dress, the split skirt, daring d'colletage all play a part in acceptable exhibitionism, as do the extremely snug trousers for males, which cannot help but bulge at the crotch.
In both male and female dress, then it must be conceded that voyeurism and exhibitionism are an accepted and expected thing in the American mores. With more and more overt resistance being shown to long-standing taboos with regard to sex, it is logical to believe that a change is in progress. Whether it may be of a dimension to justify calling it a "revolution" is difficult to know, at this point. Certain it is, that the rapidly-increasing incidence of higher education carries with it an increasing resistance to the secrecy, the forbidden character of anything touching on sex. If this trend continues, what we witness today in opposition to the behavioral codes bequeathed us by antiquity, is only the action of the advance elements. With each new class of college graduates which enters the socioeconomic picture, the resistance will stiffen and spread.
In many ways, ours is a society in a condition of flux. In such a state, constant change gives rise to confusion because it seems that time-honored standards with regard to sex are being violated ... and this is always distressing to many who feel that it presages a collapse of cherished institutions. Not so. "I don't know what things are coming to" has been the cry of the middle-age generation in every century. But, it's only change-the thing man resists most-and the force that moves him most.
The pace of life is speeding; the effect of life is more exciting; the rewards of life are richer. Much of it is due to taking our repressions out of the closet. The human race is looking at life with a bolder, braver eye, generation by generation. This is voyeurism in stereo, living color, wide screen....
It's a brave new world. Be a latter day voyeur.....
Look alive!
CHAPTER TWO
THE EYE VS THE LAW
The male in western society is much like the kid with his nose pressed to the window of a candy store. Only, instead of yearning and burning for unattainable chewies and chocolates in endless profusion displayed, the western male (especially in the United States) is constantly enticed by the luscious display of femininity which flows around him-labeled: "Do Not Touch Until Married To You."
To greater or lesser degree, the male population is almost entirely voyeurist. It is impossible for males of any age to escape the lure of attractively-, often seductively-clad, females. They surround him on the streets, in the stores and offices; they attract him in the schools, on the television screen they beckon from the pages of magazines and newspapers, as well as the motion picture screen.
Sex surrounds the western male like another gas in the air he breathes. Yet the accepted mode of behavior requires that he overtly at least, suppress the urge. Is it any wonder that, under the allure of the goodies so attractively, so ubiquitously displayed before him, many a stalwart male is "beside himself" with the anxieties induced by a combination of his natural, healthy sexual desire and the continuing frustration of repression?
The source of these proscriptions does not concern us on these pages; the fact that they do exist is common knowledge, undeniably. Be that as it may, the fact they do contribute to an unnatural, internal unrest is evident in the statistics of increasing illegitimacy;-in the ever-widening incidence of indulgence in pre-marital sex activity-in the reports of precocious and increasingly sophisticated practices in sex experimentation within the ranks of younger "young people" ... wherever you look, the signs are posted.
While voyeurism is an everyday experience with males, it is-in many of its facets-far from a simple or routine activity. For many, it is but a casual, transiently-fleeting pleasure. However, for many another, it is a morbid obsession, leading to frustration of the normal, natural sex manifestations. Between these two extremes, there are many degrees of involvement-and numerous variations in cause and effect. The complications of voyeurism are as manifold as those of sex itself. They range from amusing anecdotal material to repeated and serious involvement with the law-with subsequent forfeit of liberty.
A friend of the author's who is widely acquainted in the "swinging society"-the groups of mate-swappers-tells of one such amusing complication which falls into the first category.
"This one, enthusiastic swinger-let's call him Jack-was completely turned on by photographs of the wife of another prominent and popular member of the swinging society. Over a period of months, Jack had built up a massive desire to meet Mary, being-as I said-brought to fever-heat by her photographs, shown to him by friends. At first, he paid little attention to the fact that Mary's husband (whom we'll identify as Mac) shared with the winsome Mary the title of 'King and Queen of Sex,' kiddingly bestowed by their many friends.
"Then, Jack and his own wife, Jean (who, incidentally is one of the real, living sex-symbols), were invited to a party in a large, midwestern city, some distance from their own home town. A group of cross country swingers had put together a party which promised to gather a group of the most outstanding members of the swinging society. Jack and Jean were included, as a matter of course. When Jack informed Jean they'd been invited, she teased him (he was an avid football fan), saying:
" 'Hooray! Here's our first chance to play an intersectional game! Maybe we can win a bowl bid!'"
"Jack, laughingly, admitted he was 'rarin' to go' and Jean-as the girls do-checked with two other swinging wives by long distance to find out their plans for the group sex part of the affair. The girls always plotted the most exotic and stimulating attire they could dream up to assist in getting the males steamed up.
"You know, it used to be, that men were the ones who were accused of being blabber-mouths where sex experiences were concerned. The expression 'kiss and tell' was a popular cliche in former days. However, in the swinging society, the girls have gotten even. They compare notes ... down to dimensions, techniques, freckles and birthmarks. Of course, they don't confine their comments to the males-the girls and their idiosyncrasies come in for a good share of attention, too.
"Well-in her phone conversations with the other two wives who were going to the party, Jean learned that one of them had told Mary about Jack's interest from having seen her pictures; had sent Mary a picture of him and given him quite a build-up as to his appearance and his abilities. As a result, Mary was intrigued and expressed her interest in meeting Jack.
"Now, if this seems strange, it shouldn't. There's one thing about the swinging society you can't overlook. Its members refuse to have any part of the old-fashioned, 'hush-hush' attitude about sex. Once you get into swinging, your name really gets around ... but only inside the swinging set. Swingers do not discuss their participation with non-swingers, and it's obvious why they don't-but among the members, there's truly a frank and free exchange of thoughts, ideas and information. Not only about sex, but about the people of the swinging set. It's the same, old bit in one respect ... people are the most interesting subject in the world to other people...
"It was with a great deal of anticipation that the party gathered at a large hotel for a pre-dinner cocktail party which started things rolling. Another interesting fact about the swinging set is that, very rarely, are even large groups anything but completely congenial. Swingers are a tightly-knit group. Having to exercise the tremendous amount of discretion they do regarding their swinging activity, they tend to be closer in their ties with each other and-in many instances-swingers have found their activity in the swinging society has been far more help in business or career advancement than any other group, association or club they belong to. It also costs a lot more!
"Needless to say, Jack and Mary lost no time in finding each other at the cocktail party, and they-as well as Jean and Mac-got acquainted with each other in the process of mingling. Every once in a while, Jack would hear Mac and Mary introduced as The King and Queen of Sex. It was a running gag. The title had been awarded, largely, through Mac's writings on the subject but, through cocktails, dinner and the resumption of party activity afterward, the words built up an increasing significance in the back of Jack's mind.
"The girls (when the party gathered in connecting suites for sex), began to emerge in all sorts of sexy attire. One of the greatest favorites was the diaphanous 'baby dolls'-nearly all the girls used them for a base, and went on from there. Some wore opera-length, black sheer or mesh hose; some sported provocative, ruffled panties; there were also transparent (or almost transparent) bras, half-bras which displayed nipples as well as bras through which the nipples protruded, bare.
"As the action began to get underway, the laughter and the delighted, excited cries and exclamations began to multiply. The erotic stimulation spread, as it always does, and the men began to shed their garments in excited response to the sight of such an extensive display of libidinous goodies. Soon, everywhere you looked, there was sex activity going on.
"On the end of one sofa, a girl was urging her male partner out of his clothes. It was the first group party of this size he and his wife had ever attended ... and she'd produced a pair of scarlet nylon jockey shorts for him, as a gag. Anyhow, he was overcome by the surrounding spectacle and couldn't manage an erection! Once down to his red panties (which drew comments of delight from the swingers around him) he began to relax and feel more at home. His partner, sensing his problem, began to stimulate him, orally, and under this encouragement, he was soon erect and ready.
"Two gals began working on another male at the other end of the long sofa and soon had him snowed under, struggling but happy. One of them drifted away when the male and the other gal moved into a sexual embrace in the good, old-fashioned way. The third of the trio was swept toward a bedroom by a passing suitor before she got across the living room. A lone male, stopping to watch the two engaged in coitus, suggested that the gal try oral sex on him while her partner concentrated on her bosoms. She agreed.
"Mary came into the living room of the suite, looking for Jack and we welcomed her eagerly. They sank into a vacant easy chair and began to stimulate each other happily with kisses and caresses. Mary was 'elevated' from the drinks (the very small amount of dinner she'd eaten) and Jack fell in with her jubilant mood. As the scene across from them on the sofa became more vigorous, they looked over to watch and comment, their excitement continuing to rise. As the lover who'd discarded his scarlet jockey shorts began to return the oral stimulation favor of his partner, Mary, laughingly, commented:
" 'Otis is really swinging. His wife was worried because he was shy about being in a group.' "
" 'She needn't have,' Jack returned, watching the writhing of Otis' partner under the skillful oral caresses. 'He's really with it, judging from Lillian's reactions!'"
"At this moment, the trio on the other end of the sofa reached climax and Jack and Mary diverted their attention to them.
" 'Wow!' Jack panted, 'now there's a trio in orbit if I ever saw one' "
' You're so right!' gasped Mary, twisting in Jack's embrace. 'Ooh, lover, I've been looking forward to you for a long time!' "
"At this point, a laughing Mac trotted into the living room, not ranning fast enough to outdistance two laughing females. They persuaded him to the floor-there was no other place for them in the busy room-and it wasn't long before the two of them had stripped Mac, kidding him about his title and enthusiastically working on him. They soon had him nude and, working in tandem as he squirmed on the floor, the two set to work to kiss him over every part of his body.
"Jack had reached the boiling point and he and Mary were just about to stretch on the floor for the climax to all their heated foreplay. Jack was oblivious to everything but the entrancing woman in his arms and was just positioning himself between Mary's eager thighs when another couple breezed into the living room and spotted Mac in the grip of the two girls; Mary in Jack's fevered embrace.
"The King and Queen of Sex!" they caroled, happily, sinking down on the carpet to urge the two groups on with alcoholic fervor. The words drew Jack's attention to Mac. One moment, he was erect, passionately ready to make love to Mary; turning to focus on Mac he suddenly became flaccid and totally incapable. Mary got onto her knees, wondering what had happened and tried oral stimulation but the sight and sound of Mac, a few feet away from him, had suddenly scuttled Jack.
"He told me, afterward, the minute he heard the words, he looked over to become totally conscious of Mac in the arms of the two girls-and everything quit for him. The party was a total loss insofar as sex was concerned. Apologizing to a puzzled Mary, he proceeded to forego the sexual delights he had anticipated and just proceeded to get smashed. There was nothing else he could do ... the sight of Mac and the silly damn 'title' his fellow swingers had hung on him and his wife, really blew up Jack's chances for fun on the party."
Here is an incident in which the eye constructed an excited anticipation, then destroyed it in a flash. Ironically enough, Jack and his lovely wife are known as artists at sex-and have to take a back seat to none in swinging. This incident is a definite validation of the truism concerning the power of mind over matter....
"I didn't mean any harm," a neatly dressed young man blurted to Beverly Hills police. Obviously shaken, disoriented at being arrested on a peeping Tom charge, his plight seemed totally at variance with his tasteful dress and intelligence. At a glance, one would think him capable of finding all the feminine companionship he desired. He was a nice-looking young man-not outstanding, but clean-cut and obviously the product of a better-than-average environment. Yet, here he was, in the hands of the law, charged with peeping.
"I-I was just leaving the building where I live-I went out the back door to the parking stalls," he explained. "I caught just a flash of this naked girl through the narrow gap at the bottom of her window. At first, I could only guess it was a naked girl-I-well I couldn't see that much-but I had a feeling, somehow, that was what it was. Anyway, I crept around into the alley and through the back gate of the building next door. When I got up close enough to the window, I didn't have any trouble seeing into her bedroom..."
The perspiring young man fell' silent. "What was she doing?" a detective asked, without inflection. The young man looked up.
"Well-she was putting on her clothes," he said, huskily. "She didn't have anything on; then she got into her panties and began to pull on her stockings." The young man shivered at the recollection. "I don't know why-watching her do that..."
"Is that when you took out your penis and began to play with it?" the detective queried, bluntly. The other nodded, miserably.
"I-it-I don't know," he mumbled, "it just set me off. I-I couldn't help myself, I guess..." With no previous offenses, the young man's case received no publicity; he was remanded to the custody of his parents (one a step-parent) with whom he lived.
Another, rarer instance of voyeurism was confessed to by an offender who had a record of previous violations and drew a jail term and enforced psychiatric treatment.
"I get a wallop out of watchin' a couple goin' at it," he said, casually. "Man, it really fires my furnace. Sure-I was peepin'. The cops nailed me with my penis in my hand. But this young married couple rent the garage apartment out back of the boardin' house where I lived. The trees were so thick they figured nobody could see 'em so they never bothered to pull down the shades in their bedroom. They went at it like minks-never seemed to get tired. I spotted 'em one night comin' in the driveway and, when they turned on the light in the bedroom, I could see a little of the action as the leaves moved. I got out my field glasses and got a little better shot at 'em but still not good enough to do me any good. But every night I was home, there was this action in the bedroom.
"The next weekend I went out in the back yard and pretended to be enjoyin' the sun, sittin' in one of the chairs on the grass-but I was checkin' the trees. The one closest to the window'd be a tough one to climb, but not too tough....
"That night-Saturday-I hung around 'til they got home, both of 'em a little high, I figured from their chatter as they went up the driveway. I slipped out by the basement door when they turned on the bedroom light and got up that tree to where I could see in. Man, they were a caution! When I eased myself onto a couple of limbs big enough to hold me, they were gettin' out of their clothes and hangin' 'em up. When the boy pulled off his skivvies, his penis was a'ready half-erect as she stripped outa her panties an' fluffed her muff at him.
"He reached for her, but she slipped around and disappeared with him right after her. Wasn't long before they came back with drinks in their hands; sat down on the bed an' started playin' with each other. He was workin' her breasts over an' she was goin' ape; got hold of his erection an' pumped on it 'til he was really doin' the twist. They wasn't big-the husband couldn't-a been over five-seven or-eight, an' she was about five-five-but they both had lots of equipment. Her breasts were as tight as big grapefruit an' her ol' man looked like a horse.
"When they went at it, she rolled back on the bed like a cat and he slipped a raincoat on his erection an' penetrated her. She locked him up in her arms and legs and they started rockin'. Man! you know he wore out two rubbers before they got their climax? They'd go awhile an' rest awhile an' then they'd go some more. They didn't make a sound but they sure put out the action! I finally had to get down outa the damn tree, but they was still goin' at it. I had orgasm twice while I was watchin' 'em go for the first session..."
Here are three widely varying voyeuristic experiences. The first, no more than an accident of the eye and imagination of a member of the sexually sophisticated set; the second an entrapment by a situation and a compulsion its victim hardly understood; and the third, the accepted practice by a seasoned peeping Tom.
In none of these incidents was there any threat, offer nor yet, danger of violence to the object of sexual stimulation by the voyeur. Actually, the only illegality involved was in the incidents which involved invasion of privacy. In the final instance, although the individual concerned was "put away" on a sex charge, his only crime was that he violated the right to privacy of the highly-sexed young couple whose lovemaking so excited him. Incidentally, he was trapped by an old maid, walking her dog in the alley behind the garage, who spotted his face in the light from the bedroom window into which he was looking.
Privacy is a valuable thing to every normal human. There are times when even the most ardent of lovers, the closest of friends, the most unified of families ... all need privacy from each other. It is a difficult thing to describe-the need for privacy-but it exists to a greater or lesser degree in each of us. The voyeur's only crime-in the majority of instance-is the fracture of this right to privacy. This is a peculiar situation ... but our western customs are full of such "peculiar situations" where the law is contrasted with mores ... the basic violation being classified under another name.
Were there any intent, effort or move to harm or give violence to another in an act of voyeurism, it is understandable that the offender should be charged with a crime of sex. But we are indeed involved with another of the countless anomalies of the existing moral code when an individual may be charged with a crime of sex when his real offense is an invasion of privacy! In this instance, it is the activity of the object of voyeurism, rather than the subject which determines the crime!
J. P. Davis, in his book "Love Against the Law" says (p. 11):
"It has been estimated that, if the laws pertaining to sex were strictly enforced, the country would see 95% of its citizens behind bars. That's right95% of us are sex criminals!"
Mr. Davis, at this point in his book, was talking about the cultural lag-the gap between what is being done and what the law allows or forbids. He goes on to say:
"Laws ... are not passed with an eye to the future, but with the purpose of correcting an immediate problem, or resolving past inequities."
"Unfortunately, though times and conditions change sometimes with great rapidity-and though we learn more about human nature and human behavior, thus being able to correct the misconceptions under which our forefathers acted, the laws which they made are, in many instances, still in force.
" ... while the public's privately-held ideas on sexual conduct have changed to a startling degree in the past decade, the publicly-professed ideas haven't changed that much.
"And, since laws tend to be more conservative than the average citizen's professed ideas, the laws have barely changed at all."
This author further says (Ibid. p. 143-144):
"There are those who maintain ... that anyone who can't have a satisfactory sexual relationship within the proscriptions of legality must be other than normal."
"But ... we can state that the American sex life hasn't changed notably in this century!
"This was one of the more important-and generally ignored-findings of Dr. Kinsey and his associates. When they divided their subjects into groups on the basis of ages, they found no discernible differences in the sex practices of the different generations. Which is to say that, while 1966's citizen may more freely discuss his sex activity than would his opposite number in 1946 or 1906-he isn't doing anything now which wasn't being done then!"
Thus, we have the populace of western societies paying "Lip service" to artificial moral codes-while behind closed doors, they proceed in an entirely different direction in what they do. Is not this the personification of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?"
When the great mass of the population allows such contradictions to dominate the individual's personal life, we can only expect that those we elevate to the leadership of the people will be guided by this same sort of mental conditioning. The by-products of such an unnatural social environment are to be found, especially in our own nation, in the confusions over domestic issues and the-controversy over our foreign affairs image and conduct which lead many nations to laugh at us.
If, you think, this be sensational exaggeration, think a moment on what has gone before. You may never have heard the expression: "vote dry-drink wet." Yet this two-faced division of thought and act was a widespread subject of conversation during Prohibition when it was moral to support the "Great Experiment" publicly-but to conceal one's drinking. Almost any adult, over fifty-five today, can recall the gossip concerning the pillar of the community who was indefatigable in supporting prohibition-the shocked or ribald accounts of those who'd seen him howling drunk at a convention in some distant city-or smashed out of his mind with a sexy broad on a "business trip."
It indicates the width of the individual split over those overtly-professed attitudes, contrasted with the private, secretly-held convictions. Such Janus-like behavior characterizes our civilization, lending weight to the broad existence of the split in the mass personality.'
Where sex is concerned, the schism extends almost universally through our society, and its penetration is far, far deeper. Leland Gardner, in his book "The Secret Sex" indicates that one reason for this penetration and breadth of such double-faced crippling is its induction in children.
"The idiocy," Gardner writes, "of assuming that a child with an intelligence quotient ranging from medium to magnificent can gulp in great quantities of academic learning without being equally hungry for knowledge of the nature and exploitation of private, basic urges is ridiculous. From big breasted movie queens to furniture with legs like phallic symbols, the adult world mentally masturbates itself into a state of sexual frustration. These same adults do lip-service to the promise that their own developed desire can not possibly have companion origins in their children because they are children.
"How sex first comes to children is unknown as a general rule because sex is a secret thing. No child will spontaneously confess to masturbation, miscellaneous experimentation with the sex organ or anus, and never a plurally attended adventure in peeking, probing and pulling unless great fear is instilled in them. Any child who confesses voluntarily is actually deceiving a parent because the child is secretly contemplating great sexual excitement in the punishment or the understanding such confession will produce. Child or adult, the moment of confession is a pure expression of masochistic sex because the human is by nature an animal that must be taught to make noise in coherent fashion.
"Brought into a world admittedly confusing to a child, they take flight in the single personal refuge they have between their legs. The louder the outcry from short-memoried parents, the deeper children bury their fingering and rubbing. The conflict between what they do and what they are supposed to do remains with them for the rest of their lives. (Author's italics)
"Right after ... idealists outline the proper age and place and circumstance for spending the one percent of human attention they allot for sex, they knock their hypocritical heads up against the fact that, age, place and circumstance be hanged, sex feels good."
Thus, the secrecy into which sex is forced by our behavioral concepts is responsible for a considerable portion of the schizophrenic weight which burdens much of our population-a burden assumed by most, early in childhood. The code of acceptable behavior in our society cannot allow the early and permissive sexual experimentation between children which exists in many primitive societies. So, many adverse pressures are brought to bear on early manifestations of this most natural impulse. Once a child experiences the incredibly attractive sensations of sexual sensation, resistance is not natural. The urge and its satisfaction go underground and become secret. On the face of it, it would seem that this is the natural pattern, so often is it repeated but authorities widely admit that the sex urge is more natural than the effort to suppress it, by far.
Unfortunately, the products of this pattern of secret participation and surface innocence become a behavioral pattern. Established in childhood, it is strengthened and enlarged by practical demonstrations that, in relationships and considerations other than sex, it is not good practice to "tell everybody your business." An individual soon finds himself at a disadvantage in dealing with others by so doing.
But, the roving eye reveals little to the outsider. It contributes amazingly to its owner and its influence is as widely varied as the colors of the rainbow. Unfortunately, for some, the voyeuristic bent and the universal human practice of sexual secrecy, can result in the inability to attain sexual satisfaction except by watching others in the act.
Mark S. discovered sex, accidentally, at about the age of five. Mark's sister, Alice (about five years his senior) and Mark enjoyed the normal, combative relations of siblings; their ways divergent in activities and associates. Alice was precocious in sex; from about age fourteen, the front porch swing was her arena for sexual exploration with a long succession of boys. Mark, contemptuously relegated to limbo as a "brat," was not deterred by her attitude; enjoying his role. One of his secret pleasures was spying on Alice.
"She was a 'hot number' all right," Mark recalled. "Every night that wasn't a 'school night,' some boy had a date with her. She didn't disappoint many. She masturbated more guys in that front porch swing than I can remember. Mom and Dad were pretty easy with Alice, except she couldn't have dates on school nights and she couldn't go out on dates until she was sixteen. I don't know (thinking back on it) what my folks figured was going on in that swing, but they seemed to feel they should show they trusted my sis."
"I used to hide at the end of the porch where heavy vines and bushes made a perfect spy spot ... The street light on the next corner filtered through the vines enough to let me see. And, I saw plenty. At first, Alice seemed to be content with kissing and feeling. I remember some boy always had his hands under her dress. It wasn't long before she was unzipping trousers and manipulating the erections of her dates. Meanwhile, I let no opportunity pass to take care of my own excitement at the antics which went on the swing.
"By the time Mary was sixteen and was allowed to go out on dates, this broke up my play house. As nearly as I can remember, she had masturbated fourteen different boys; had performed oral sex on six of them and had the favor returned by three. The first time she performed fellatio, she was dating a boy a little older than her usual run and he wouldn't hold still for her playing with him until he had an orgasm. He worked her panties off and was just about to penetrate her when she kicked loose and threatened to go in the house if he kept on. After a long, whispered conference, Alice leaned down and began to use her mouth....
"Well-I watched Mary and her boy friends for about two years, taking care of myself in the process. Now, I can't get my kicks with a girl. I've tried, but I can't get an erection. I have to be able to watch someone else in a sex act before I can go into orbit."
Mark is a confirmed Peeping Tom; a voyeuristic victim of his early sex experience. Doubtless, had not this early opportunity to spy on his sister been available, he'd not have arrived at the completely warped condition of his sexual reflexes in which he lives. He is constantly in danger of apprehension by police; already has a record of arrests for peeping, but the compulsion is too strong for him to resist. Psychiatric treatment has not helped and Mark will, probably, end up in prison.
While such voyeuristically-induced impotence seems rare, it is a shame-a tragedy, really-that such crippling should ever occur. But, because of accepted customs which insist that sex and most of the considerations surrounding it be kept in secret, such aberrations do occur. Quite often there are outcrops of deviations from the sexual norm which can be traced to accidents or entirely casual events in childhood. "As the twig is bent, so inclines the tree" is very applicable in such cases.
While many of the factors which encourage voyeurism are evidence of a seeming upsurge of resistance to publicly accepted custom, our behavioral codes have existed for so long that they have become instinctive-a conditioning that goes too deeply to allow them to be thrown off without tremendous mental difficulty and emotional conflict. So, this manifest resistance is, in itself, a subject for mass concern in the "publicly professed" adherence to ancient codes-and another thorn in the epidermis of our serenity.
Riley M., an undergraduate-a sophomore-at a midwestern university indicates how, in some cases, voyeurism may contribute to difficulties other than with the law. It was Riley's first time to be away from home-he'd spent the freshman year in a junior college in his home town. Deciding that he would like to go into business with his father (a graduate Electrical Engineer), he entered a state university to seek the same degree.
"It was stepped-up confusion to me, landing at State, getting myself settled and trying to get into the swing of things. I'd made good grades at junior college but, at first, it seemed to me as though I'd never get squared away. My classes were spread out over the campus so a school day seemed like a twenty-mile hike and I used to get back to my room at supper time too beat to eat.
"I hadn't been able to get into a dorm on campus, but I was lucky enough to find a room in a good boarding-house, just a block away. My room was at the back of the house, looking out toward the ailey which ran between my street and the street bordering the campus. There were several sorority houses in the block (on the street facing the campus) and one evening I discovered that I could see into the windows of one of them fairly easily, if the Venetian blinds were slanted the right way.
"Right away, I'd find myself getting up from the desk, when I was studying, to cautiously peek out to see what I could see. I used a student lamp which didn't diffuse much light; it was mostly concentrated on the desk so my room was pretty dimly lit when I was working. I spotted a red-haired girl in the shower one evening. There were no Venetian blinds in the bath, but the window was open at top and bottom and I could see the top part of her, clearly, when she got out of the shower stall and dried off. Inside the stall, I couldn't see anything but the blurred outline of her figure.
"Now and then, I'd get a look at another girl dressing or undressing and I nearly always got an erection. Now and then, the display was good enough so that I relieved myself in the manner common to guys my age. In order to escape detection, I'd prop a shirt cardboard up against the desk lamp, the shadow of it blacking out the window and I could look without fear of detection if I didn't stick my head out too far. Didn't have to, really.
"Soon after I saw the red-haired girl in the shower, I spotted a blonde bathing one night, deducing they must be room-mates if they used the same shower. For a month or so, this was all my looking amounted to: an occasional look at a naked girl in the bathroom or a girl taking off or putting on her clothes. I used to watch most on Friday and Saturday nights, because the gals really got gussied up for dates and they'd parade around in panties, hose, with or without bras-pretty good show.
"Then, one night, while the red-head was showering, the blonde girl appeared in the bathroom and got into the shower with the other. This really started my motor racing-their actions seen through the translucent shower glass indicated there was something going on besides just soaping and rinsing. To make a long story short, they re-appeared in the bedroom in robes; the red-haired girl coming over to sit on the bed beside the blonde. The angle of the blinds made it impossible for me to see everything, but enough to get the idea. They began to make love, turning off the bedroom lamps and I could dimly see them in the light reflected from the bathroom. The next thing that happened, the blonde girl opened her robe and lay back on the bed, the red-head opening hers, to lie on top of the other girl. Man! this really set me off!
"I'd heard about girls 'doing' each other-and I remembered I had had some mutual masturbation experiences when I was about nine years old with a boy friend of mine, but watching them was something else again. Of course, I relieved myself at the spectacle of the two bodies writhing and twisting under the red-head's robe. It slipped off to one side, finally, so I could see the motions of the red-haired girl's buttocks. Evidently, she knew what it was all about-and the blonde was getting the message! By the time the wriggling and tossing and jerking stopped, I was limp and pooped.
"This was only the beginning. I saw them maybe seven or eight times after that, but at widely-spaced intervals. The blinds were sometimes tight-shut so I couldn't see that particular pair. But the display of other gals, between times, found me spending more and more time looking for a show.
"The result was that my studies suffered to the point where I was put on probation and got a stiff lecture from the Dean of Men. I was ashamed to take my grades home at Christmas-but I had to do it. When Dad saw them, he demanded to know why-and I figured the best thing to do was to tell him the story. We'd always been close and, if I was going into business with him, I couldn't start holding out on him at this point. So, sweating like a condemned criminal, I told him the whole thing....
" 'It's my fault, Dad,' I concluded lamely. 'There's nobody to blame it on but me..."' To my surprise, he broke into roars of laughter, and pounded me one on the shoulder.
" 'like father, like son!' he laughed, tears running down his cheeks from the violence of his glee. 'Only to me, it happened my freshman year and I lived next-door to a girl who must have been an independent prostitute!'"
" 'Now, what do I do?' I asked."
" 'Find another place to room and find yourself a girl-friend and be careful you don't become a father. I know it's a big order, but you have to be practical. And you're going to have to make up these grades, man. As I remember, they're as bad as mine were when I had the same experience. And look-don't worry about it-I'll handle it with your mother, when the question comes up . . "
"I was pretty lucky, I guess, but I followed my Dad's advice about moving. Then, I got a part-time job doing radio repairs with a shop in town and began to make some extra money and could take a girl out, now and then, and I finally found one to occupy my attention. Anyhow, I didn't graduate cum lauda, but my grades were okay from then on. I had to finish out the year in that boarding house, but I kept my own shades pulled down and only peeked now and then. Next year, I got into a dormitory and there weren't any such distractions. Just a bunch of guys-but, by that time, I'd located some female companionship ... "
Depending on the circumstances, there are many attractions for the male eye. In this instance, the young man involved came off lucky, all things considered. Fortunate for him, his relationship with his father-and the attitude of his male parent-were such that they approached the situation as a problem for solution and not a subject for ethical or moral censure. Riley, too, was fortunate that his exposure to voyeurism did not lead him into aberration, as happened to Mark S.
The sex drive is so powerful, in most human males, that the danger is constant; that some mischance may produce the eventual substitution of voyeuristic manifestation for the normal manifestation of the sex act. But, too, noted psychologists have pointed out that we humans are by no means all alike. There is the question of the relative strength of mental fabric between individual models, so to speak. Thus, similar circumstances are capable of producing totally dissimilar consequences, from individual to individual. The increasing appeal to the male eye; the incidence of opportunities to peek during the formative years will leave some unmarked, others badly scarred. It is a thing of chance.
C'est la vie, cherchez la femme ... but if you're looking in windows ... look out for the law.
CHAPTER THREE
THE NOT-FLEETING LOOK
In the acquisition of impressions concerning sex by the very young, "the seeing eye" operates much like the Persian poet's description of "the moving finger." Having recorded the impression, it moves on, leaving an indelible impression behind. The secrecy in which adults shroud sex in attempting to hide it from children evidently is contributing considerable damage to psyches of children at the same time parents think they're doing the right thing by shielding their young from any knowledge (or taint) of sex information.
Sex information may be divided into two classifications. One of these is the store of fact and/or imagine a child acquires through discussion with his peers. This may range in accuracy all the way from "if you do it, you'll get a baby," to "you can get a baby just from kissing a boy" or "if you do it with someone older than you are, it gives you a disease." The second classification of sex information is bounded by sensation and secrecy. It consists of what the individual has experienced via the senses and such conclusions as experience and matching information from discussion make worthy of retention.
While it is impossible to determine the extent of damage to adult psyches which stems from initial, childhood upsets rooted in sexual experiences, casual manifestations indicate there must be considerable. It is notable that, while newspaper reports chronicle the continuous desire for "full and frank" dialogues concerning troublesome situations on the diplomatic fronts of world situations, there seems to be far less sentiment demanding the same treatment for factors in our lives which are equally troublesome to the individual. While there is emerging some agitation for sex education in the educational curricula, a long-time observer of American customs cannot but have the feeling it is not totally sincere. Succeeding generations of parents, encountering more complicated personal situations in the task of progressing in the existing socio-economic environment, may sense this as a peripheral requirement. As such they may support it, mildly, feeling it is a progressive manifestation they must make. Secretly, however, most feel this is something which should remain a parental responsibility-a responsibility which they shirk, bungle, ignore-or cope with in varying degrees of efficiency.
Marjorie Y., a vivacious blonde in her early thirties, laughingly confided:
"The very first thing I remember about sex was climbing a pole. Actually, it was a slanted iron pipe frame in our back yard. It had three swings and a slide attached to it. I discovered sex at the age of six. Prior to that (and afterwards) I had plagued my daddy to take me in the shower with him. He did so, but I remember he wore under-shorts while we were bathing. One day, I tired of playing on the swings and the slide and, for no reason I can remember, tried to climb one of the pipe legs which supported the cross-piece to which all the stuff was attached. I didn't make much progress toward the top the first time. It was awfully hard work and, really, I don't know why I tried it a second time, except it was that I'd seen boys climb it and it seemed something worthwhile doing.
"So, I tried again, and this time I wrapped my legs around the pipe and tried to struggle upward. I didn't make much more progress but I quickly became aware of a most pleasurable sensation between my legs. So, I kept on climbing until I had to let go and rest. Then, I tried again and once more experienced the good feeling.
"It never occurred to me to touch myself there; mother had always headed off any tendency on my part to do this, and I evidently accepted the implication that this was harmful. But, climbing the pole was something else again and I got to be a whale of a pole-climber. Whenever mother came out into the yard, I'd skin up to the top, touch the cross-bar and skin down again, to show my proficiency. She applauded my accomplishment and I kept it that way-I had the feeling she wouldn't approve of what was really happening-but I had a lot of fun, climbing that pole.
"That exercise led to a lot of other things. I learned now to get that same feeling lying in bed, sitting in a chair-I guess I was about eight or nine before I had an orgasm, but I worked up to it so gradually that it didn't shock me. Believe me, I filed that discovery away in my head to enjoy secretly. By this time, I had begun playing with some of the boys in the neighborhood who were younger than I and one afternoon, Warren and I had begun roughhousing each other. It was a sort of rough-and-tumble wrestling match without much form or pattern; we were just tumbling over each other. Warren's leg got between mine and I got the old familiar electric shock. You can guess what happened. Poor Warren was more than ready to stop before I was but I had a whole new thing to think about.
"I got pretty expert at wrestling Warren and Tommy and, since I was older than either of them, I didn't have much trouble "getting them down." I always managed to get one of their legs clamped between my thighs. Then, I could tickle them to make them kick ... ! "
Marjorie went on to relate that she met her Waterloo in an older boy-he was about thirteen but small for his age-who moved in next door. A well-mannered boy, Marjorie's mother took a liking to him. His parents also being Navy (Marjorie's father was a naval flying officer) the mothers of Marjorie and Ronnie felt no concern in leaving the children together for afternoon shopping expeditions or calls on other friends-even for an occasional bridge afternoon.
"When I knew Ronnie a few days, I decided to challenge him to a wrestling match," Marjorie recalls. "He sort of laughed it off at first."
" 'Girls can't wrestle' he pooh-poohed. This only made me more determined, so I began to tease him. Mother called to tell me she and Ronnie's mother were going to the commissary and we went in to be instructed as to what we could or could not do-there were cokes in the ice-box-and don't muss the house, play quietly if you come indoors', etc. After they drove off, I took Ronnie into the garage to show him a tumbling mat my Daddy had rolled up there. When it rained, he unrolled it and it was soft to play on.
"By this time, I was becoming obsessed with wrestling with Ronnie and I think the tumbling mat sold him. Anyhow we started out and, in no time, I was flat on my back, kicking and protesting it wasn't fair. So, gallantly, Ronnie gave me an other chance-with the same result, only this time, he landed between my outflung legs. For the first time, as I struggled under him, I felt that good sensation in my you-know-what and I really started to go to town.
"Ronnie, however, had different ideas. He raised up, holding me down with his hands on my shoulders, supporting himself on his knees, and breaking up my play-house. However, he was looking downward and I quickly found out why. My skirt was up to my waist, and my loose panties had pulled aside so my secrets were open to his gaze.
" 'Let me up!' I gasped, somehow thinking things had gone haywire but Ronnie reached down and squeezed me with his fingers-and that good feeling soared again. I relaxed, as much as I could, and watched what he was doing. He could tell I was enjoying it, and kept on until I was tensing and stretching, close to orgasm. At this point, he removed his hand and sat back on his haunches."
" 'I didn't know girls could do it,' he said."
" 'Do what?' I asked, struggling to sit up and cover myself.
"'(Masturbate), ' he replied. 'You don't have a (penis). '"
" 'What's that?' I asked from the depths of my ignorance.' Ronnie proudly unzipped his trousers while I watched him produce his treasures. " 'Want to see me do it?' he asked. I shrugged. What did I know? He proceeded to demonstrate to my fascinated eyes. When, after a short interval, he took his hand away his (penis) was standing straight up and making little jerking movements. I was both entranced and horrified-maybe scared would be a better word. "'Feel it,' he offered magnanimously. I did so, with reluctant but curious fingers. " 'Now, pull down on it,' he instructed. I did, marveling at the shiny, purple ball which emerged..."
Marjorie and Ronnie continued the surreptitious experiments, undiscovered by their parents, proceeding from complete examination of each other and masturbation together. When Ronnie suggested he penetrate Marjorie, it met with considerable reluctance on her part, but she agreed to try it. She didn't receive much pleasure from the coital attempt, but later reports that another try did produce that "good feeling."
By the time Marjorie was nearing eleven, she and Ronnie were separated when her father was transferred to another station. By this time, Marjorie was intimate with two girls in her class at school (not to the point of sexual experimentation but to discussion and conjecture about sex). When she advanced facts from her experience in these discussions, the other girls demanded to know how she knew and, since Marjorie was not inclined to reveal the source of her information, she soon stopped talking and mostly listened.
"The one thing which seems to remain with me," she reported, "Or-really there are two things: every time I pass a playground with those pipe stands for equipment, I have a really furtive, sexy feeling. The other is that the sight of a male's sexual equipment really sends me into orbit. Either erect or relaxed, it really turns me on. I've been had on at least three occasions I had no intention of being, simply because the boy unfastened his trousers and produced his organ..."
Strange and wonderful effects are produced by the combination of childhood discovery of sexual sensations, coupled with the sense of sight. One man who was a foot fetishist (though not morbidly so) relates that he always receives sexual stimulus from the sight of women's nether extremities. He has very strict standards as to the conformation of feminine legs and feet-the legs must be rounded, full and shapely; the feet must be small with high-arched insteps; and he only enjoys this stimulation when the extremities are clad in long, sheer hose and high-heeled pumps.
"I could never figure this out," he said. "Matter of fact, I never tried. I just accepted it as part of my make-up, I guess you'd call it. Then, later, when I began reading about the psychology of sex, I was surprised to find there was a definite name for it-and that other people had the same response I did to the sight of girls' legs. I remember once in a doctor's office (I'd gone in to have a cast taken off a broken arm) the doctor had been held up by surgery at the hospital and I had to wait for nearly forty-five minutes past my appointment time. While I was sitting there, a good-looking woman-I judged to be between twenty-five and thirty-came in and sat down across the room from me. She had the sharpest set of gams I ever saw; was wearing sheer nylons that gave just a hint of pink luster to her legs, and a pair of sling pumps (red, incidentally) which fit her perfectly. I don't usually like open shoes-generally they don't fit a woman's feet well. Her heel either sticks out over the end or doesn't quite reach it and this is unattractive to me.
"But this gal's legs were a delight. She had small feet and her insteps were high. When she crossed her legs, after she sat down, I could peek around my magazine and get a load of a little naked thigh above her hose. I watched for about twenty minutes-until the doctor came in-during which time she re-crossed her legs twice and I could see clear up to her panties. When the nurse called me, I had such an erection I was afraid to get up, but she was standing, holding the door open for me, so I just held the magazine over the displacement of my pants until I relaxed a little in the treatment room, waiting for the doctor ... "
Voyeuristic adventures such as this may be dismissed as less than worthy or worthwhile by many. The fact remains that the eye provides for many, a powerful stimulant to the sex urge. Usually, this occurs in the male-the female is the sex symbol in our culture-and for a female to receive much stimulation from chance or casual optical encounters would almost require that she have homosexual or bi-sexual leanings (or be of this persuasion).
"The foot fetishist, enlarging on his conditioning and experience revealed that he believed he had traced his predilection to its source.
"Wondering and remembering-after my reading-it came to me that my younger brother was allowed to play on the floor on a quilt spread out for him. My mother and her friends would sit, chatting and visiting, while little Carlton played on the floor. They used to laugh at him for some of his antics. Lying on his stomach, sometimes he'd arch his back and rock and rock, cooing and gurgling until he got tired and stretched out flat and relaxed. Since the style of dress in those days hadn't generally included the casual pants women wear today, women most often wore dresses, hose and heels and my mother usually dressed this way. I probably picked up my preference for women's legs during this same period in my life-from that position on the floor, I guess that's about all of them you could see..."
It would appear from the experience of many people that there is an ineradicable impression or impressions left in the mind from earliest sensations connected with sex. It is entirely possible these may occur before the individual has passed from the stage of inimagine. Certainly in this case it would be a possibility. When one considers the multitude of differences in secret sex attitudes which are multiplied by the differences in multitudes of people, it should not be surprising that this powerful drive may give rise to any number of fanciful connections, desires and reactions.
"I didn't know what it was all about," confessed Ralph W. in discussion of his early sexual experiences. He had been caught in the act of coitus with a seventeen-year old girl in the basement of the church of which both sets of parents were congregation members. The minister, displaying great restraint considering the tenets of the sect and the sacrilege involved, suggested that both youngsters be brought under treatment of a psychologist. Ralph was only four months older than Nedra, but he had passed his eighteenth birthday. The circumstances of the discovery were peculiar: the minister, returning to his office after services were done and the congregation departed, spied the janitor standing on a chair, peeping over a transom into a Sunday School room. These led off a long corridor and the janitor's impaired hearing did not warn him of the minister's presence....
"All I know was I wanted to make it with her worse than any girl in school. I was sitting in math class one day when the girls went out for physical ed. They wore these short-skirted uniforms and I spotted Nedra in hers and it was like I found something I'd been looking for a long time. I remembered seeing her in the halls, but she didn't make much of an impression on me. She dressed the way the rest of the girls did and she looked sort of lumpy. She never wore any make-up-our church is strict and most of the kids aren't allowed to-anyhow seeing Nedra in that gym-suit made me so excited I could hardly get through the rest of the day. I hadn't done much more than say hello to her, but her legs and bottom and breasts all seemed to add up to something I'd never known she had.
"I went home that night and could hardly get through my homework for thinking of her. I can see her, now, with that springy walk, her body was the most exciting thing I'd ever seen. I made an effort to find her at school the next day, but she generally knocked around with a group of girls and I couldn't find a way to get her alone to talk to her. I wasn't about to let those other nosy crows know anything.
"Finally, Friday it was by then, I spotted her in the hall, walking alone and I sidled up beside her and said hello. She seemed surprised and I tried to put my best foot forward. She didn't act like she was offended, either, and this helped. I tried to make a date for a coke with her after school but she had to meet Martha and Aggie and I passed.
"Sunday I saw her at church and got to talk to her for a few minutes. It's about the only place you have any freedom, where our house is concerned. My folks are so strict, I almost have to ask permission to go to the bathroom. Anyhow, I got across to Nedra that I liked her a lot and she agreed to have a coke with me Monday after school. I felt really happy that she'd agree to ditch the harpies to see me, and went around all day in a rosy cloud.
"We went to a drive-in and sat under the awning in my jaloppie. I'd earned the money for it, working during vacations, but it was strictly for school transportation. I wasn't allowed to take it out at nights. I talked fast while we were having our cokes and Nedra got the message of how I felt about her. In spite of how strict my parents were, I'd gotten in a few licks about sex on my own. Before I got cut off the basketball squad my sophomore year, I'd made a trip with the squad and three of us sneaked out and went to a cat house. I'd secretly been pinching on my vacation salary and had about fifty bucks saved up.
"Anyhow, we followed the advice of some of the older boys and masturbated before we went in and I got a good workout. I was lucky I guess, in getting a girl I liked and, after the first time, I paid for a second trip. The other guys were scared to wait for me but I didn't care. I figured it was now or never....
"Anyhow, the coach ,caught me coming in when he made bed-check. I really was sweating and he reamed me out until he found out what I'd done. He told me this was between us, but he was going to have to drop me from the squad and I clammed up about the other guys, insisting I'd been alone. He made me go down to the drug-store and get a prophylactic and use it and he dropped me off the squad two weeks later when he cut down the size.
"So, I knew what I wanted to do ... and Nedra and I, on the few opportunities we had to be together, began to love it up, pretty good. We had to meet and sneak and we were always looking over our shoulders. I'd wait for her somewhere we could hide in the shadows after youth meetings or school activities and we'd neck up a storm. I always went home with an ache and Nedra began to get into the act more as time went on. We almost got caught one night-the first time I took my (penis) out and put her hand on it. I was playing with her breast and was just about to orbit when these blamed kids came sneaking through the bushes, spying on us. It was dark enough they couldn't see, but it scared us silly and I booted one of them a hard lick in the rump and sent him yelling.
"By this time, we were nearly out of our minds. We were both scared, both pretty hot for it, but couldn't find the time or the place for it. Then this special drive came up at the church and there was a big meeting one afternoon after school. I volunteered to clean up, for no reason I guess than it would give me an excuse to be late getting home without getting chewed. After I finished, I went through the building and somehow, the feeling that I was alone there, sparked an idea. I searched every room that wasn't locked-and was happy as if I'd found buried treasure. One of the Sunday School rooms had a day-bed or couch in it and I got the idea that Nedra and I'd hide and wait until everybody was gone....
"I got one of my friends, who ran errands for a drug store in the afternoons, to get me some condoms and then I explained my plan to Nedra. She was scared at first, and refused, but finally agreed. I went around for several days so excited I couldn't talk right. Then, one Friday night, we were both going to this meeting of the youth group and I arranged with her to hide out back of this garage at a house next door to the church. There were thick bushes around it and it was a perfect spot.
"As for me, I told the lingerers goodbye, then went to the washroom and got into one of the toilet booths. If anyone came in, I was all prepared to pull my feet up-but nobody did. I waited until it was all quiet in the building, then I sneaked out, after checking the whole place to make sure there was no one there....
"I got Nedra back in, set the lock on the door and led her down to the schoolroom corridor. There was enough light corning in from the corridor light they left on at nights so I could see. My heart was up in my throat; I felt like I was choking. Nedra's breasts, under her sweater, were tossing up and down with her excited breathing. We both talked in hoarse whispers and I kissed her to make her stop talking. She was scared and wanted to leave. I finally felt her arms go around me and backed her against the couch as she gave a little moan.
"I was shaking so, I could hardly stand it. When we were sitting on the couch, I started to pull her sweater up and she tried to stop me, but stopped right away. I got those beauties out of the bra and squeezed one of them. Then I came to my senses when she jumped and I knew I'd hurt her. I started to kiss them and the nipples got stiff right away. I leaned Nedra back against the cushions and started kissing her, one hand on a tight breast, the other pulling her skirt up. She didn't resist when I started taking her panties off and pushed her back on the couch. I fumbled the box out of my pocket and opened my slacks to put on some protection and Nedra grabbed my erection as I knelt between those trembling thighs. As I remember, she didn't have too much hair, but she looked puffed up and ready.
"I felt like I was coming apart as she guided me.
I remembered to take it easy, but there didn't seem to be any barrier. I could feel Nedra tense as I slowly pushed and then those legs and arms went around me and I began to lose touch with reality. All I could feel was my hard (penis) and the tight hold of her body on it. I don't think I really believed it when the preacher opened the door, holding that stupid damn janitor by the arm and came into the room. When I became conscious of Nedra trying to get up and crying, I looked around and saw them. I think I said: 'God damn!' I don't remember clearly..."
The sequel to this occurrence was that Ralph rebelled completely against his rigidly disciplined life. He recognized that he would have to finish school in order to be able to make his way in the world and the morning after he got his high school diploma, his family called the police (at 6:40 AM) to report him missing. Two years later, his parents received a post card from him from Copenhagen with no information other than that he was well. The last word was from the police authorities in a western city notifying his parents that Ralph had been killed in a crash while attempting to escape police pursuit, driving a stolen car....
Certainly this is an unusual and extreme case. Tragedy is not encountered in life nearly so often as appeals to the lighter emotions because tragedy requires far stronger motivations-responses to and reactions against unbearable pressures. Oftentimes, to the young, some facts of life assume an importance far greater than adults assign to them. But it is difficult to recognize, in the fixed (and more or less ordered) world of grown-ups, that the questions of youth cannot be answered with the results of someone's experience other than the subject's.
In the foregoing, regrettable happening, Ralph's vision brought into focus the full force of desires which his strict and non-permissive home life had successfully caused him to suppress, up to that time. It is impossible to calculate the amount of force which will cause a human entity to explode. Most pressure vessels are equipped with safety-valves, and the human entity possesses relief mechanisms. When the safety-devices are thwarted or rendered inoperative because of rigid repression, the internal pressures, inevitably, seek to by-pass the obstruction.
The key impulse was triggered by Ralph's eyes-by the voyeuristic necessity which is in all of us. Seeing Nedra at a particular time, in. a particular light-so to speak-dressed a certain way and moving with a certain, (to him) irresistably-attractive grace, snapped a switch on the long-pent desires in a healthy, young male whose real error was allowing himself to be throttled by the discipline of his strict home-life. Most boys find early relief in secret self-eroticism but Ralph had been brainwashed with the belief that this would do him irreparable harm.
Often, the volatility of youth escapes the restraints of convention in even more violent rebellion. There is no doubt that the hungers of young males are difficult to curb in the face of temptations which are constantly in evidence. It would seem the tighter, stricter the family discipline, the greater the reaction of resilient youth ... the tighter the bonds, the greater the effort exerted to break them. The eyes of the young cannot be blinded nor blinkered to the fact that adult discipline is, largely, based on a philosophy of "do as I say, not as I do." Evidence of this practice is in plain view, on every hand ... and the eyes of youth are sharp, alert and retentive in matters of interest or which titillate their curiosity.
Psychotherapists hold the view that there are two sub-divisions to voyeurism and exhibitionism (conditions considered to be opposite sides of the same coin, so to speak). In the case of voyeurism, Dr. William Graham Cole states in his book "Sex and Love in the Bible":
"If sexual satisfaction is in some sense dependent upon seeing, so that the orgasm cannot be achieved without it, and if the urge to see is so strong that it breaks the bonds of rational prudence, resulting in the Peeping Tom, then a verdict of neurotic voyeurism must be returned.
"A pleasure in sexual sights of various sorts is perfectly normal, from the psychological point of view, providing that it is not the sine qua non of satisfaction and that it is obtained under more or less acceptable circumstances."
Thus, professional opinion indicates that determining the state of voyeurism as pathological in its condition requires an assessment of whether the condition in existence is such that it violates and not a natural code of behavior. In primitive times, man largely avoided marriage within his own horde or tribe; possibly from the demonstrated disadvantages of too-close breeding or from an instinctive aversion.
The usual practice was for primitive man, seeking a mate, to take her from another horde and-to this end-the prospective husband "scouted" other groups to shop for a satisfactory mate. His activity, of course, did not go un-noticed by the group under his surveillance. Constant vigilance against any and all outsiders whether animal or human was the order of those long-gone days. The result was that the wife-hunter might be adjudged unsatisfactory-with the result that the women of the horde being scouted were hidden from the peeper's view.
Again, he might be worthy of the chieftain's approval, in which case those females who desired mates were allowed to parade in plain view, making the most of their attractions-emphasizing their desirability in whatever manner was the accepted practice. The result being sought was that the watcher would covet one of the available women and initiate the foray which would end in the chosen woman's capture and abduction.
Thus, voyeurism and exhibitionism have roots which are nearly as old as human life. What contributes the difficulty is the proliferation of taboos which stem from antiquity's fear of sex and the codes attempting to regulate sexual feeling which still exist. So, while it is permissible and socially acceptable to look at a pretty girl on the street with undisguised admiration, watching her from a secret vantage point when she is not aware she is being observed is a breach of both custom and law. To this point, the worst which has happened is a violation of artificial conduct decrees.
Going one step beyond ... when, due to some mischance, voyeurism displaces the normal sexual manifestations, rendering the voyeurist incapable of normal sex relations, it is this development which leads the psychotherapist to class the condition as pathological-the subject being considered a sick man-or woman.
Betsy F. was precocious in sex. Evidently she had learned to masturbate as a tiny baby, rubbing herself against the mattress of her crib as she lay on her stomach. Her mother had reported the circumstances to her pediatrician: Betsy would roll over on her tummy and, arching her little back would begin to rock, continuing until red in the face and breathless, she was seized by tiny spasms and relaxed, content. Since any attempt to interfere brought on an angry fit of crying from the infant, the mother was considerably relieved when she was told that the best thing she could do was to ignore it. The baby would not perform the act to excess and the doctor would keep a close check on the genitalia to make sure. It was probably a thing which would be forgotten-outgrown-in the involved process of maturation.
The doctor's prediction was correct. By age 7, Betsy seemed to have forgotten the earlier habit in her new involvement in school and being busy with several other little girl playmates in her neighborhood. Then Betsy happened to spy her 11-year-old twin brothers naked in the bathroom. They had failed to close the door completely when they stripped to take a bath and Betsy was immediately fascinated by their activity. Neither boy had been circumcised, they were writhing and twisting with the sensation of baring the glans and rubbing the sensitive tips, one against the other. When they could no longer withstand the sensation, both boys proceeded to masturbate.
Betsy, perhaps in subconscious recall or in searching for an erectile organ of her own, began to palpate her vulva with the result that the pattern of inimagine was resumed, this time however, with digital assistance.
Thereafter, for perhaps a month, she spied upon her brothers at every opportunity; managing to catch them repeating their games. One of the boys discovered that dipping the glans in a jar of petroleum jelly greatly increased the fun and Betsy walked in on them, one evening, in the course of their play. Both being near orgasm at the instant she made her appearance-stark naked, like themselves and her fingers busy manipulating her own pouting organ, her brothers went on to completion, as did Betsy. Swearing her to secrecy in response to her demand to be allowed to examine their sexual equipment, a trio of conspirators was formed.
Betsy proved to be a welcome addition under repeated admonitions to keep the secret, her brothers repeating that their parents "would kill them" if they found out. Betsy learned to masturbate both boys and they her. On one occasion when there was no petroleum jelly available, Betsy repeatedly wet the organs of both by taking them into her mouth, to their delight. Continued explanation had led to all three attaining orgasm by oral means, though never as a simultaneous project.
By this time, Betsy was about eight-and-a-half, a happy child and a good student-as were her brothers. That spring, a 45-year-old widower moved into the house next door with his two daughters, both of whom worked daily at government jobs. He was a retired seafarer, holding a captain's papers; had been a ship's officer for twenty years. He was retired through injuries received in a shipboard accident which impaired his sight and sense of balance. Treatment had restored both, almost completely, following his retirement, but the captain had no need to return to sea; indeed, as he explained to Betsy's father, it would result in more red-tape and paper-work than he had any stomach for. He made friends among the fishing-fleet captains at the seaport town in which his family and Betsy's lived and between occasional deep-water trips-and gardening in his yard-he was enjoying life.
The two families were congenial neighbors and Betsy and the captain became good friends; the little girl being fascinated by the tall, gray-haired man; while, on his part, he was never too engrossed in his own projects to make Betsy a part of them when she came to visit. His yard was becoming a veritable fairy-land of bright blooms, by mid-summer and Betsy was highly responsive to the flowers.
The captain had become a sun-worshipper in the balmy southern California climate and had formed the habit of stretching out, nude, on a cot on his back patio. One morning in July, he neglected his usual procedure of latching the gate before stretching out for his sun-bath. Lying on his back, he dozed off to sleep in the gentle warmth and Betsy wandered into the yard.
Evidently some romantic dream had possessed his slumbers for, as the little girl spotted his nudity and slipped behind a hibiscus for concealment, his penis started to become erect. The sight made Betsy breathless and she began to search with her fingers beneath her skirt and into her panties to manipulate herself, which she did to orgasm, slipping away before her friend awoke to her presence.
"I made a peep-hole on the corner of the fence," Betsy recalled, "so I could peek at him when he'd take a sun-bath. Every time I saw him, almost, I'd indulge in self-gratification. I couldn't believe he was so huge ... it made me breathless with excitement!
"Then, for my birthday, I got a sleeping bag and pestered my folks to let me sleep out on our patio. Mother wouldn't let me at first, but I pestered her so, she finally gave in. My brothers were away at camp and she and daddy were going on an overnight visit to Riverside and my Aunt Gwen was coming to stay with me. I went over to see the captain, to tell him about it and he told me I was a brave girl. I felt very proud.
" 'Myra and I are driving up to San Francisco for a few days,' he told me. 'The Lieutenant she's engaged to is coming back from extended deployment, so Nardis will be home all alone.' "
"I promised to watch out for her. I liked both girls. Nardis was twenty-four and was a widow. Her husband had been an Air Force pilot who died in a jet crash two years before.
"Finally, things settled down for the night, Aunt Gwen saw me settled with my sleeping bag on a chaise and me snug inside it, warm robe and slippers (in case I had to come in) snug under the big umbrella, in case of fog. I finally went to sleep but the sound of a car in the driveway next door woke me and I heard Nardis' voice and a man's. I couldn't hear what she asked him, but he said: 'sure I'd love to...' and they went indoors. It was a warm night and there was no fog, the stars glittered like sparklers. I lay there and watched them, beyond the edge of the big umbrella for awhile, drowsing but I came wide-awake when I hard Nardis give a muffled squeal, followed by an excited laugh.
"An unexplainable sense of excitement came over me-and I got up and slipped into my robe and slippers to see what I could see. The picture window of the captain's house opened by a sliding glass door between patio and living room. The yard gate was unlatched and, as I came around the corner into the yard, I could see a crack of light between the drapes drawn across the glass door. As I got closer, I could see movement in the living room, and I heard Nardis' giggle again.
"Wondering at what I might see, my heart began to pound with excited anticipation as I sneaked up to the crack of light and put my eye against the glass. To my surprise, I could see the entire end of the living room-or by moving, could look through the length of the dining room into the kitchen. The man with Nardis was sitting on the sofa, and she was standing, bent over as he held her wrists, trying to get away.
" 'Chuck, stop it now, so I can fix us another drink,' she was protesting as she struggled. Her dress was hiked up in back to the tops of her hose and her bottom and torso were wiggling as she tried to pull away.
" 'Well, all right,' the man said, grinning, easing his grip and handing her his glass. 'But you know what would be more refreshing than a drink...' He dropped his hand to the division of his legs and squeezed himself. I could see a big swelling in his hand....
" 'Who said you were going to get that,' Nardis asked, tartly as she spun on her heels and went into the kitchen. She wasn't mad though, I could tell by the expression on her face as she passed by me going into the kitchen.
" 'Nobody, sweetie,' the man said, getting up to come into the kitchen with her. 'It was just my own idea...' He stepped up behind her as she was busy with ice, bottles and glasses, and pushed the swelling against her bottom. Nardis had a nice figure-my mother was always needling me to stop eating so much if I wanted to grow up to look like her. She giggled and tried to move as he shoved.
" 'Chuck, stop-you're making me spill...' she protested. He just tightened his grip and began to push against her more gently. I could see the ridge in his pants travel along the roundness of her bottom, hiking her dress up. When they'd finished fooling around in the kitchen, they took their glasses back in the living room and sat down on the sofa. Nardis crossed her legs and her dress rose well above her knees. The man started tickling the tops of her thighs with his finger tips and she giggled and tried to stop him, which just pulled her dress higher.
I felt myself choking and realized I'd almost forgotten to breath, so I took several deep breaths, quietly, looking around for something to sit on. A little upholstered stool with rubber feet on it the captain called my 'reserved seat' was right at hand. I silently moved it over so I could sit and watch. My heart jumped into my throat when I looked back in; the young man was kneeling on the couch and was kissing Nardis. Her head was forced back against the sofa-back and she was trying to pull his hand out from under her dress. She had crossed her legs, hooking a foot around her ankle and I could see her bare thighs and panties as she struggled.
"Finally he let her up, laughing as she slapped at his hands, and straightened her dress and her hair. "I'd have never invited you in if I'd known you were going to try to rape me ' she said. I could tell, still, she wasn't mad. He laughed.
" 'This isn't rape, it's a pleasure,' he laughed, taking one of her hands and pressing it against the swelling in his pants. Nardis snatched her hand back and slapped at his hands.
"'Chuck, you're a devil!' she snapped and he bent down and kissed her again.
" 'You like it, Nardis, I can tell...! ' he teased her.
" 'Oh! you...' she started to say and, still on his knees, he kissed her again. This time, he started to play around the swells of her bodice and Nardis didn't object. I could see her legs twist as he squeezed and rubbed. After awhile, he slipped one hand inside and, despite her resistance, worked one breast out of her dress. He bent his head and put his mouth on the nipple and Nardis laid her head back, her lower lip caught in her teeth and her legs twisting in pleasure.
"I was working to get inside my pajama pants and had to slip them down over my hips-but I didn't care. It was dark and nobody could see me and I began to play with myself. I was so excited, it felt marvelous. While Chuck was kissing Nardis breast, I saw him move his hand to his pants and start unfastening them. I could hardly concentrate on Nardis as she twisted and squirmed-my eyes were glued to what he was doing.
"When he took them out, I felt like my heart jumped in my throat again. He was standing, stiff and straight and jerking, much bigger than the captain, (testicles) too. He took Nardis' hand and put it on him and she tried to get away but he kept putting it back. I felt myself going and couldn't stop and, as my legs stretched out in climax, a flower pot scraped along the concrete and I didn't even notice until the waves had stopped rushing over me.
"Evidently, Chuck and Nardis hadn't heard. He was still kissing her bare breast and, by now, she was holding on to him and moving her hand as he began to slip his hand up under her skirt again. Nardis took both hands to try to hold his, but he pushed her down, on her back in spite of her struggles. Her head was away from me and I could see Chuck's hands stripping her panties down. He pulled her legs up, together, and slid them off, tossing them on the rug, then opened her legs again as she grabbed his erection and started to masturbate him furiously.
"He grabbed her hands away and I gasped as I saw her open and defenseless as he pulled his erection downward and began to search for her.
"'Please, Chuck!' Nardis said, and I could tell she was on the verge of crying. 'Chuck, you'll get me pregnant. Please don't do that ... "'
" 'Hell, Nardis, what do you suggest?' he asked, and I could tell he was angry. He was still holding it and began to rub it against her as she stiffened and tried to pull away.
" 'W-will you let me do it my way?' she asked, her voice shaking.
" 'Not with your hand, baby! Hell, I can do that myself!' She shook her head.
" 'That's not what I meant. I'll show you...' He let her up and sat down on the couch as Nardis sat on the floor between his legs. She was too low and asked for a pillow, getting on her knees on it. Then she took his erection in one hand and his testicles in the other, slowly lowering her head. I heard Chuck gasp as I began to rub myself again, the excitement and sensation building in me as I watched..."
"I climaxed again, shuddering and straining, feeling the cool glass against my face as I tried to keep my eyes focused on them. I must have dozed off, leaning against the plate glass door because I woke up with a start, a little while later, wondering where I was. Then I remembered, and sat up startled wondering where Nardis and Chuck were. Moving my head, I saw them in the kitchen. Nardis had taken off her dress and slip and put her panties back on. Chuck was fondling one bare bosom with one hand, holding a drink in the other. Nardis, in panties, hose and heels was pressing against him. He had only shorts, socks and loafers on and was whispering in her ear. She shivered and giggled and he began to urge her back to the living room.
" 'I'm scared,' she said, but she didn't look it. 'I never have...' "
" 'Aw, come on,' he urged, moving her into the living room to the couch. Kneeling he stripped down her panties as she lifted her hips, then moved between her legs. As his head disappeared between Nardis' thighs, she squealed softly, her head falling back, her fingers twining in his hair....
CHAPTER FOUR
THE ADULT VIEW
The remainder of Betsy's story belongs in a later chapter-and will be covered there-her adult experiences falling into that classification of voyeuristic influence which produced a morbid or pathological effect in her sex life.
That the results of voyeurism do not contribute irreparable damage to the psyches in every case is just as true as the fact that they do in a number of instances. There is no pattern, no formula which would make it possible to eliminate the danger of most damage-other than a widespread acceptance of the fact that sex is a physiological function of the human organism-with the follow-on requirement that it be treated as such.
However, such an attitude should have had to be adopted some centuries ago to have much effect today. So much for impossibilities. Since there exist many already impaired psyches resulting from early voyeuristic experience, it seems best to examine them in their applicable categories.
As stated earlier, there seems to be a firming and spreading opposition to the unquestioned acceptance of the rules of sexual behavior which originated with and were inherited from our forefathers.
One thing which we recognize is that enlightenment is clarifying our present attitudes with regard to these rules. As noted in a prior chapter, the increasing number of Americans who are enrolling in institutions of higher learning each year, is providing the core of doubt as to the validity of these ancient taboos.
Despite the facetious description of college life often heard in the first half of the century ("college is a four-year loaf made with dad's dough") there is considerable evidence that education which carries today's high school graduate into the halls of higher learning is inducing a spreading ground-swell of thought. Part of this is the inevitable "why?, " posed to hitherto unquestioningly-accepted dogma. The sexual rules of antiquity are not only being subjected to the inexorable probe of "why?" but personal experimentation is providing some of the answers pedagogues cannot (or may not) give.
Past the area of college campuses and their restless questions and ceaseless experimentation with the facts of life, there is a whole new area of activity in sex, giving substance to the belief that Americans, in substantial numbers, are embracing the idea of a greater sexual freedom as desirable, worthwhile, necessary. With the numbers of these new frontiersmen and-women estimated to number no less than 8,000,000 and growing ... v spending in excess of $50,000,000 yearly in pursuit of their philosophy ... there is no longer room for doubt that a movement is afoot with a hard-core statistical base which will not be shrugged off.
This is the segment of married Americans which is dubbed "The Swinging Society." Its existence has been proved, beyond shadow of doubt; its activities have been probed, charted and graphed with the result that almost every strata of American fife is shown to be represented ... and voyeurism is admittedly an acceptable and enjoyable part of this activity.
Matt and Kathleen Gallant, admittedly the top authorities on the swinging society, have produced three books (with more in preparation) on this contemporary defiance of long-established sexual mores. "The Sex Rebels."
"The Lesbian in Wife Swapping" and "Wife Swapping-The People" written by this husband-wife team, have delved, sifted, sorted and compiled a startling statistical picture of the segment of our population dedicated to the sophisticated sexual philosophy. Here, we are concerned primarily with voyeurism and do not intend an in-depth review of that strata of citizens devoted to the new sexual freedom. However, they do require more than passing interest, since-in their activities, voyeurism is an integrated, accepted and welcome factor.
This has come about through a full, frank and free acceptance of sex as a natural, enjoyable, necessary function of the human organism. The delighted stimulation which occurs in those witnessing the sexual activities among others leads to a fuller participation through voyeuristic assists to desire. Note that here there is no side excitement (as is the case with the peeping Tom) generated by deliberately performing a forbidden or illegal act; no atmosphere of daring nor living dangerously in defiance of social practices. Among members of the swinging society, the stimulation the eye provides is an accepted part of the activity; is remarked by almost every interviewee who has contributed a case history to the Gallant's studies.
Thus, there arises a suspicion that voyeurism belongs in sexual activity, somewhere, somehow, since it is widely admitted to be a definite spur to both enjoyment and desire. Again there comes to mind the fact that voyeuristic law violations, in nearly every case, are not sexual offenses, actually, but offenses against the right to privacy.
In the Kinsey statistics illuminating sexual behavior in the human male and female, more than half the men and more than one-quarter of the women admitted to extra-marital affairs. Projecting such figures indicates that every other man-and every fourth woman-has participated in extra-marital sexual activity.
If these statistics prove nothing else, they do demonstrate that, regardless of what the mass of population professes to be its philosophy with regard to sex, that belief does not coincide with the action of over 50% of married males and 26% of the married females. Here is a clear demonstration of a wide duplicity with regard to sexual attitudes and a fact of grave concern since, no matter what the subject under consideration, such a widespread acceptance of dishonesty in matters touching sex cannot help but be reflected in other relationships to some extent.
It is also possible that this mental attitude is inescapable in the continuing condition of flux existing in our civilization. Faced with the continuing barrage of new concepts and upsets of ancient fallacies, which flow from the research of science, industry, medicine and scholars, there is constant warfare in the minds of many as demonstrated fact knocks the props from under long-held "truths."
There can be no denying the fact that radical change is spreading through the population with regard to sex. It may be seen in the increasing use of sex in advertising to motivate sales; the greater frankness of motion pictures in sexual matters; the spreading coverage of sex in books. The public is eager for knowledge and more and more accepts sex as a subject of consideration and conversation which should be released from taboo.
A totally voyeuristic factor in this sea-change regarding sex is an institution which has grown to be fully recognized and accepted: the sex symbol. Consider, in this one public attitude the degree of swing in public opinion. No farther back than the screen era of Clara Bow, the exceptionally libidinous appeal of this actress had to be hidden in advertising and promotion activity under the anonymity of "It." Looking back, this seems ridiculous, considering that-over the intervening years-the late Marilyn Monroe and those who followed after were frankly described as "Sex-Symbols." Considering the cultural lag in sex, many today do not fully recognize the vast change which the transition from "The Tt' Girl" to "The Sex-Symbol" reflects.
One thing it admits is that voyeurism plays an important part in sex, since the institution of the sex-symbol is totally an appeal to the eye with the tacit acknowledgement that the individual can use his imagination to fantasy whatever he wishes with regard to the initial subject. In the swinging society, extant today, the factor of voyeurism is given full and unrestricted play, eliminating or spurring fantasy, as the case may be, but admittedly heightening the enjoyment of sexual activity for its participants.
Don S. is a "single" in the swinging society (a not infrequent situation) who recalls that his first sexual activity, aside from self-erotication, which he discovered at about age ten, was with another male, a school-mate with whom he was spending the night.
"I was about thirteen," Don stated, "and this friend and I owned a canoe on shares. We'd spent the day on the river, paddling upstream to the bridge at the east end of town, then drifting downstream to the public beaches. During the drifting, we'd dive out, swim, climb back aboard-and generally have a hell of a time....
"Between the upstream limit of the bridge and the beaches downstream, there were several "camps" or summer cottages owned by some of the more sophisticated, well-to-do-families in town. One of these was owned by a blonde widow, Hyacinth Baldwin, called "Hy" for short. Her husband had died of a heart attack a couple of years before this time, and Hy had the reputation of being "fast." She always drove in town in a white Caddie convertible and Karl-my canoe co-owner-and I had seen a lot of the Baldwin leg on several occasions we'd been downtown. She climbed in and out of that car like a Hollywood stunt man getting on and off a horse.
"Anyhow, passing Hy's camp, we noticed her coming down to the beach in a white swim suit and we just had to steer over for a better look. She ignored us completely, getting her cap on and going in for a brief swim. We got to talking about her as, regretfully we watched her come out of the water and climb the stairs up the bank to the cabin.
" 'Man, look at those hips roll!' Earl breathed, as Hy climbed the steps, slowly. I nodded, licking my lips.
" 'And that chest and those thighs!' I contributed. Our conversation continued, getting into the area of what we'd like to do' if we ever got a chance with Hy.
" 'Let's go back over and ask her for it!' Karl suggested, excitedly, his imagination running away with him.
"I scoffed at him, telling him she wouldn't give him the time of day. Karl was paddling front and put his paddle across the gunwales as he turned on the seat.
" 'I'd like to give her this!' he blurted, pulling down his swim trunks. He had a full erection and grasped it in excitement. Despite the futility of the suggestion, I felt myself stiffening and turned the canoe back upstream to paddle past Hy's cabin again, closer in to shore.
" 'How're you doing?' Karl asked, looking at my trunks. I pulled them down. Mine was erect too. In an excess of bravado, Karl pulled his tunks down to his thighs, baring his erection and swung his legs back to pick up his paddle. " 'Let's show her what we've got', he said excitedly, 'maybe she'll ask us up!'"
"I told him not to be silly but he was heading us with his paddle and we were just a few yards off shore. At that moment, Hy came out on the porch in a robe, toweling the ends of her hair. She looked down at us.
" 'Whaddaya want?' she called, her voice hoarse and strident. (She'd been a waitress when she married old man Baldwin). Karl, always the impulsive type, got carried away, putting his hands on the gunwale and lifting his hips so she could see his nakedness. She laughed, scornfully and spat over the porch rail. "That's all I got fer you. Go play with each other. You look like the type. And if you don't clear outa here, I'll have the cops run you in! Ya hear?' " She turned to go back in the house and Karl shouted an obscene suggestion. Hy paused, spat again and went on in the house.
"We paddled out again and headed toward the bridge, Karl cussing a blue streak. What he said about Hy was pretty much the consensus of our elders as revealed by our eavesdropping. We were nearing the bridge and Karl quit paddling and shipped his blade, and jumped overboard. When the canoe quieted, I started to do the same thing, but then saw Karl toss his trunks onto the front seat.
" 'Hey, you goin' in skinny?' I asked.
" 'Yeah-come on in,' he urged and I did, skinning out of my trunks in the water.
" 'Why not, there's nobody out this morning but us?' I agreed and joined him alongside the canoe, stripping off my trunks.
" 'Maybe old Hy didn't have such a bad idea, 'he grinned. He grasped my half-erect (penis) underwater, and gave it a suggestive tug. I started in surprise.
" 'Hey, what's the idea?' I asked.
" 'You do mine and I'll do yours,' he grinned excitedly. 'That's what that blonde tart suggested...'
"Despite my reluctance, I could feel myself becoming erect, so I hesitantly reached across to take Karl's throbbing erection in hand. As we masturbated each other, nearing climax, I blurted: 'Man, I wish Hy had hold of that ... ! '
"After we'd finished, got back into our trunks and back into the canoe, Karl faced me on the front thwarts with a thoughtful expression on his face.
" 'What's on your mind?' I asked, suspiciously.. 'That wasn't such a big thing.' Truth was I was feeling ashamed and guilty of what we had done.
" 'Better than doing it all by yourself,' he joked, repeating a punch line of a current joke, 'at least it gives you somebody to talk to!'
"I had to laugh. He was a real 'heller," as we said, then. Then his face grew intense.
"Look, Don-I've got an idea ... why don't we fool around tomorrow until Hy comes down to swim-we can drift inshore close enough to get a good look and (masturbate) each other while we watch? She'll never know what we're doing...! '
It took a minute for the idea to filter through my thick skull-then I was amazed at the re of excitement which swept over me at Karl's suggestion. Even though I was scared at the notion, the truth of his thinking-that we'd be doing it right under our sex symbol's eyes without her knowing-set me off and I fell in with the plan, whole-heartedly.
"We almost drowned ourselves in that river before the opportunity we wanted so much, actually arrived. About ten days later, we were drifting down past the banks where the cabins were, when we spotted Hy's white convertible come roaring up to her place. We went over side and Karl took the long long mooring rope and dove to tie it to a big underwater snag-just a little upstream from Hy's stairs down to the beach. It was a big, fallen tree from some long-past flood, waterlogged and stuck in the river bottom. You could see it at low water in late cummer and we'd checked the location from memory and dived till we found it while lurking around hoping Hy would show up. We even practiced once, holding on to the canoe, masturbating each other again and found out the drift was too fast so Karl figured out this way to keep us in one place until we'd pulled off our caper.
"So, there we were, in position and excitement rising. I was experiencing an erection and I whispered to Karl to ask how he was doing. We were on the side of the canoe away from the bank and Karl, grinning arched back in the water to show me he was completely ready.
"It wasn't long before she came out onto the porch and Karl and I started manipulating each other, filled with excitement at what we were doing, and our eyes filled with the seductive lines of Hy's over-ripe body in the white suit. My heart pounded as my eyes feasted on the big breasts, the rolling hips and thighs. Then the skirt across the front worked up as she came down the steps and my breath stuck in my throat as I saw the plump swelling between her thighs and the crease which centered it, clearly outlined as the material molded it. I know Karl got the message too, his movement increased in tempo. Hy stood, silent, round thighs slightly parted, watching us as she got her bathing cap adjusted the way she wanted.
" 'You two girls sweethearts?' she asked, contemptuously in her strident voice. She stepped into the water, then-bending over to splash with her hands, and I got a glimpse of her bare breasts at the top. I couldn't have spoken to save my life. I began to climax, with my eyes fixed on the plump bulge just beneath the skirt of her suit and had to hold on tight to keep from slipping under water. Karl finished himself and I could hear the excitement in his voice as he replied (and I could tell he wasn't going to be smart, again):
" 'We're buddies,' he said. 'It's our canoe in partners . .
" 'Wonder you don't drown yourselves. Them's dangerous.'
"I was beginning to recover my senses as Karl tensed and I knew he was climaxing. 'It's safe enough if you can swim,' I gulped.
" 'Whaddaya two doin' hangin' around here?' she demanded, the belligerent tone coming back, wading out a little farther.
" 'We-well, we were fooling around with the snag,' I said. 'We dove down and found it. We've got the canoe tied up to it.' She shuddered.
" 'How c'n yuh put yer head under water?' she said, distastefully. Karl came around at this point.
" 'You have to keep the water out of your mouth and nose, but it's easy.' He grinned. 'Is it alright if we fool around with the snag?' he asked. She grumblingly said it was OK, if we wanted to drown ourselves, go ahead and stepped into the water farther to dog-paddle a little in the shallow water before getting out. We retrieved our trunks and got into them and told Hy goodbye, telling her we'd see her....
"We did this about a dozen times that summer,' Don continued and, as great as the excitement was, I finally got scared that it was a 'pansy' thing, especially when Karl wanted to do it when we stayed all night. Karl scoffed at the idea it was queer.
" 'Heck, it's not your hand I'm thinking about when we're doing it,' he grinned, 'I imagine it's that blonde that's got hold of me!' We got pretty well acquainted with Hy and she got to tolerate us. I have often wondered if she knew what we were doing, underwater and out of her sight while she was on display.
"I don't know how I ever kept out of trouble, running around with Karl," Don went on. "He was always up to something. He discovered a peep slot into the girls' gymnasium locker room. We wondered if the janitor used it, but we never found out.
He was a sourpuss and we kept out of his way. Anyhow, Karl came up with the information he had a hot surprise for me and mysteriously led me down to the boiler room at the last period when the janitor had started his rounds to empty the waste-baskets in those classrooms that were vacant. The back wall of the boiler room was the dressing room wall. The gym had a curved, metal roof that covered the locker room, too, and there was a gap someone had pried open along the top of the wall.
"You could see everything-but to reach it you had to cross from the roof stairs in the boiler room on a girder. When you were in position to see into the room, nobody could see you unless they came up the stairs because the boilers stood way up in the air. So, after we crossed over the girder, steadying ourselves on another overhead support, I looked down into the room.
"Then the chicks began trooping in from gym and started to strip down and shower. My eyes must have popped out an inch, watching all those bare breasts and bottoms. We could see into the shower stalls and before we left, I had an erection that ached. That night, I masturbated, remembering that room full of naked girls.
"I guess we enjoyed that peep-hole for about a year. It was a slit, really, about two feet long, so you could see almost the entire locker room. I got my biggest charge out of seeing the gym teacher a few times. Man! was she built. I remember one night I lingered after even the boiler room was locked up when she came in to shower. Her breasts were big but they were firm, jiggling, with every move she made. After she finished soaping, and rinsing, she soaped up between her legs again and began massaging herself until she was real excited.
Then, she unscrewed the shower head and adjusted the stream real strong and crouched co the water hit her just there. Man, we both made it and I thought nhe was going to fly apart when it hit her. She twisted like a snake..."
It was during this time that Don got the idea to prowl the homes of certain girls he was particularly attracted to. If he could get a chance to look while they were naked (or, as he recounted being lucky enough to catch one masturbaling on her own) he indulged in masturbation.
When he was about six months past his fifteenth birthday, there occurred his first experience in coitus. A friend of his mother's, Lucy, about fifteen years older than the lad, had a habit of dropping in for visits unannounced. She and Don's mother had gone to school together and were close friends.
This Saturday, Don was home alone and was showering when Lucy walked in, not knocking or ringing, which was usual with her. Finding no one in the house, she headed for the sound of the shower, evidently assuming it was Don's mother. The door to the bath was open, and Lucy walked in on the lad just as he emerged from the shower-stall. He was experiencing an erection from some manipulation in the shower and didn't realize she was there until he turned from the towel rack to face her.
"I'd always thought Lucy was the sexiest-looking woman around," Don grins, in recounting his experience, "and many's the time I'd masturbated with fantasies about her. I was shocked numb, for a moment to see her standing there, looking at me, buck naked and my (penis) standing straight up. It started to fall, but Lucy's smile and comment encouraged it to remain erect.
" 'Hey, Donnie-today you look like a man. Do you know how to use that?'
"I'd always kidded around with Lucy. Besides having a terrific yen to spy on her (which I'd never been able to do) I liked her and she had always liked me, I thought. I figured she was just kidding me so I excitedly gave her a smart answer. Sone-thing like 'would you like to try?' This may sound pretty forward for me, but Lucy and I always needled each other-never before anything really to do with sex, but I guess the feeling must have been just under the surface, all the time....
"She wanted to know where mother and dad were and I told her they'd driven over to Aunt Grace's and wouldn't be back until late afternoon.
" 'Expecting any of your friends?' she asked, smiling and moving a little closer, her eyes constantly dropping to my (penis) which was jumping with my excited heart-beat. I shook my head and she said:
" 'If you'd really like to find out what that's for, now's a good time," she said, kiddingly, but moving a little closer. "Doesn't your hand need a rest?'
"'Doesn't everybody's?' I cracked back. This type of repartee with Lucy excited me still more.
" 'I'll go lock up so nobody wanders in,' she said and winked and I excitedly finished drying while she took care of it. As she came back, her arms were behind her neck, to unzip her dress; her eyes were busy on my erection. You know, it's funny how certain things stick in your mind-I remember Lucy's arms in that position looked as sexy as I always thought her legs looked....
"Then she was pulling her dress off and shaking back her hair, saying:
" 'OK, big fellow; let's do it ... ' "
"Man, was I excited as she took her dress off. She had on a brassiere, panties and long, sheer hose which had garters built into the tops. She always dressed nicely and was proud of her legs and small, neat feet. I'd gotten a dozen erections just glancing as she sat, with her legs crossed, talking to my mother. She had big breasts, too, and I thought of the girls' gym teacher I'd seen in the shower, wondering if Lucy's jiggled like hers, instead of bouncing. When she came close to me, slipping one arm around my shoulders and taking my erection in the other hand, she kissed me, pressing herself against me. I could feel those breasts pushing against me and thought I was going out of my head.
"She retained her hold on my erection as she led us into the bedroom. I pushed my clothes aside as she released me to unhook her brassiere and my hands, instinctively took hold of them. They were tight and warm and I never felt anything so exciting. She slipped out of her tight panties, sitting down on the bed and pulling me down beside her. She kissed me then, her fingers touching me and teasing me all over.
" 'This is the first for you, isn't it Donnie?' she asked, when our lips parted. I nodded, too breathless to speak. " 'Then, I'll show you everything, sweetheart ... '
"And she did. I know Lucy must have had two orgasms for every one I experienced and I climaxed three times with her. When we were done, Lucy confessed that she and her husband were members of the mate-swapping set. She swore me to secrecy about that and about what we'd been doing. She asked me if I'd like to come over some evening and swing with her husband and her. I was a little dubious about her husband, at that moment, but I wasn't dubious about Lucy. All I knew was that I'd stumbled onto a free pass to the ball game.
"I had a call from her about a week later, asking if I'd like to come over for an evening. Being as close a friend of my parents-my mother, actually-as she was, Lucy could plan pretty cagily. My folks were out for their bi-weekly bridge fight-as they called it-and weren't-likely to be home before two o'clock.
"It was foolish to worry about Lucy's husband. When I got there, Hal welcomed me, laughing, saying he was certainly glad to have some help to keep Lucy happy.
" 'From what she tells me,' he laughed, 'I think we can handle this job, just by ourselves.'
"I got a kick out of a grown man talking to me like an equal. It helped take the shock off the fact that, when I got to the house, they both greeted me undressed Hal, completely nude, Lucy in panties, hose and heels.
"To get me into the swing, they had a session first. Man! I had a climax watching them. Peeping at naked girls was nothing compared to this! They got a bang out of seeing me react to their lovemaking. When Hal finished, and Lucy came back to the living room, he told me it was my turn-and was I ready! Lucy explained the rules of the game to me when we were at the house, so I knew my job was to make her happy. I did, too-and I was proud of myself. She had two climaxes while I was doing what Lucy had told me she wanted but I couldn't make it.
"Hal got an erection again from watching and suggested I rest while he took over for awhile. It wasn't long before I had to ask if I could go again and Hal grinning, turned Lucy over to me. This time, I stayed in there and pitched until I won, but again, Lucy made it twice while I was working with her..."
Don, subsequently, went on with this couple for several months before they introduced him to some of their friends. He recalls that he quickly became satisfied with the group method of sex and didn't derive nearly the enjoyment from individual dates. As a matter-of-fact, his parents often quizzed him about the fact that he didn't date any of his high school classmates but Don always shrugged them off as too kiddish for him.
After high school, Don attended junior college, then went into a local industrial job. He advanced quickly, by age thirty-five he was a vice-president. He has never married, but is an enthusiastic and popular member of the area's swinging society-and one of their best recruiters of single girls. This, Don admits, has become something of a way of life for him.
"Remember 'The Enforcer' on television?" he asks, laughing. "Well, in the group I travel with, I'm kiddingly known as 'The Procurer'-the only thing that troubles me is there's more truth than poetry in the nick-name. However, I can always take comfort from the fact that the girls are willing..."
Don is the first to admit that his introduction to swinging was probably responsible for his never having married.
"Single sex-to me-is just too tame. There's no kick to it as there is when I'm with a group of swingers-watching other guys making it-or having them watch me make it. I could never settle down to one woman sex. I guess I'm beyond the point of no return..."
It would appear that the voyeur/exhibitionist in Don has remained dominant since his youthful experiences with Lucy and Hal-and had been solidified by subsequent activity among swingers. Predicating the opinion on the inevitability of old age and the loneliness of no family life, it might appear that Don is headed for personal tragedy due to his sexual preferences. However, we base such deductions on the experiences of the past.
It is very true that Don may have company in his declining year, because things are reflecting change-and there may be compensation of which we know nothing, held, as we are, in the thrall of our conventional beliefs. What we do know is that nothing in human experience is perfect-and that may certainly be used to describe sexual proscription as we know it today.
While Don has expressed an aversion to the possibility he may be somewhat homosexually oriented, the possibility remains, in his affirmation of the delights of swinging sex, that this latency may contribute, without his being conscious of it, to his reticence to find a full-time mate for himself.
While in the general numerical assessment, voyeurism is not a major consideration with the female, in the swinging world there are numbers of single females whose participation is due to an early conditioning to voyeur contributions to sexual satisfaction.
Alice M., as a case in point-insists she can only achieve a sexual climax in situations where there were more than two participants. Alice was brought up in a "hard shell" Baptist home in a small southern city, and she lived under the strictest kind of moral discipline. All of the casual pleasures which her peers indulged in with no restriction cards, dancing, movies, etc.-all were forbidden to Alice.
Her clothing, compared to that of her schoolmates, was "frumpy." No ribbons, little color, none of the touches so dear to the feminine heart-even among very small feminine hearts. Alice's entire social life orbited about the church to which her family belonged. Parties at home were unknown, alcohol was an anathema to her parents and Alice accounted for every moment of her time from departure for school in the morning to her return at night. In vacations, the strictures were (seemingly) even tighter because all her friends seemed to run free as the birds. However, with the pliancy of the young, Alice managed to get along in the strict atmosphere of her Baptist family since she saw that many of her acquaintances-as well as a few of her friends-were also subject to this same tight discipline, so she did not feel that she was entirely deprived. She had company.
This situation altered drastically when Alice's father was offered a position in a large, midwestern city office of the company for which he worked. It was a promotion which carried with it increased responsibility and authority as well as setting Alice's father on the path toward the upper echelon of the company. Their home in the south was sold and the family moved north and west.
The step to the St. Louis office was a big one and Alice's parents found a great many things different from their former existence. For one thing, Alice began to feel deprived, immediately. The clothing which had been suitable before, was definitely a detriment and earned the young girl nothing but scorn and jibes from her schoolmates. With the father's new position, Alice's mother quickly faced up to the fact that there were many changes in all their lives which must be made. Immediately, Alice was to be equipped to "fit in" better with her associates. Her clothing, for one thing, and her participation in their activities for another. When the young girl stayed out of school three days, too sick and miserable to face a return to class because of the scornful comments of her classmates, her mother-practically-informed the father they were outnumbered and reminded him of the ancient truism about Rome and the Romans.
So Alice received a complete change of wardrobe on a one-day shopping expedition that lasted from early until late. The lift for her spirits can be imagined. Also, she was permitted a far wider participation in the amusements. Almost immediately, she was invited to parties and other social activities which opened, for her, a complete new world.
She was catchecized, thoroughly, by her parents about her behavior; warned against petting, alcohol and tobacco and certain movies she was not permitted to attend but it was a tremendous change from her virtual imprisonment in home and church. Alice's first reaction was one of almost delirious intoxication in her new freedom. She began to apply cosmetics, surreptitiously, and became the object of attention from some of the boys. She was shocked to find that movies and dances were not as she'd been assured-way-stations on a straight road to hell and, again with the elasticity of youth, she expanded under her new-found freedom to secretly question anything and everything she had been taught was a sin. Experimentation on the sly was unavoidable and Alice soon came to a state of mind which, with her conditioning, was inevitable. If so much she'd been taught as gospel truth was so patently false, she-secretly-could accord little respect to her parents' leadership. She questioned everything in her discipline.
Alice, before long, became an intimate of a sophisticated clique in school. Her good looks and her frankly-confessed naivet' triggered her warm welcome. Her innocence was a long-standing source of delight to her girl friends, many of whom had long since parted with their virginity and were participating in what Alice had been taught to believe was the most dangerously sinful of all offenses.
"I didn't know what time it was," Alice confessed, "but I soon got an earful. When they realized I didn't know a single, solitary thing about sex except that it was all hell-fire and damnation, I thought the slumber party would go into mass hysterics. They had thought I was kidding at first, I guess, but when they found out I really was a square, they just couldn't stand it. They had to fill me in as quickly as possible.
"It seems like they were always talking about sex. The others constantly were discussing the size of this boy's (penis)-or that one's; how expert each was in taking care of their partner's needs and the various methods they used to masturbate. All this was shocking initially but I began to get used to it. I had only masturbated twice in my life and I was horribly ashamed and frightened both times, being convinced that it would make me incurably sick....
"I had gone home one afternoon after school with Janie for awhile and, up in her bedroom, our conversation-hers rather-turned to sex and she wanted to know how I masturbated. I confessed my lack of experience, blaming it on my fears of becoming ill.
" 'Oh, pooh' she scoffed. 'I found out how when I was nine. I've been doing it ever since. Do I look sick?'"
"I had to admit she didn't. Janie was one of the most popular, attractive and on-the-go girls in the class.
" 'It's good for you,' she continued. 'Relaxes you-makes you feel a"L soft and relaxed like a bunny.'
"Janie and I had reached the 'best friends' relationship pretty quickly after her crowd picked me up. I felt I could talk to her and, confessing I didn't really have any technique, I asked her how she did that and she showed me. Locking the bedroom door, she took off her clothes, directing me to take mine off and proceeded to lie back on the bed with her thighs apart and massage herself. After she climaxed, she explained to me how sensitive the clitoris was and I had to confess I didn't know what it was and she instructed me to take the same position on the bed she had and she proceeded to go to work with her finger. I found out what I needed to know, getting passionate in a hurry and reaching a climax swiftly.
" 'You're an easy off,' she laughed and, soon afterward, I asked if she'd do it again. It had felt so good. 'I'll show you some other ways,' she said-and proceeded to do so. Then she wanted me to do it for her and priding myself on learning quickly, I induced two orgasms for Janie.
"Janie and I kept this up for about a year," Alice recalls. "Now and then Phyllis would join us. We'd do it in front of each other or to each other. I confessed to Janie I'd never seen a boy naked and didn't know what one looked like. It was right near the end of school and the boys were beginning to talk about going swimming.
" 'Wait'll the water gets warm enough and I'll show you something,' Janie promised, and she was as good as her word.
"So, one Saturday, Janie took me down to the lake. We sneaked up through the bushes like a pair of Indians and found a good, thick clump of bushes we could hide in and see out from. It was some time before any of the boys arrived, but I was so excited in anticipating the sight of a nude male, I didn't care. Finally, a group of three of them drove up, stripped to the skin and headed for the lake. I couldn't see much until they got into shallow water and started to splash each other. Then, I could see everything....
"Janie got excited when a second group arrived.
"I've done it with that boy,' she indicated a muscular, compact boy who seemed to have a bigger equipment than the others. She began to play with her breasts, watching him and remembering and got herself excited. The first group of boys decided it was too cold and dressed and left, but Janie's friend decided to stay. His companions went with the other boys. She was excited, but good. Telling me she just had to have Jack in her, she got ready to go around and come back from a different direction through the brush. " 'Why don't you watch?' Janie breathed, her hands still playing with her bosoms as she got up and disappeared.
"I was excited, too and watched with eyes that ached from the strain, until Janie appeared from my left, calling to Jack. He hailed her excitedly as she approached, standing with his hands on his hips his big (penis) beginning to stiffen. Janie offered to go swimming with him but he said it was really too cold, asking if there wasn't something she'd rather do.
"Janie didn't hesitate, stripping down to the skin as Jack and she moved to a grassy knoll so close I could see the drops still on his skin. He grabbed her breasts and started kissing her as she lay back. I could tell by the way her legs were twisting and tensing she was enjoying it, and her hand quickly caught Jack's erection. As he began kissing her breasts, I heard Janie give a little moan and I knew she was so excited she could hardly hold on.
"I had unfastened my slacks and got a hand down inside my panties to squeeze and rub and I had two climaxes while I watched Janie and Jack. I had never experienced anything like them. They shook me clear down to my toes. When Janie relaxed her legs and arms and Jack withdrew, they were shining, with perspiration and began to kid about the appearance of Jack's relaxed (penis).
"Then, after awhile, Janie started fondling him and he became erect again. He began by kissing her breasts this time but it took them longer than the first time and Janie had two climaxes before Jack finally reached completion. I had two more too, reaching the first when Jack rocked back on his haunches after Janie climaxed, his erection throbbing and shiny, Janie trying to focus her eyes on it while she was ebbing. Then, he went back at her again. By the time they finished, I was exhausted; could hardly drag myself back to the car after they left. Both Janie and Jack were kidding about being sore ... I was sore and worn out!"
"Well, this began it for me and I began to get Janie to tell me where she was going with dates she did it with and for a while she told me. Then she confided to Jack what we did and what I was doing and he began to urge Janie to get the three of us together, but she was reluctant because of me. Finally she told me what Jack had asked, and-while it scared me-after thinking about it for a couple of weeks or so, I finally found myself eager. I wasn't thinking so much of my participation as I was the opportunity to watch, close up and openly....
"The result was that I was supposed to spend Saturday afternoon and night with Janie, planning on going to a movie that afternoon-but, when Janie picked me up in her car, we parked it in a shopping center and Jack drove up as Janie locked up. Excitedly-and frightenedly-I asked what the plan was and Jack told me his folks had this mountain cabin and we were headed for it for complete privacy. It was a beautiful place-it took us about an hour to get there-perched on a ridge-top with miles of mountain scenery around it. Jack and Janie didn't spend too much time admiring the picture, though. Jack was impatient to get started-as I could tell by a quick glance at his trousers-and the three of us were soon in the big bedroom.
"It was a little embarrassing for me, right at first, but Jack and Janie stripped and I couldn't tear my eyes away from his big (penis) and (testicles). Occasionally, while they were playing with each other, they'd look over at me and smile, Jack urging me to take my things off. I began to feel my excitement drowning out everything else and while Jack was kissing Janie's breasts and she was teasing his erection, I got up and stripped, too. Then, shoving the last feeling of embarrassment behind me, I began to rub myself as I watched the two of them working on each other. When Janie guided
Jack into position and they began, I had an orgasm before they finished.
"When they recovered, Jack and Janie insisted I get on the bed with them and we fooled around awhile, Jack teasing and playing with both of us. I'd never touched a boy, before, but-at his urging-I finally took hold of him, and was so excited I could hardly breathe. Jack began to play with me and then suggested I let him in me, but I was scared. Then, he and Janie began to play with me together, and I got so excited I guess I'd have said 'yes' to anything. When Jack moved over between my thighs and knelt there, I hung on to him like grim death, I was so shaken. As I watched his erection pulse as he put on a protector, I knew that this was the time....
"Janie cautioned him to take it easy as I lay back, trembling, my breath jammed up in my throat. I was a little scared because he looked so huge, and was all tensed up but it only hurt a little bit and Jack took it easy, as Janie kept urging him. Finally, when he was there, I felt like I was paralyzed. I could hardly get my breath and I felt strained and full.....
"Then I became conscious of Janie teasing my nipples and I guess I twisted at the new sensation because Jack, smiling down into my eyes began to move. I've never had anything to equal that in my life-Janie playing with my breasts-Jack slowly, slowly moving himself up and back. Then, Janie was kneeling beside us and I felt her other hand, teasing Jack's (testicles) while she continued toying with my nipple. The good feelings began to swamp me then and before I could hold it back, I climaxed. Oh! how I spasmed. My muscles in my legs and back were sore for three days. When I came up from the whirlpool, Jack and Janie were grinning down at me, and he was still there-still throbbing! Oh!...! "
Mary dropped her face into her hands at the recollection but, smiling, continued after a moment.
"We rested for awhile and Jack mixed us a drink-this was another first for me-but he made them all light. Bourbon in coke. It tasted alright, but I could feel it almost immediately and I remembered thinking a little of that must go a long way. We got to talking about the way girls made love to each other and Jack kept urging Janie to do it orally. She finally admitted having done it once and asked if I minded. I told her I might as well know it all and Jack watched while she began to kiss me. Before long, I felt myself slipping out of this world again as she reached my sensitive spot. I remember how excited Jack got at watching us. I couldn't take my eyes off his erection as I exploded-then I lost sight of everything..."
Mary recounted that she seemed to remember that whole afternoon as an almost continual orgasm. Jack performed coitus next with Janie while Mary teased both of them as Janie had. Then Jack asked Janie to do oral sex on him but she protested, saying she never had. Finally, she agreed to try if I'd try too. Jack had mixed us another short drink, between sessions, and I agreed and we began-first Janie, then me. Jack was going out of his mind-I guess he was nearing orgasm-and, when I lifted my face, to look at him, he pushed me back and entered again, climaxing almost immediately. This broke the party up, Janie rushing me into the bath and immediately digging out the equipment for a cold water douche. Ugh, that was uncomfortable-but that was an afternoon to remember, otherwise..."
"We were tired and, as I said, my whole body was aching and sore for the next three days, but I determined that if that was so black a sin, by now I was the blackest sheep of all because I had never experienced anything so terrific before. We all agreed it had been a tremendous afternoon and formed a 'Three Musketeers' for future sex.
During school vacation, Mary had invitations from several boys for dates, one of them-a friend of Jack's-frankly asking if she'd have sex with him. She admired the boy and agreed and they went to Chris' house. His folks were away, overnight. Mary recounted that, while Chris seemed very capable in the fight of her limited experience, and seemed to handle her with skill, her orgasm was not so full nor satisfactory as with Jack and Janie. When he suggested a second try to which Mary agreed, hoping for better results. However, the second climax, while more vigorous than the first, still left much to be desired.
Mary puzzled over this and agreed quickly when Jack and Janie suggested another Saturday session. This time, since Jack's family was at the mountain cabin, they went to his home. Again, Mary's orgasms were all she could want. She told her friends about the experience with Chris and Jack confessed he'd suggested his friend ask her for a date, but hastened to reassure both girls he hadn't talked.
" 'I only told him that if I weren't going steady with Janie, I'd sure ask you for a date,' Jack explained.
They had no explanation to offer for Mary's experiences. She dated Chris a couple more times and went out with another boy Jack suggested, but the results were not worth the effort. The trio settled down to a fairly regular group session no less than once every two weeks and every week, when they could manage it. Mary's mother and father had no idea, of course, what was going on. Since Janie's people were influential members of the business community and well-respected, Mary's mother and dad congratulated themselves on their daughter's obvious good-taste in her close friendship with Janie.
The trio all entered college at the same time, Jack and Janie eloping to be married at the end of their sophomore year. Far from breaking up the trio, this solidified it and the three graduated together. When Jack's and Janie's parents decided they seemed-likely to make it, they relaxed their ban on the young marrieds living together which both families had insisted upon since both wanted to finish school. Relieved that no premature offspring had resulted with the follow-on embarrassment for both families, both sets of parents got into the spirit of the thing and gave Jack and Janie a new home in a smart suburban neighborhood for a wedding present their senior year, Jack's father being a successful building contractor and developer.
Mary, meanwhile, found herself leading two existences, which went against the grain and led to a widening of the philosophical split between her parents and her. Now and then, she'd date boys from school, just to satisfy them but she never formed any permanent alliance nor felt any need to, with the regular sessions of sex she enjoyed with Janie and Jack. Upon graduation, Jack got a job with an investment brokerage firm (this being his prime interest) owned by a friend of his father and soon began to make excellent progress. By the time he'd been out of college six months, Jack and Janie confided to Mary that they'd made the acquaintance of a couple who were active in the swinging society, telling her that single girls were much in demand. Mary needed little urging, and the threesome expanded into a wide range of contacts, acquaintances and friendships within the swingers' numbers.
It was not until eighteen months later that Mary finally became interested in a male 'single' she'd met in this activity. After six months, they decided to marry, both having the clear conviction that the swinging society was their way of life.
Mary's resentment at her parents' constant insistence on their strict behavioral code as the only acceptable way of life increased from the time she began her secret sex life. Her irritation was constantly aroused by her mother's comments and pronouncements which made Mary's double existence an offense against every 'honest and decent thing' in life. Mary, silently, denied every assertion her mother would make (in the fond hope that she was instilling in her offspring her own code of behavior), her resentment and anger building slowly. In the light of her discovery of the delights of sex, she further considered her parents had deliberately misled her for their own purposes and, in time, it assumed the dimensions of a considered betrayal in Mary's thinking.
Finally, she managed a subtle rebuke. She agreed to marry Ran only if they might elope-which they did. When they broke the news to Mary's family on their return, they were shocked but Mary adamantly refused to consider a second, religious ceremony. In the heat of their discussion Mary compared her childhood to 'living in prison' and made it plain that-if she and Ran had children-they'd be subjected to such treatment 'over her dead body.' Soon afterward, Mary's father was promoted into the top echelon of the company in New York and Mary was relieved and pleased that distance prevented any but the most infrequent contact with her family.
Adult voyeurism, thus, is quite often a result of early experience and, considering what may result in adult consequence, gives a valid reason for sober consideration of the impressions to which the young may offer acceptance from the earliest period of sentience. There is no straight, well-marked highway to a desired balance in such matters; in our society, the paths are many, indistinct and-in many cases-leading everywhere but to the ends parents may be either striving (or wishfully thinking) toward. In that area of maturation: the highly impressionable, irresistibly attractive and conventionally secretive process of acquiring sex experience, millions of American youngsters are exposed (in the existing, publicly professed behavioral codes) to a form of Russian Roulette which is-it's true-seldom fatal ... but very, very final.....
CHAPTER FIVE
IMPAIRMENT BY VISION
A closer look at some of those who have been the victims of voyeuristic experience at an early age is interesting. With the entire subject of sex one which, more and more, offers as many curses as blessings in this enlightened time and society; the casualties of voyeurism come under scrutiny next.
One thing should be recognized immediately. Just as each individual of us has a slightly different threshold to pain; a mind which is either more or less "tough" or complacent, a physique which is more or less able to command respect through the possibility of force-so do we vary in the individual fibers of mentality ... the ability to absorb or be dissolved by the emotional peaks and valleys which are part and parcel of human experience. Sex is an area of experience where this latter ability is a highly critical consideration, the fact being evident-as in every other consideration of human worth or failure-that we are far from similar.
Thus it is that some with a psyche capable of absorbing all of the varying shocks of nature versus convention, will sustain no ill effects from whatever impressions, influence or experiences are his lot during the highly impressionable, formative years of his sexual experience. At the other end of the line is the male or female who is incapable of containing the pressures generated by the shocks and emotional peaks of sex experience and, as a result, comes to the status of outward adult maturity with a secret corner of the mind still prey to the fears, mysterious doubts and debilitating fears of childhood and adolescence.
All too often, help is not available to these sufferers since their afflictions must be kept as secret as the means by which they were acquired....
At this point, we resume the story of Betsy F. whose sexual precocity and the revelations of her peeping generated an insatiable hunger in her. After witnessing the uninhibited sexual activity of Nardis and Chuck, Betsy became fascinated with peeping. She was constantly on the alert when her brothers bathed and participated in several sessions of mutual nakedness and masturbation with them. However, the boys were beginning to shy away from including their little sister in their sexual activities, the attitude of their associates in school indicating that sisters were in the same sexually desirable classification as mothers, grandmothers, Aunt Tilly and ugly first cousins.
To gratify her increasing desire to spy on others naked or in the sexual act, Betsy went to great lengths. She found out the bathing time of all the boys in the neighborhood. Several of them said they took their baths after dinner, but Betsy wasn't allowed to prowl the area after nightfall, so this wasn't productive of much opportunity for what she wanted. She weltered in frustration for some months until Nardis' sister was married and departed to another city with her new husband. About a month later, the captain made a deal with one of his commercial fishermen associates to buy into his operation, time beginning to hang a little heavy on his hands. As a consequence, he was gone from home for long weeks at a time and Nardis made good use of his absence. Quite often Betsy was able to sneak out of bed and watch proceedings next door with an avid eye and a lavish indulgence in self-gratification.
She had a couple of narrow escapes and once her mother, getting up in the night, discovered her absence. Betsy, seeing the lights go on in her home, reasoned it was her absence causing the activity and slipped back into her patio, pretending to be asleep on the chaise. When her mother, in frantic relief, "woke" her, Betsy spun a story about not being able to sleep indoors. Thereafter, it was easier to get permission to spend an occasional night in her sleeping bag and an opportunity to peek, if there was activity next door. Her desire turned more and more on the satisfaction she was able to derive from self-erotication when spying and when she was frustrated in this desire, masturbated as she recalled things she had seen.
Betsy's own narrative continues verbatim with an event which occurred shortly after her fifteenth birthday:
"We went up to visit my grandfather and my aunt and uncle in the Valley that summer. It was awfully hot and I didn't like it up there much but I didn't want to go away to a camp with a bunch of girls so, like it or not, I was stuck with it. My brothers were at a summer camp on the coast so they had an excuse not to go.
"It was real busy around the farm for the grownups, but I didn't care anything about riding cultivators or harvesters in the heat and dust, after I'd done it once. So, I poked around, mostly by myself. One afternoon after lunch, I was fooling around in the barn when a boy from a neighboring farm came in. I'd climbed up in the hayloft and there was a steady draft blowing in the open door to the loading stage and I lay down on a bale of hay, enjoying the sensation as the draft evaporated the perspiration and made me feel cool. I heard someone below and, instinctively I crept over to the edge to peep at whoever it was, when I saw this boy.
"The last time I'd seen him was about two years before and he'd teased me by calling me a baby. I'd begun to menstruate a few months after I was twelve and my mother explained what was happening and that I wasn't a child anymore-now I was a woman. Well, I couldn't tell Griff that, but I resented his teasing me about it. He was in the process of stacking some tools in the corner-evidently he'd borrowed them and was returning them. He made about three trips from the truck to bring the things in and when he made the last trip, he stripped open his tight jeans and dropped them to put his shirt; back in tight. It had pulled out while he was returning the tools.
"He didn't have anything on under his jeans and I was shocked at the size of him. He was evidently very proud of his organs, he manipulated and flopped them around a little before he started pulling up his pants. Some hay dust got up my nose and I let out an explosive sneeze which came on so fast I didn't have a chance to squelch it. Fastening his pants, Griff looked up and spotted me spying on him.
" 'Hey, Betsy-baby, what're you doin' up there-peepin' at people?'
"I'm not a baby and I wasn't spying!' I retorted heatedly. T happened to be snoozing up here on a bale of hay. You woke me up and I was just coming down.'
"'Well, why don't I come up, instead?' he grinned and I shrugged.
" 'There's some air moving up here, anyhow,' I said, complainingly. 'Is it always this hot?'
'"Most times it is,' he said, coming up the ladder with a minimum of waste motion. When he reached the top, his eyes widened as he looked at me and his grin broadened. I was wearing 'short shorts' and a thin, knit cotton top and I guess my breasts had developed to the point where they were far from bee-stings. Anyhow, I could tell from the way he looked at me that he regretted the 'Betsy-baby' crack.
"'You still think I'm a baby?' I demanded, sitting down on the bale of hay I'd been lying on, and arching my back to give him the full benefit of my chest development.
" 'Not any more, Betsy,' he grinned. 'Maybe I should have my eyes examined.'
" 'They seem to be doing alright,' I tossed back. They were traveling over me, from face to ankles, busy as bees.
" 'Well, the scenery's alright,' he said, sitting down beside me on the hay bale. 'Maybe that's why.'
" 'You like what you see?' I persisted, still rankling from his designation of baby. He slipped an arm around my waist and pulled me closer to him.
" 'Pul-lenty!' he said. 'How about smoochin' it up with me?'
" 'You go around kissing babies?' I asked tartly. That set him off, and the next moment I was locked in the hard grasp of his hot arms, his mouth on mine. It was pretty exciting and I didn't resist after the initial contact, and only a token wriggle when one big hand slid up my ribs and closed over my breast.
"It was a long kiss and when we came up for air, I was tingling all over-especially where his hand still held my tingling bosom. I glanced down quickly to see his tight jeans bulging at the crotch and he intercepted the glance, pulling me back.
" 'You know where to check the results, baby-doll,' he chuckled as he kissed me again, his hand dropping to slip under my top and pull it upward. I wasn't wearing a bra and the touch of his rough, hot hand on my skin almost made me jump out of myself. This time, he cupped me and began to roll the nipple between thumb and finger and the tingles spread down to my hips and my excitement was making my heart go like a hammer.
"Then he let go of my breast for a moment and took my hand and held it against his (penis). I could feel it, stiff and throbbing against his tight pants and I tried to pull away but he held it there, placing my fingers around it and squeezing my hand against it. Then his hand went back to my bare breast and he slid the other up between my thighs. I jumped and struggled but he wouldn't let go, and I began to get that old feeling. Griff knew how and it wasn't long before he had opened the zipper at the back and pulled my shorts down over my knees. My panties came with them and they dropped around my ankles as he worked my thighs apart and began to work me up in earnest.
"We broke our kiss again and he let go of my (vulva) and started to unfasten his pants. I tried to get him to stop, but I couldn't make anything but a stupid croaking sound. I couldn't resist looking down as he spread his legs and dipped his hand into his jeans to work his masculinity out into the open. Again, I was overwhelmed. I'd never seen anything to compare with him. He could tell I was impressed.
" 'You like that?' he whispered, hoarsely, his words shaky as we both sat and looked at the rigid, jerking (penis). I nodded, dumbly, as he put my hand around it and he teased me because my ringers weren't long enough. 'Ever play with one?' he whispered again and I could only shake my head.
"Well, he showed me how and after several minutes, I was half out of my mind with excitement and his continued manipulation of my clitoris. When I was just about to climax, he picked me up and put me on a tarp, spread over a pile of loose hay, and pulled my shorts and pants off my ankles.
" 'What are you going to do?' I asked, my eyes fixed on his massive erection.
" 'This is what we do to separate the babies from the grownup girls,' he said, winking. His jeans were below his knees and I was paralyzed as I watched him pull himself down, gritting his teeth, until I felt him touch me. I jumped at the sensation and my breath caught in my throat. It came unstuck right quick because he pushed and the pain made me yip like a stepped-on dog. I hunched back.
" 'I'm sorry,' he whispered. 'Didn't mean to hurt you. Too much for you?'
" T think so,' I said, uncertainly.
" 'Let's try it again, real easy-like,' he urged.
" 'Well-alright-but easy...'
"He moved himself around against me for a little while until the sting had gone and I was beginning to feel myself getting closer to the edge from the friction. When I felt him at the spot again, I tensed and began to shake.
" 'Now jes' relax, baby-doll,' he said, in that hoarse whisper, 'Griff won't hurt Betsy-relax, now...'
"I tried to relax, but when he came on again, I stood it as long as I could, but the pain was fierce. Something gave and he slipped deeper and I began to kick and beat at his shoulders. When he released me, I wrapped my legs around each other and doubled up until the pain stopped.
"I told him it was too big and I didn't want to do that any more. I noticed a trace of blood on him and he removed it with a blue bandanna. He didn't try to penetrate me again, but he made me bring him to a climax with my hand and I had an orgasm when he did. Then he wanted to get me to try him inside me again, but I wouldn't. I told him it hurt too much. He was erect again and wanted me to take it in my mouth, but I was afraid and he couldn't persuade me to. He asked me if I'd like to go swimming with him the next day-he said he had a secret place on the irrigation canal that only he and one other boy knew about-you could even go in naked, for kicks. I felt this was his way of testing me, somehow, so I agreed to go.
"I had some pain in my vagina that night and didn't get to sleep until late and didn't feel too good the next day. When Griff came by to take me swimming, I begged off, walking out to the car with him to tell him why. I agreed to go with him the next day, instead. He came by at the same time and we took off in his pickup. We had to walk the last hundred yards to the swimming spot and it was secret. I didn't even know the canal was there until Griff pulled the bushes aside so I could get through. It was all sandy banks and bottom and I hauled off my muu-muu under which I had my swim suit and headed for the water.
"Griff called out to me that I was a sissy, and I looked around to see him pull his pants off and walk toward me, stark naked, the huge masculine parts of him drawing my attention like a magnet. He talked me into shedding my suit and we went into the water, nude. It was pleasant and we fooled around for awhile in the water, our bodies rubbing together and I got real excited again. We got out and lay down on a big beach towel Griff had brought and he began to get me excited again. When he rubbed my (vulva) and played with my breasts, I got hold of his erection and did what he'd showed me before. Finally, he was so excited he couldn't stand it and I felt an orgasm close and he rolled me over on my back and got between my thighs. I pulled my legs back and pushed against his stomach with my feet to keep him from trying to get in me again. Then he stopped and tried to get me to take it in my mouth but, somehow, I didn't want to, not right then. He didn't say anything for awhile, just sat playing with his erection. I started rubbing my clitoris, watching him, and had an orgasm. When I finished, Griff was red in the face and looking angry.
"Then I heard a noise in the bushes and jerked around to see another boy come through, saying hello to Griff. I tried to grab the towel to cover myself, but Griff pulled it away, telling me this was the other fellow who knew about this swimming place and he was a friend of his. I started to get mad, but I sensed that I was in a bad spot and kept quiet. Then I knew I was when the other boy stripped naked and came over to sit on the towel with us. Griff introduced him as Wilfred and he said:
" 'Hey, looks like you're havin' fun,' Griff said he'd thought so, too, but Betsy had turned off for him. Wilfred's (phallus) wasn't nearly so big as Griff's, I couldn't help but see. It was shorter and not nearly so thick and the (glans) was pink and bare while Griff's was shiny and purplish when he drew the skin back. When Griff was erect, the end was covered all except for the very tip.
Griff was still looking mad and he began to work his hand on it and I couldn't keep my eyes away from him as he became fully erect again. Wilfred, grinning wickedly, began to do the same and I was surprised at how long it was when it became erect. I began to feel excitement, even though the circumstances made me uneasy. This didn't seem to reduce my excitement. Somehow, it seemed to increase my fever. With the two of them sitting there, working with themselves, I couldn't help it-I began rubbing myself. As the silence continued and my eyes were glued to the boys' hand movements, the weird situation began to add to my excitement. I felt my eyes growing droopy as I neared a climax again and I heard Wilfred chuckle.
" 'She looks ready, Griff. Maybe I can open things up for you!'
"Then he was on me and Griff was holding my legs stretched out and apart. That same wicked smile was on Wilfred's face as he reached down to cup me and slip his finger up me. I was too scared and too excited to struggle and Wilfred took his time, entering me very slowly, with little pushes. I gritted my teeth to keep from yelling, and I thought he'd never stop going. I know I began to sob and I guess about half the pain I felt was mental but I could visualize Wilfred's erection ruining me inside and I began to roll and toss but I couldn't get him off. Then I felt him throb as he rocked several times. I was crying out and sobbing
-nothing was happening to me but pain and fear. But the fact I was scared seemed to keep my excitement at a peak. Wilfred became soft and withdrew.
"When Griff moved over me I suddenly felt limp as a dishrag. Maybe I relaxed subconsciously, I don't know. I raised my head to try to see what he was doing just in time to see him draw the covering back. His (glans) was reddish-purple and shining like he'd just come out of the water. I felt his fingers stretch me and then he moved into me. I tried to escape, again, but he kept pushing in quick motions until he was completely inside me. I felt like I was coming apart and I could feel the stinging ache burning clear up to my breasts.
"Griff told me, hoarsely, to put my legs around him and I tried but I couldn't move. Then I felt Wilfred lift them, locking one ankle under the other knee and the pain eased a little, but not much. I thought Griff was going to stay in me forever. I heard Wilfred laughingly ask him if he was trying for a record. Griff replied not to bother him-it was so tight he couldn't move and wanted to hold off. I could hear him gasping and straining; feel him throbbing through the pain; then he moaned like he was hurt and begin to pound against me like a maddened bull. I know I yelled and tried to hold him with my legs but I couldn't feel them. I felt his (penis) jerk and then this hot sensation deep inside me and I guess I passed out for a moment.
"I came to in the water in Griff's arms. He was kneeling with me on his thighs and his fingers were holding me open down there and I could feel the water inside me. After a few minutes, he carried me back up to the blanket and laid me down. I still hurt inside but I felt alright otherwise. Those two clowns smoked a couple of cigarettes and then started fooling with themselves again to get me excited. After awhile they succeeded and knelt beside me, putting one of my hands around each of them and making me work them while they rubbed me and played with my breasts.
"Then, when I was about over the edge, Wilfred slipped around behind me and squatted with my head between his knees, holding my arms over his thighs. Griff straddled me, slipping his hand behind my head and holding his erection with the other. He made me take it in my mouth and when he climaxed I almost strangled. When I came back from the canal, Wilfred said it was his turn but I begged them not to hold me and he sat down and I lay down on my side and did it to him. He kept pushing my head down and making me choke but finally lost control of himself and had an orgasm.
"When Griff took me home, he grinned at me as he was braking the pickup to a stop.
" 'Betsy, you ain't no baby, now,' he told me.
"I called him an SOB and told him if I ever saw him around the place again, I'd tell my uncle what he and Wilfred had done to me-and both of them would end up with their (testicles) nailed to the barn door. He knew I meant it and he stayed away.
"I felt terrible and I was so sore I could hardly walk right, but I covered up, in spite of the pain. I used an antiseptic douche and that helped; and it stopped the bleeding. I told the folks I thought I had stomach flu and stayed in bed the next couple of days..."
Betsy's early and subsequent sexual experiences have made her a sexual "cripple." Her condition is not physiological, entirely-her genitalia are fully developed and normally operative. Her difficulty is a psychological, but nonetheless pathological. She has an adamant aversion to coitus.
Upon leaving home to take a secretarial job, Betsy had an apartment mate who was a lesbian, but did not force the issue. The girl had a circle of friends and, for a few months, there was no sexual activity between them; she had told Betsy of their preference at the time they agreed to share the apartment and adhered to her promise not to involve Betsy in anything she didn't want. But, in a strange city, Betsy found it almost impossible to find sexual satisfaction by the only means which gave her complete relief: looking at male genitals and masturbating.
Confiding her difficulty to her friend, Betsy agreed to try the lesbian approach and derived enough satisfaction from the activity to keep her moderately fulfilled. Her apartment mate then suggested that Betsy meet some of her contacts in the swinging society, explaining that single girls, who fit in, were highly acceptable; and that Betsy might have no difficulty finding, in group sex, the stimuli to provide complete satisfaction.
Betsy, in her early twenties, became an initiate of the swinging world. While refusing coitus, she is widely acceptable in swinging groups-she submits to lesbian acts, passively; performs fellatio upon request but cannot achieve orgasm in this latter activity unless she stimulates herself, digitally, during the process. Participation is mildly enjoyable to her, but Betsy derives her greatest peaks of sexual satisfaction-her only achievement of full release by observing the sex organs of males and masturbating while she is looking at them....
With the preponderance of numbers of the male over the female incidence of voyeurism, it would seem that peeping-for the distaff member of society-would almost imperatively be an acquired taste. Further, the acquisition would probably have to antedate the impact of other, more numerous impressions. The fact that the female is the sex-symbol in our culture-and its numerical superiority in incidence of display almost obliterates any consideration of the male in this guise-could, also, have a bearing upon the relative rarity of voyeurism in females. The ubiquitous presentation of the seductive female would not excite in the heterosex-ually-oriented woman any emotion other (perhaps) than jealousy, envy, or even admiration.
There is no doubt about the fact that in the myriad bids for public attention by exploiters, promoters and advertisers, there is a type of pressure generated. It is similar to that of magnetic attraction-a pressure pulling toward an object or objects calculated to win attention and impress upon it a message. Thus, the pressure of those attractions which excite the greatest voyeuristic response from the male might have the reverse effect on the female. All those public manifestations of a culture exert a certain pressure of influence upon the members of the society which engenders that culture. Thus, it might well be that this conditioning has helped to anesthetize or render passive the voyeuristic response of the female.
Certain it is that in those inferior numbers of voyeuristic cases among women, the urge seems no less attractive than in the cases of masculine voyeurism. It is a common male error to expect that, just as the sight of a feminine entity seductively presented to his view stirs desire, a corresponding exposure of masculinity will elicit the same response from the opposite sex.
In this supposition, the male is most often doomed to disappointment. For one thing, the male has little to offer other than his face, his mucles and his genitalia. Quite often, the first two of these is insufficient attraction to advance his wooing; the third probably possesses far more shock value than any aid to persuasion. Many women, indeed, find the sight of male genitals unpleasant or ugly.
In lower life forms we encounter this disparity in physical attractiveness-certain birds are more brilliantly feathered among males than females-other life forms display an imbalance of visible attractiveness between male and female. Perhaps it is that an all-wise nature has worked toward this end, deliberately. It may be that her ends are more efficiently accomplished by limiting the overt attraction to eliminate confusion, spur desire and consequent aggressive action toward possession without confounding the situation by equipping both sexes with mutually attractive physical attributes. It could be nature wishes to avert such situations as Subject A being irresistibly attracted to Object B, which, in turn, finds no attraction in A, preferring Subject C. Subject C, however, yearns for object D, creating a pattern in which frustration seems the only identifiable product.
Another theory is that nature has equipped the female, in almost every instance, to stand in the position of making the choice. Because of the superior importance of her function in propagating the race and the necessity for continual improvement of the species, she is better equipped to decide, instinctively, the important question of which mate to choose.
In the human female, definitely, the physiological and psychological manifestations of sex are so different from those of the male, there is small reason to wonder that this difference in voyeuristic influence should exist. The differences between the sexes are so extensive that, despite the fact that both are members of the genus Homo sapiens, the dissimilarities begin at this point and continue indefinitely.
The noted French psychologist, Rene Guyon, points out that this difference between man and woman has been psychologically translated by the male into a belief that the female is inferior. In his book, "A Case For Sexual Freedom," he writes:
"What then, is the explanation of this widespread conviction that woman is man's inferior? The reason is that man and woman are fundamentally different, and that the difference extends into the psychological realm. Physiologically, of course, men and women differ so much that we might regard them as beings of different species. This does not apply to the reproductive organs alone, for the rest of the bodily systems differ no less in the two sexes. It is the same in all the higher mammals. Even when the outward aspect of male and female is much the same, we notice differences of build, gait, and posture, so that at the first glance we can distinguish ... without looking at their sexual organs.
"Psychologically the differences between men and women are no less conspicuous. Their respective understandings do not work in the same way, they do not reason alike and a man's judgment of merits and defects varies from a woman's. The consequence is that men are apt to talk disparagingly of a woman's mental aptitudes-and conversely. Each sex regards the other's way of looking at things as incomprehensible, and does so in all sincerity, this being perhaps the only sincerity in sex relations."
Further, the monograph on "Voyeurism" by Edward Podolosky, M.D. and Carlson Wade states:
"It is believed that the female does not become a peeper because she does not derive any special thrill from viewing the naked parts of a male. In our culture, nude women are the sexual symbol. All of us are subjected to this symbol by the means of billboards, television, motion pictures, magazines, etc. We are surrounded by naked or near-naked symbols of females. This has instilled in the average male a feeling of excitement at the naked parts of the female. It is possible that, in a different society, the male body may be regarded as a sexual symbol and the female figure not so regarded. However, modern psychologists explain that the psycho-sexual components of the two sexes are such that the male becomes more visually stimulated than the female. For this reasons, voyeurists are generally of the male sex."
At the age of eleven, Robert M. witnessed his mother and father engaging in amorous play which was followed by intercourse. His boyhood memory retains the distinct recollection that both his parents engaged in oral stimulation-his father performing cunnilingus on his mother-his mother performing fellatio on his male parent. Although these activities held no special significance for him during this period of his life, he recalls his spying on his elders, thus engaged, brought on a massive excitement and caused a persistent erection while he was occupied in his voyeuristic activity.
While the opportunities to see his parents thus engaged was not too often available, Robert was alert to the possibilities of such activity, noted the signs in his mother and father and would attempt to view their activity together. He also manipulated his erection during the ensuing excitement-when he was successful in being able to spy-and, although he does not recall that he ever attained orgasm, he does remember than the agitation of his erection produced greatly pleasant sensations and heightened the excitement of his peeping activity.
Robert was one of three children. His sister Marion was eighteen months older than Robert; his sister May was a year younger. The girls had a room to themselves, as did Robert, but they shared the use of a connecting bath. On one occasion when Marion did not close her door to the bath completely, Robert saw her for the first time in the nude and his excitement at the sight of his sister without her clothing inspired him to peep, providing a new source of excitement. Becoming aware of the situation inspired Robert to figure ways and means to exploit it. Since the girls were quite often in the bathroom together, and were naked most often during these occasions, Robert would either steal into their bedroom to ease the bathroom door open a crack or peep through the keyhole in his door.
Looking for more effective spying methods, he thought of the transom over the bathroom doors, and by standing on his bureau, he could see almost the entire bathroom when the transom was half open and solved the problem of its being closed by scratching a small hole in the translucent, figured paper which covered the transom glass in the old-fashioned house.
"Watching Marian and May excited me as much or more than trying to get a chance to spy on my mother and father," Robert revealed. "Besides, the chances of seeing the girls were lots more numerous than for seeing my parents. Marian, especially, excited me. Her body was a lot like my mother-her breasts were full and she had a thick growth of hair between her legs. Seeing them always brought on an erection and I regarded this as a signal to masturbate. Since I got the chance to peep at them pretty regularly, I was relieving myself in this manner almost every day."
Quizzed as to his activity in masturbation without the stimulus of his sister or sisters appearing in the nude, Robert stated he did not recall performing the act at times other than when he was excited by peeping at the girls. By the time Robert had reached age fourteen, he and May began to be thrown more together as Marian was then in high school. She was quite attractive, as Robert had noted, and her popularity was high in her school set. She was daring quite often and was away from home much of the time. As her interests became more involved away from her sister, May began to turn to Robert for companionship. She revealed her curiosity about some words she had seen written on a fence behind a schoolmate's house. The other girl didn't know their meaning, so May asked her brother to explain. In the explanation, he had to touch on the male genitals and then May was even more curious. She didn't know what a boy looked like and persisted in asking questions until she got around to asking Robert if he'd show her his.
"I didn't think too much about it at first," Robert recalls, "and then I began to get a little excited about the idea. So, we made a bargain-I'd show her, if she'd show me. This was alright with May and we decided we'd do it in the bathroom and lock the doors so our folks wouldn't catch us.
"So, we did, making sure both bathroom doors were locked, and then taking off all our clothing. It was the first time I'd ever been naked with a girl who was naked and I got excited right away. May, whose eyes were fastened on my sex organs, was curious all the more as she watched it swell and stiffen, and wanted to know why and I tried to explain it to her as best I knew how. Then she asked if she could feel it and I agreed to this when she said I could feel her. When she took hold of me I could tell it excited her and it sure raised my temperature. When I was feeling her she acted like she was enjoying it and we both admitted that we masturbated. I showed how she could do it to me and she instructed me in what she did and showed me how to rub her with the best results.
"Marian broke up that session as we heard her come in downstairs, calling for mother, and we knew she'd be upstairs right away. I grabbed my clothes and hustled into my room to dress, leaving the bathroom to May. That was the beginning of a long series of mutual or individual masturbation sessions between the two of us. Sometimes I'd ask May to do it for me while I looked at her and sometimes, I'd get her to sit or lie with her legs spread while I did it myself. She always wanted me to do it to her, afterward and I enjoyed it. It was exciting when she'd go clear out of herself and reach a climax.
As their intimacy progressed, Robert told May more of what his experience had been, including what he'd seen when he spied on their parents in bed. He had to describe everything he'd seen and May was curious to experience intercourse and pestered Robert to do it with her. However, in
Robert's surreptitious conversations on sex with his schoolmates, such activity with a sister he knew to be beyond the pale. He couldn't define why, at that time, but the incestuous was considered with contempt or aversion by all the boys he knew, most of whom scored their sisters in sibling animosity anyway.
"As much as I wanted to try it," Robert admits, "I just couldn't do it with my own sister. I'd heard one boy say he knew a brother and sister who did it and the sister had a baby with two heads-or something real shocking. So I had to tell May that that was something that just couldn't be done."
When Robert reached high school, he began to have the urge to expand his field of experimentation. The endless conversation among his classmates was now turning more and more to sexual experiences and the attention was on the exploits the boys bragged about. Most of these the listeners took with a grain of salt, because they knew that, in their own turn, the tales they spun were largely imagination, based on wishful thinking. However, one of Robert's more reserved classmates was always scoffing at these tales and Robert began to fall in with his attitude, because he genuinely admired the lad. When in discussions away from the group, the two of them talked, this boy said he knew the others didn't know what they were talking about. He named three girls in school he'd had intercourse with and Robert immediately became excited.
"I asked him if he thought there was a chance I could get a date with one of them," Robert recounted, "and the reply was that I could probably get a date with any of them. However, if I wanted a sure thing, all I had to do was start kissing her and feeling her breasts and the rest was guaranteed. This girl was ready and all it took was for a boy she liked to turn her on.
"So, I had a couple of dates with her," Robert went on. "I was too scared to try anything these times, but the next time I took her out, she agreed to go park with me and we got started necking with no trouble. As my friend had told me, the minute I put my hand on her breasts and started pressing them, she jumped and began to breathe faster. This was encouraging so I started to unbutton her blouse and when she didn't try to stop me, I opened it and worked her bosoms out over her bra.
"By this time she fell into the spirit of things completely. I felt her hand unfastening my trousers and excitement at her act heightened until she reached in and took my erection out. I was conscious of feeling a little apprehensive. Finally I became conscious that my erection was subsiding and I desperately manipulated the girl in an effort to spur my own response. She was begging me to 'do it to me, Bob!, ' her hips thrusting instinctively and excitedly.
"Well, I took her panties off, continuing to rub her, and moved in between her legs, but my (penis) was flaccid and that condition did something more to me. I was doing what I'd wanted to do for so long-I had a girl who was ready for sex-was begging for sex and I couldn't come through. You can imagine that, starting to worry about this situation didn't help me either. As I manipulated her I was thinking this was the same thing I always did with May and it always made my (penis) hard as a rock, but now ... nothing.
"Finally, Arlene had an orgasm, twisting and crying and begging me to keep on rubbing her.
When it was over, she felt OK, she told me. I told her I didn't know what the trouble was-I didn't tell her how worried and ashamed I felt.
"Thinking about it later, I guess I had all sorts of mental excuses for myself-like it was the first time and a girl I didn't know very well, but I still couldn't convince myself that there wasn't something wrong. The next time May came into my room and suggested we have a session, I almost refused. She tried to talk me into it for awhile, but when I still didn't want to, she went on into the bathroom. In a little while she called to me to come there, and I did.
"May was naked, seated on the edge of the bathtub with her thighs open, looking up at me with a pleading look. Immediately I felt an erection begin. Relieved, I stripped out of my clothes and dropped them in my room as I heard May locking the door to her room and I went in, locking my door. Somehow, my excitement seemed much greater than usual and May began to beg me to put it in her, but I refused and we climaxed in the usual fashion-mutual masturbation. Then May began to pester me about why I didn't want to and, I suppose, boy-like, I couldn't help bragging about my daring in trying ... even if the results weren't good. I started to tell May that I had done it, but I finally told her the truth. Of course, she didn't know much of anything, but she pointed out I had just done it, and took hold of me, remarking how swollen and big I was-and I quickly came to erection again. We ended up doing it again and I felt better afterward, but I still had this doubt. However, I determined-after my revival of confidence with May-to try again.
"Before I could manage another date-about ten days later-May and I were alone in the house for the evening. Mother and Dad had gone to a dinner dance, Marian was out on a skating party and May came parading into my bedroom without a stitch on. I had my usual reaction and got my clothes off in a hurry. We stayed in my bedroom and, in the course of our play, May confided the reason she'd been late getting home a couple of days previously. She'd gone home with a boy friend of hers in school and another boy and girl. The boy's parents were away and they danced for awhile and the other boy and girl had started loving each other up. May and her friend followed suit and it wasn't long before the other pair was naked on the sofa, indulging in intercourse. May said she got so excited at this that she agreed, immediately, to do it with her friend and they stripped and stretched out on a white bearskin rug on the floor.
"I asked if she liked it and she confessed that she didn't. She said it hurt when the boy put it into her and he withdrew when she told him. They tried it again and the boy had an orgasm, but May said it hurt worse because he came on pretty strong when he climaxed. We agreed that, maybe, some people did it that way and some people did what we were doing, instead. I told her I was going to try it once more but she said she didn't think she would. It hurt too much.
"I did get another date with a new girl in school my friend tipped me off to," Robert recounted, "and while it was far different than the first time, it still ended up being no good for me. I maintained an erection until I penetrated her, but then it softened and she used her mouth to re-stimulate me. However, a second attempt at coitus had the same result, so we tried mutual masturbation for relief. It worked, but we were both disappointed-and I was convinced that wasn't for me.
"Yet, every time I saw May's naked body, I got excited and, over a period through my graduation from high school, we continued to take care of each other. Then I began going to college, locally, and May and I saw less of each other. The next thing I knew, she had started going steady with a boy and, I guess, I felt rejected and we started to fight. She wouldn't do it with me any more, except at great intervals when she was between boy friends. By the time May finished high school, I felt my sex life was a mess. Then, she eloped with this older boy and that blew the whole thing.
"I had some dates with girls at school and it was alright as long as we didn't get into the area of intercourse, but, of course, this didn't help my situation. During my junior year, Marian got married and the folks had a good offer to sell the house so they suggested I live on campus my senior year. Dad went ahead with plans to build an apartment house and he and mother would five there when it was done-it was understood I could five there when I was through school.
"I got hung up in the start of a homosexual arrangement with a classmate," Robert went on, "but I soon found out this wasn't for me when his ideas got more and more exotic and I gave it up in disgust."
Upon graduation, Robert worked with a national concern and made an excellent impression on his superiors. He was transferred to New Jersey for additional training and experience and, while he was there, May left her husband and came to see him. She was much upset over the failure of her marriage and wanted to move in with Robert and "keep house" for him. By now, he was finding his sex life considerably burdened with guilt reactions from his earlier relationship with his sister and vehemently rejected her proposed arrangement.
May returned home and went to work. About a year later, she was killed in an automobile accident, and it developed that she'd been driving and was loaded on "pep pills"-the authorities suspicioned that her death was suicide. It happened on a lonely stretch of road in good weather with the evidence pointing to the fact that May drove into a concrete overpass abutment at or near top speed.
Robert added this horror to his other guilt feelings, completely convinced his refusal triggered May's death. Convinced that there was nothing for him but to divert his sexual energies into work effort, he has managed to make exceptional strides, has established his own management consultation business. He personally handles those firms which permits him some opportunity to exercise his desire to peep. One of these is a manufacturer of women's undergarments; another is a dress manufacturer. In both of these, on his periodic visits to check the operation, he has managed to be assigned an office location where he can secretly spy on models changing clothes. He uses a "spy camera"-about the size of a cigarette lighter-with which to make shots of naked girls. He dates them, when possible, and then gratifies his urges, afterward, by masturbating to the stimulus of pictures of his date in the nude. He is expert at developing and enlarging his films; some of his other camera work having been published in photography magazines. He also possesses some sophisticated optical equipment of high magnification. Living in a corner apartment, he has an outlook on three sides and can look into apartments which practically surround him and, on occasion, finds gratification by masturbation while watching female nudity or observing a couple engaged in sexual activity.
While Robert has never married, he is a favorite with the girls he dates-probably because he makes no sexual demands upon them and treats them royally. The clothing models, for the most part, look forward to an invitation from him since it involves cocktails, dinner at an expensive restaurant, a show or dancing. He's known among them as a 'fun-type' date and the girls all rate him as a wily bachelor, many of them setting their caps for him. Robert easily avoids the traps, knowing marriage is not for him.
Robert is a true and confirmed voyeur. While he peeps, he is careful not to allow his proclivity to become known. There is no record of his ever having been caught in the act of peeping and, to his other mental burdens, must be added the stress of this additional requirement. He is highly strung-is described as a "regular dynamo" by his clients and acquaintances. It is evident that Robert is possessed of both strong drives and strong control, the latter no doubt buttressed by the guilt he experiences at his adolescent relationship with his sister, May.
Whether it might have been possible for Robert to rescue himself from his sexual predicament is problematical. The fact that his voyeuristic activity was accidentally triggered by the opportunity to spy on his parents-and that this was his earliest exposure to sex-makes it seem unlikely. When he progressed to spying upon his sisters in the nude; going from this to the establishment of the longstanding relationship with his little sister, the-likelihood is that there was no possibility of ever changing his course since the combination of circumstances and events early confirmed in him a pattern of self-gratification spurred by the stimulus of his eyes.
When his next step was to find sexual release in the company of and through the participation of May, it would seem to indicate that, from that point onward, any personal effort to change the direction of his libidinous demands would have been futile; might have, in fact, proved an insurmountable obstacle to the material success Robert has achieved in his life.
There is no doubt that May provided, in all innocence, the coup de grace to any possibility that she or Robert might have attained a "normal" adjustment to sex. The unconscious chain of mental relation, which rendered Robert impotent with girls other than May, seems a clear indication that he was identifying, even at that stage, all sexual stimulation with his sisters and the taboo on incest which he sensed and gleaned from his peers' opinions erected an impenetrable barrier to intercourse with any female partner. In short, in any naked female he observed, he saw May and his reaction was forced into the same pattern which they too observed.
There is not a modicum of doubt that this damage to Robert's psyche stems from early youth and the initial impacts upon his senses. While information is not available as to May's experiences except through Robert's revelations, it seems logical to assume that she became an unwitting victim of the circumstances which centered on Robert. Thus, while he cannot keep himself from feeling that he and he alone is responsible for the tragedy of May's life, he cannot rationalize the fact that he had no way of knowing what the effect and the result would be. Indeed, such results are by no means the rule, many such childhood experiments being abandoned and the subjects going on to a wider, non-morbid sexual plateau which we would describe as "normal."
This consideration, alone, is a definite indication that, as stated earlier, each individual is of a different "thread count" where the weave of his sexual fabric is concerned. What may hopelessly cripple one, may-just as inevitably-leave another untouched. The awesome question of sex, in its kaleidoscopic, mass variation with regard to individual results, needs some of the attention that we devote to the diseases which mankind considers as highly dangerous to his well-being. Sex can be just as vicious a crippler; can lead to just as regrettable an effect on the spiritual entity as cancer, heart trouble or polio to the physical being.
And sex is secret, its morbid effects maintained in invisibility, though nonetheless painful to the sufferer. That the eye is instrumental in producing much of the early experiences which may lead to eventual sexual impairment, makes each individual who is not sightless, vulnerable to the possibility of pathological involvement.
It is not surprising that many sexual attitudes and manifestations which are fixed in adult experience spring from childhood experiences.
Carla M. was born in Yuma, Arizona, her family moving to Tucson and, thence, to Phoenix. During her early years, she was discovered to be mentally precocious and, at the age of five, was tutored at home up until the time she could enter school. Because of her birth date, she would have been unable to enter school until she was seven. She reached high school (tenth grade) at the age of thirteen and, although her classmates were older than she, Carla easily maintained a position in the top six percent of grade achievers.
While her intelligence was superior to those children of her chronological age, she was at a disadvantage physically. She was forced by circumstances of differing mental and physical maturation, to play with children older and bigger than she. Carla's encountered her first experience in sex when she was about ten years of age, in the company of some boys she knew who were about twelve and thirteen. The father of one of them had given his son permission to appropriate an old tool-house for the use of his "gang" as a club. The area in which Carla lived was well out to the edge of the city and the property on which the tool-house had been placed (by a former owner) was isolated and seldom if ever visited by adults.
Evidently Carla had been curious-as had some of her girl acquaintances-to see the inside of the clubhouse. The boys were very mysterious about it and one of their earliest rules was that no girls were allowed. However, after the club had been in existence for about two years, its members began to have second thoughts about maintaining it as off-limits for girls. Carla had been regarded with mixed feelings by the boys in her classes. At first, they were contemptuous of her as all brains and spurned her as the human animal normally does the abnormal. Some of them changed their tune when they were forced to ask Carla for help with their studies and, as she began to exhibit the first elements of physical development beyond her age, others of the boys began to take note of the first signs of budding breasts and buttocks and legs which were also beginning to display the attributes the older lads had begun to look for in more mature females as exciting. As a matter-of-fact, Carla at this time, resembled a miniature woman, her buttocks, thighs and lower extremities exhibiting a symmetry and a shape which was unusual.
"I was pretty flattered when they asked me to their clubhouse," she said, chuckling at the recollection. "When I got inside, it was just what you'd expect. Cobwebs up in the roof comers; furniture they'd knocked together out of scrap lumber and pictures of naked or undressed girls tacked all around the walls. It was a meeting day and they had a cooler with cokes in ice and they gave me one and said I could listen in on the meeting. So, I drank my coke and listened and I was quite impressed. Evidently their business meetings had been a pretty consistent part of their club and they seemed to know the ropes pretty well. There was a lot of discussion about the club treasury and delinquent dues and a couple of the members got fined because they'd failed to pay when they'd said they would.
"When the meeting was over, they all sat around and talked. The two boys who'd been fined were sore and they left immediately after the meeting ended, but it didn't seem to worry the eight or ten who were left. I asked about this, but they laughed, saying those two were chicken and they'd just as soon kick them out if they didn't come into line. They gave me another coke and began to talk about girls. One of them suggested they'd like to see what a girl looked like without any clothes on and another one kidded me, saying I was probably too young. This made me a little angry and I pointed out that I wasn't so dumb and asked if any of the group would like to compare report cards with me. This stopped them and they began laughing at themselves a little when one boy said his home room teacher was so good-looking he couldn't keep his mind on what he was doing.
"Then one of the boys suggested they all chip in to get me to take off my clothes and stay naked for fifteen minutes. I was beginning to bask in their approval and the pile of nickels on the table turned the trick. Too, I was anxious to show them I was no baby, so I said 'yes.' I really got some satisfaction out of the way they looked at me when I got my clothes off. They asked me to sit with my legs apart so they could see me there better and the slight bulge of my bosom came in for quite a lot of eye-balling.
"When the time was up (the secretary-a studious boy with glasses kept track) I put my clothes back on, picked up my nickels and left. I went home, elated, thinking that was the easiest and quickest forty-five cents I ever came by. Also, I got a kick, as I remember it, after my initial embarrassment was over, at being the center of all the attention. Having all those boys eyeing me so intently did something for me-or to me.
"A few days in advance of the next meeting day (they had meetings every two weeks) the president fell into step beside me at school and asked if I'd like to come to the next meeting. He said all the guys had said they'd like for me to-so, again, I agreed. The price was right, in my eyes. This time, the business meeting was more hurried than usual. I noticed the two delinquents had paid up and were back in good standing. Doing a rapid count of the "house" I determined this time, my fee would be fifty-five cents. After the business was over, the president announced that Carla has come back to visit us and everybody who wants to stay for the next thing, chips in a nickel. It didn't take long for everybody to get his nickel on the line-evidently there had been some conversation among the club members. When I was naked and had performed a couple of requests, the president asked if I'd ever seen a boy naked. I told him I hadn't, and he asked if I'd like to. I was as curious as they were and told him quickly that I'd like to.
"They decided they'd all get undressed if I'd stay for a half-hour instead of fifteen minutes. I figured I was getting much the best of this bargain. There were eleven of them for me to look at-and I agreed. So, they stripped down, and soon I was surrounded by almost a dozen, naked and excited boys. Some of the older boys-one was fourteen-had much larger (penises) than the others. They began to experience erections and soon all of them were crowding around me, eager to display their masculine equipment. I was excited, too, and even more so when the fourteen-year old and a couple of the younger ones began to masturbate ... I was fascinated by the actions of the older boy, for some reason.
"Anyhow, because of me-I suppose-they began to hold club meetings every week. I was the star attraction. Things progressed to the point that they paid extra, teaching me to masturbate them, and I'd do it to them, in turn. Then, later, they proposed feeling me and I got extra nickels for that. They'd play with my breasts and my genitals, some of the boys getting me to masturbate them while they did it (for an additional fee, of course). The fourteen-year-old boy was pretty advanced, sexually I guess. He offered me a quarter to put his (perform fellatio) and I did. I was reluctant to do it, but I was fascinated by his size and the importance he assigned me.
"However, it wasn't long after we'd reached this stage (I was doing several of the boys pretty regularly) that one of the boys' parents got suspicious, having seen me going into the tool-house. His mother cornered him and wanted to know what a girl was doing in their meetings, since it was a boys-only thing. She kept at him until he admitted that I was stripping down and showing myself. He was afraid to admit anything else and stoutly maintained that was all that we did, not wanting to get himself in any deeper, I guess. Anyhow, that blew the whistle on the whole operation. One of the parents filled my parents in on the situation and my father gave me an awful tongue-lashing and restricted me from playing with anybody, boys or girls, for almost a year.
"Later, I got caught peeping at some of the members of the football squad in the locker-room. There was a store room right off the locker-room and once, when I was on a committee to decorate the gym for a party, we went in there after hours to get the bunting and flags and all. When we were through, I was supposed to lock up and return the stuff to the office. My folks, in the meantime, had bought a motel and my father, now and then, had me go to a hardware store to have duplicate keys made. I recognized the key to the store-room was the same type of key the motel used, so I kept it and had a duplicate made next lunch hour before I returned the key to the office. Both boys and girls used the same gym-the store-room was between the girls' locker room and the boys'. My next gym period, I found opportunity to try the key in the girls' side door-and it worked. I slipped in, and, pressing my ear to the opposite door, realized the squad wasn't in from practice yet. I fooled around in the library and, when they finished practice, I hustled down and secreted myself in the storeroom, just cracking the door and blocking it with a little chip of wood, so I could peep through the opening on the hinge side.
"It was great! I saw about thirty-five or forty boys naked in the process of showering. This in itself was exciting enough, but when I began to masturbate, I noticed two boys in the shower room with erections and their teammates were kidding them about them-which made them show off all the more and go through some sexy motions. I reached one climax and was working on a second, some time later, when-as I thought-all the boys got out and sort of left me with it. I opened the door a little to get the wood chip out when the boy who'd been the oldest in the club group came around the corner and caught me. He pushed his way into the store-room and we renewed acquaintance. With the door locked, he took out his (genitalia) and urged me to perform fellatio on him again. When I was reluctant, he threatened to tell the coach. I knew that was all I needed. For his promise to keep quiet, I did what he wanted, stimulating myself to orgasm at the same time.
"Since this same boy was on both football and basketball squads, that broke up my play house and I threw the duplicate key away and gave up. I used to he in bed at night and remember the sight of all those males naked and masturbate. I was not popular because of my advanced grade situation, most of the kids thinking I was a freak. So, I had to depend pretty much on solitary self-gratification. My father kept such a strict watch on me, I really had no opportunity to establish a relationship with the boys I'd known in the club escapade. Now and then I'd buy nudist magazines that had photographs of both females and males. I used this as a stimulus for awhile, but this soon wore pretty thin.
"Things didn't go too well with the family, financially, and instead of going to college, I took a course in computer programming. I was pretty good at mathematics and got a job with a company which offered me the opportunity to take some advanced math courses in college classes at their expense. I was pretty much of a fair-haired girl and, while I wasn't any prettier, I had learned how to make the best of what I had. My figure was alright, though. I know because I used to get a lot of passes made at me.
"I think my earlier experiences made me even more reticent about getting involved with older men. I longed to go to bed with a man and used to have involved fantasies about it while I indulged in self-erotication, but the opportunities which were offered for dates I refused on the excuse that I was dated up or busy studying or had other work to do.
"However, one fellow in another section refused to be put off and finally I broke down and had a date with him. He made a pass at me and I wouldn't play. He didn't give up and, on several succeeding dates, he'd try every time. One night he persuaded me to go and park with him on the desert after we'd been out to dinner. We necked up a pretty good storm and he made another pass at me, but I was still afraid. He kept putting my hand on his (penis). It was erect and I know he must have been as hot and bothered as everything. I'd let him play with my breasts awhile and we'd kiss like crazy-but that was as far as I had the nerve to go. This night, after putting my hand on him several times, he just unzipped his trousers-and produced his erection. The sight of it almost made me climax but I resisted his efforts to get me over into the back seat.
"Finally, he suggested I (perform fellatio) and I agreed. I was pretty well turned on myself-not to the point of being able to overcome my aversion to intercourse-but when I saw his (penis and testicles) I just fell apart. When I fellated him, I experienced an orgasm that was like nothing I had ever known. It was a tremendous experience..."
Carla revealed that on rare occasions, she has been forced into intercourse but the process was painful, distasteful and did absolutely nothing for her so far as sexual satisfaction is concerned. She is on a fixed course of depending on fellatio for her sex activity, quite often climaxing without any resort to digital or other friction on her genitals. Hers is a peculiar situation-while not being averse to physical contact with the opposite sex, her desires are limited to this one form of activity ... a fixation on the male penis engentlered by her voyeuristic exposure to many of them, simultaneously, at a very early age. Cunnilingus does not satisfy her and the fact that she is able to reach climax most often without physical stimulation other than fellatio, indicates that her sexual excitement and satisfaction are dominated by the intelligence and imagination. Her involvement with fellatio goes back to the club, and the members who taught her the act; her realization that she can bring satisfaction to a male partner as well as herself by this means, confirming it as the most acceptable sexual activity for her.
Thus, the results of early voyeuristic experience are clearly unpredictable. There is no guarantee-no indication of the end results of a child's early impressions. Sometimes, these have no bearing on what happens when the subject reaches adulthood, since the youngster may not know enough to link what is seen with sex impulses he or she may experience. The crippling or impairment of sexual attitudes and manifestations would seem to be a product of the excessive secrecy surrounding sex-and particularly of the heavy veil of "modesty" thrown about nudity. It is certain that this has contributed, in a considerable degree to the impairment of the individuals involved in the foregoing experiences. Certain it is that, had the sight of a member of the opposite sex without clothing not been a subject for such consuming curiosity and the resulting desire to see, people such as these would not be in the sexually incomplete condition in which they exist now. But, to alleviate this situation would require the revamping of an entire moral code and this is a task which is beyond the ability of contemporary society, even though that society might be convinced of the desirability of such a re-vamping.
In many considerations, the life we experience as humans is much like war. No one of us can escape eventual death-but the demise of some occurs much sooner than that of others-and there are many maimed in the process of living. Still others bear invisible scars of their living which vary in severity. Although invisible, these scars are critical. Everyone is familiar with cases of combat veterans who have gone over the edge-unable to adjust to the differing pressures and demands of civilian life. Similarly, there are many victims of early sexual impressions and experiences (some of voyeuristic nature) who are unable to adjust to the accepted norm in sexual activity.
Thus, as we continue keeping sex locked in the closet of conventional behavior, the results spread and multiply as the population burgeons and the increasing, competitive demands to achieve success or a life which satisfies the individual, makes the task even more difficult. The danger is widespread, in our way of life, of accidental involvement which can permanently cripple, due to the ever-present possibilities of initial sexual impressions at an early age. It would appear that any parent who sincerely wishes to guard offspring against the possibility of such eventual impairment should evolve a definite attitude which removes sex and nudity from the artificially sacrosanct consideration in which these seem to be held by the majority of parents.
Sex education seems hardly the answer because sex is not an impulse which can be easily disciplined, artificially colored nor yet willfully directed. like hunger, its demand is for satisfaction. If we take the attitude that the demand should be ignored, we are but asking for trouble which we now, most often and gratuitously, receive. The reaction of "naughty-dirty" to sex manifestations or curiosity on the part of children is manifestly an error. All too often, children (who are shrewd practitioners of psychology on their own) have caught their parents over-stressing the undesirability of other things which have proved to be incapable of living up to their advance billing in such consideration.
Thus the child takes this description with a grain of salt and knows only that the parent wishes to prohibit his exercise of further curiosity or his urge to participation. Prohibition is the best way to attach a false value to anything; and the most effective means of inducing an inordinate desire for that which is prohibited.
So, all too often, we-as parents-have a proximate position in those factors in a child's life which can eventually cripple him or her sexually, permanently and irrevocably.
Beware the eyes of the young. They can cripple, maim and deform with the worst of diseases....
CHAPTER SIX
AN EYE TO BARS & STRIPES
A look at the criminal involvements of voyeurs reveals-as in the case of those who have been crippled, permanently-a compulsion to view the genitalia or sexual acts of others which is irresistible. However, the criminal division of voyeurism, so to speak, is an artificial classification in that the cases which appear in it have been put there by officers of the law. It is certain that the compulsion is no less vigorous in the individuals discussed in the preceding chapter. Their offenses, by and large, are no less illegal when they violate the privacy of others yet they are not classed as criminal simply because they have not been apprehended.
The physical circumstances have much to do with the ultimate classification of voyeurs. There is little to ameliorate the offense of a peeper who scales a fire escape to indulge in his activity or conceals himself in the abode of another to spy. But one who peeps from the security of his own abode into another cannot be said to be somewhere he does not belong. Indeed, it might be argued in such a situation that a female who leaves an aperture through which she may be seen is equally guilty since the voyeuristic urge is universally acknowledged. Though it may sound facetious, a voyeur should logically seem entitled-were he arrested upon the subject's complaint-to file a counter-accusation of negligence on the woman's part.
The Kinsey-founded Institute for Sex Research, in its report on Sex Offenders, indicates statistically that both criminal voyeurs and exhibitionists have one thing in common-an unsatisfactory history of heterosexual relationships. Rejection by the opposite sex may depend upon a myriad of factors, indeed the esthetic standards for sexual acceptability are so numerous between individuals as to defy cataloguing. To the extent these reactions are generated by the eye, these factors of attraction or repulsion are, in themselves, a voyeuristic exercise. Those spurred by an assessment of personality, odor, sound or touch must be pigeon-holed elsewhere, but all contribute to the complicated and accumulative factors which either attract or repel between individuals.
The consideration of this magnet-like reaction is complicated enough when it touches a specific pair of people of the opposite sex and the factors of their relationship. The intricacy is compounded when a single individual's reactions to all those of the opposite sex he or she may know or encounter. While there are general standards, it is not possible to say this or that particular individual lacks sexual attraction for every other. All of us have experienced the reaction almost parrot-like in expression: "I wonder what in the world she sees in him!"-or vice versa. '
Turning aside from this consideration for a moment, we encounter another tangled thicket of experiences, desires, impressions, reactions, thoughts and impulses which stem from childhood and remain in the conscious (or sub-conscious) to contribute to the early onset of heterosexual maladjustment which often continues throughout life and contributes to criminal incidence.
Carlton M., age twenty-seven, has worked in department stores for nearly his entire employed history. A capable salesman, he has learned the ability to establish confidence in a prospective customer. Not being effusively outgoing, his mien is not that of the traditional "confidence man" type of salesman, though he attains the same or better results with far less effort, seemingly.
He relates that, in childhood, he was repeatedly told by his parents that sex was shameful-dirty was a word they used to describe it, quite often. They were also consistent in insisting that girls were untouchable-that he must avoid any sexual activities with them-must shun any such considerations until after he was married. These repeated admonitions, Charles admits, had the effect his parents evidently desired. It was not until he was seventeen years old that he saw a woman in the nude for the first time in his life. In response to a gnawing curiosity, he slipped the bonds of parental proscription and went to a burlesque show.
"I told them I was older-the ticket taker didn't argue and I did look older than my real age. I was excited and about half-scared, I remember, but I hustled down front and managed to get in the third row. Somehow, I felt I had to get as close as possible. Well, this good-looking girl came out and did a strip-tease. Right at the end of it, she was completely naked for an instant before the lights went out and the shock of the glimpse of her sex organ-and the excitement of seeing her body gradually and seductively bared had built up in me to the point I had an orgasm. The rest of the show was a blur. I came alive for two more strip-teases, but nothing could approach the impact of that first girl's exposure. Even while watching the others, I could still remember her legs, her breasts, her buttocks-everything.
"That night, at home, I re-lived every moment of the girl's act and masturbated several times in the process of remembering and re-remembering. As a matter-of-fact, I was sore the next day from the excessive activity. When the storm in my mind cleared up somewhat, I reasoned that, if touching women was forbidden, it was alright to look at them."
Evidently a theatre full of people thought so-and he tried the burlesque house again. However, the complete exposure of the strippers had brought complaints and the authorities had forced the house management to tone down the acts. With the pressure on, the ticket takers were challenging anyone who looked under age ... and Charles didn't get in. Filled with a consuming desire to look at naked femininity, he remembered an acquaintance who'd worked in a department store. Visiting him one day, Charles got an unofficial tour of the huge establishment, recalling that his guide had confided-with a lascivious leer-the women's dressing rooms for trying on dresses in the better garment department was right next to the stock-room.
Charles went to the store and applied for a stock-room job, and a few months later after graduating from high school, was called to go to work. Finding there wasn't enough privacy in the stockroom proper to hide his explorations for a way to peep into the dressing rooms, he began to offer help in handling the merchandise carriers-big canvas baskets on casters-which were stored in an ell off the stock-room when not in use. Getting carts out and re-storing them was a chore the older hands always wished off on someone else, and Charles was willing. While working out of the sight of the other stock-room employees, he noticed a large steam pipe going through the partition of the ell, well back in the cart storage area and concealed from the main activity and the stock desk. The first chance he got, Charles found it was no problem to loosen the collar to allow him to see through and was excited and elated to find he had an unobstructed view into two dressing booths and a slightly restricted view into two others.
This was it-and the stock-room gang didn't mind his goofing-off a little for relieving them of the cart chore.
So Charles began his peeping in secret. It was an involved process and, as often as hot, was productive of frustration rather than satisfaction. Charles had to exercise extreme caution to see that his activity wasn't detected and the customers in the end cubicles into which he could see were often fat, ugly or elderly. However, he saw, at fairly satisfactory intervals, women in various stages of undress.
"I looked for women with pretty figures. When they weren't wearing slips I got a big jolt of excitement and usually managed to masturbate to orgasm. But the excitement of escaping detection and the female bodies exposed usually had me so aroused, it was a quick process. On rare occasions I got a good look at girls or women who wore nothing in the dressing rooms, trying on dresses which fit very snugly and evidently wanting to avoid the outline of undergarments. These really sent me to the moon....
"When I'd been there about a month, one of the office girls who was in and out of the stock room quite frequently began to shine up to me. Her name was Virginia and I liked her, too and one day she asked if I wouldn't like to take her out. Well, the idea was completely foreign at first but I got used to it in a hurry and dated her for a movie. I know that sounds squirrelly-but I was shy of women to the point you wouldn't believe it. No matter if they had everything I liked in a woman's body, I was hardly able to carry on an understandable conversation. They just froze me up....
"Well, with Virginia, from the first, I was elated to find that I didn't have any trouble in talking to her. In the first place, we both worked in the store and there was a considerable amount of ground to cover there, so I got off real easily with her. We'd go to a movie or have dinner at one of the Chinese restaurants-the prices weren't too tough-and it was a pleasure to be with her. She had a wonderful knack of being interested in me-or seeming to-and this helped."
Charles and Virginia, according to his account, became pretty close, dating at least once a week, sometimes oftener. They ate lunch together at the store on numerous occasions. They went together for almost a year and Charles made no attempt to advance their intimacy past the point of taking her arm crossing the street or shaking hands with her. This got to be amusing to Virginia and perplexed her as well. One night she asked Charles why he had never tried to kiss her.
"It was after a movie one night," he says, "and I'd walked her home from the bus stop and she comes out with this. I kind of stuttered around for a bit but I could express myself to her, so I told her I'd thought about it but hadn't asked her because I knew this was something you didn't do with a girl if you weren't married. This almost sent her into hysterics, but she quickly recovered, recognizing-I suppose-that she'd hurt my feelings. Anyhow, when she realized I was serious, she said there wasn't any reason why two people who wanted to kiss couldn't-married or not ... and she wanted a kiss.
"Well, I pointed out that standing in the vestibule where everybody could see us, wasn't a very good place for it, so she invited me up to her room. After she'd closed the door, she put her arms around me and touched her lips to mine. I got an immediate charge out of it. I was exciting-I guess because it was one of the things I'd thought about doing so often. Then, she took one of my hands and placed it on her breast. I almost suffocated at this, but an excitement like I'd had in the burlesque theatre began to bubble up inside me.
"As I explored the feel of her breasts, I felt her hand go to my slacks and she began to squeeze and fondle my erection. I don't know what happened to me then. Maybe some unconscious recollection of the lectures I'd had-something-fouled me up. When we were kissing, I got an immediate fever; then the combination of my hand on her breast and her touching me down there combined to cool mc off. I lost the erection and suddenly felt like there wasn't enough air in the room. I just had to get out of there so I could breathe....
"Well, Virginia couldn't understand it. She looked disappointed and asked if I didn't love her-or if I was queer. It made me mad. I liked her better than anybody I'd ever known and told her I loved her. Also, I was no queer-it was just that, well I told her that we'd just been raised differently and I guessed that was it. She wanted to know if I was really going to wait until I got married and I told her I was.
"She really floored me then-she asked how I knew it would be any different after I was married. That stayed with me because I could see she was right. How did I know? All of a sudden I felt frightened because there was a question I couldn't answer-and I couldn't see any way I could find an answer to it. I left and I was one scared cookie. I didn't go home. I walked the streets until dawn broke and I ducked into a beanery for coffee and an egg sandwich. My mind was in such a turmoil, I couldn't face the idea of going home and trying to sleep. I'd never have made it-so I walked, and walked.
"I felt I loved Virginia-that she meant more to me than anyone in the world. Not only that, but I desired her-plenty. I'd thought many, many times about the things we might do together and, many's the time I'd masturbated, thinking of her. I couldn't understand it. The moment I held her-felt her and knew she had her hands on me, everything just came apart like a cardboard box in a rainstorm. I couldn't understand myself. When I'd had what I'd dreamed about so many times right there in my arms, all the switches went off. The more I walked and thought, the more the feeling grew in my mind that I was afraid-really afraid of having sex with her. I guess that's why her question hit me the first pop out of the box. I didn't consciously know the answer, but I must have sensed it. It came floating right up to the surface while I was pounding those pavements that night....
"She was right-that there wasn't an assurance that it wouldn't be just the same way after I was married. It seemed to me that that phrase 'when you're married' was to be the new day dawning.
When that happened, everything would change and for a few fleeting minutes as I walked I thought maybe I had the answer to the thing-that it would maybe change me into somebody else. Then I began to sober up on that because I remembered when I'd worked real hard getting merit badges so I could be an Eagle Scout and I looked forward to the court of Honor because I knew something great would happen. And nothing had. Sure, I was proud of the things they said about us and really stuck my chest out for that badge-but afterward I was the same guy that had sweat so hard for those badges there were times I'd missed meals because I felt nauseated from anxiety. As I walked home with my folks, I felt real depressed because, after all that work, nothing wonderful had happened to me-inside. Nothing....
"The upshot of it was that I felt I was as normal as any other guy but I had to show both Virginia s any other guy but I had to show both Virginia and myself. It wouldn't be fair to Virginia-or to any other girl-to get involved in marriage and not know beforehand. I had to prove it. If there was something wrong with me, I had to know. And this funny feeling came on when I wondered-if there was nothing wrong with me-why I'd acted like that.
"So, the next day I apologized and asked her for a date for that Saturday night. My folks were going on a trip for a few days and I could take her to the house. I got a pint because I figured I'd need something to give me a boost-and it might not hurt to have Virginia feeling a little high..."
Virginia was very co-operative, sitting on Charles lap as they had a couple of drinks, kissing and talking.
"She must have had an idea of the spot I was in," Charles recollects. "She was in no hurry-the drinks gave both of us a lift but she just let me take the lead. We kissed for quite a while and I started to play with her breast. She was stroking my thigh and the excitement was coming on as I unfastened her blouse and took it off. She got out of her bra and I could feel my heart pounding as she bared her breasts. They were beautiful.
"I asked her to take all her clothes off and she laughingly did so. I got more and more excited, watching her get out of her skirt and half slip and then slip her panties slowly down and step out of them. I couldn't take my eyes off her (pubic area). She didn't have much hair and I could see her (vulva). Then she insisted that I take my clothes off and I got up and stripped quickly with her help. I was erect and throbbing, my eyes racing over her nudity and we kissed standing up, pressing against each other. Then she took hold of me and we started to the bedroom and I began to feel my erection falling. She told me not to worry, she knew what to do for that, and we got onto the bed.
"She worked over me for the best part of an hour, but nothing did any good. Again, I got that same suffocated feeling-like there wasn't enough air-and the harder she tried to get me excited again, the more depressed and nervous I got. Finally, I admitted that it just didn't seem to be any use-I was probably too tired. She smiled and agreed with me, but we both knew differently."
As might well be imagined, this experience made Charles fearful of attempting further coital activity and he withdrew completely from active contact with girls. Virginia started going with another boy in the store and Charles thought they must be lovers from the way they looked and acted when he saw them at lunch now and then. In his masturbation, his fantasies often focused on what he thought Virginia and the other fellow were doing with each other and he would imagine that it was him.
By now, Charles was finding that peeping on women in their underwear was less and less exciting. When an upper floor stock-room needed a replacement, he asked for the job. This floor had foundation garments and swim suits and would give Charles a chance to look at women in the nude. He had even more seclusion and made peepholes which exposed the interior of three of the dressing booths. Then he found by standing on a step-ladder, he could see through a gap at the top of the partition but he had to be careful. If a woman looked up, she might be able to see him.....
His masturbatory activity increased under the spur of this new stimulus, Charles said. "Those swim suits and girdles fit real tight and the gyrations women would go through getting into them set me off. When I'd find one who appealed to me, I'd sometimes have a second or-on rare occasions-a third orgasm. Then this assistant buyer fouled me up. She was a snotty-bitch and I got on her list when she ran out of her office just as I was pushing a merchandise cart past the door. She sprawled over it, spraining her wrist, and blamed me for it; screaming about my stupid clumsiness until the buyer shut her up by pointing out it was her fault and not mine. Anyhow, she didn't like me and got wise to the fact that I was out of the stock-room a lot.
"She made a few cracks about my never working and I finally got sore one day and smarted off about her opinions being pretty one-sided and not too accurate. She reported me to personnel and I had to watch my step for a while until I thought things had quieted down. When I thought it was serene again, I went back to peeping. One morning a good-looking blonde girl was trying on bathing suits and between changes, she'd massage her breasts and her crotch. I had one orgasm and was working on a second when I felt someone touch me on the leg as I stood on the ladder. I started, grabbed for the partition top instinctively and knocked a cloud of dust into the booth area. An older woman looked up and spotted me and screamed....
"In a panic, I jumped off the ladder, and guess who I knocked on her fanny? Right-that lousy assistant buyer. She trailed me and caught me in the act. Anyhow, the woman who screamed went into hysterics, then threatened to sue the store; they called the police and I went to jail for a year. I had to take psychiatric treatment and it helped for awhile. When I got out, I found a job in a manufacturer's shipping room and went along without any trouble for some months. The doctor had showed me how to relax when I began to get the urge to peep. He pointed out that masturbation wouldn't harm me, but I was always vulnerable to prosecution for invasion of privacy."
When he found his desires beginning to get out of hand again, Charles moved to the west coast and soon managed to get back into a department store as a stock-room employee. Within six weeks, he'd managed it so he could again indulge in his favorite avocation of spying on undressed women.
"I knew all about this 'invasion of privacy' thing," Charles admits, "but there's something about all this I don't understand. If these women don't even know I'm there, what harm does it do? I've never even seen a woman on the street I'd peeped at in a dressing room. The only time I ever saw any of them again was when they came back to the store and I peeped at them again-and that only happened twice. I'd never approach a woman on the street-I'd be frightened of her. So-privacy, OK-but if they never know I'm there, I ask you ... what have I done harmful to them? I'll never see them again, probably-and even if I did they wouldn't recognize me; I'd be going in the other direction to avoid getting close to them..."
The former pattern repeated itself, with Charles being detected by a zealous floor manager who noticed his absences, then noted his movements. There had been some complaints from customers, too, who had good reason to believe they were being watched. The store management trapped Charles in the act by using a detective, tipped off by the floor manager-and this time, Charles went to prison. This time he was sentenced to two years.
He was released after serving eight months; about six months later was picked up again for peeping, this time in the bus depot where he'd found a way to spy into the women's rest room. This got him a two-year sentence and, upon his release, he headed back east to try to get another start.
"I couldn't bear it in prison. If I ever have to go there again, I'll end up in the puzzle factory. You talk about facing up to things-I have. The only thing I can do is peep. How about that? How do the judges feel about knowing that's the only thing I can do? The law says I'm wrong-but there's no other way for me. I refuse to believe I've ever hurt anybody. Physically, I know I've never harmed a living soul-and I never will, as long as I keep my marbles. But I can only get sexual satisfaction by peeping. They tell me sex is as much of a necessity as food, almost. The law fixes it so a man can eat-or go to the bathroom-why doesn't it take care of my problem? As it is, it's just that-my problem-but the law won't allow me to solve it ... "
The pattern of Charles' sex manifestation is set beyond remedy-indeed, was finally molded years ago. He has learned a great deal in his experience, is excessively cautious (this has become integrated as an acquired facet of his abnormality) and is confident he'll never be caught again. However, every time he peeps without being caught, he's using up the statistics in his favor which exist in the law of averages.
Charles' affliction was definitely contracted during his childhood. The misguided parental policy which impressed upon him a concept of sex as dirty and shameful and characterized women as untouchable permanently warped his psyche. Despite the inferred approbation of sex in marriage, Charles' mental processes gradually built up a barrier to coital activity which solidified to the point that, as a young adult, he was unable to perform his normal sexual function when an attractive and desirable partner offered him the opportunity. By the time Charles finished high school he was beyond repair, in all probability. At best, psychiatric mending is a patchwork effort which quite often comes unstuck again. It has been estimated that our most prodigious geniuses employed less than twenty percent of the estimated capacity of the normal human brain. What lesser percent do we normal humans use-yet what infinitesimal percentage of what we know of it is true?
It might have been that, had Charles been frank with Virginia, she might have persisted in her efforts and established a new base for him in matters of sex. It is improbable that his proclivity for peeping could ever be uprooted, but Charles might have been equipped with a second arrow for his quiver, but this is a highly conjectural theory. The forces of Charles' early indoctrination by his parents and his initial sexual adventure at the burlesque pointed him in the direction that made sexual gratification a follow-on to the stimulation of what his eye beheld. It is highly probable that he was irretrievably excluded from the ranks of the sexually normal with that incident. He felt excitement at kissing Virginia-responded to her femininity-but more intimate contact sapped his desire in response to his childhood conditioning.
Imprisoning Charles is no solution-unless the state wishes to keep him locked up forever. He assesses his incarceration as what it actually is-a retaliatory move by the state against him for violating one of its rules. In the same patterning of reasoning which took the path of least resistance around his parentally induced mental block, Charles has concentrated his not-inconsiderable intelligence on the problem of not being caught again. Undoubtedly this will happen-but it is-likely to be a long time before it happens. Charles' condition is pathological. He does not run a fever; his skin does not break out in lesions; there is no interference with the normal functions of his physical entity nor is he physically incapacitated by his affliction ... but he is a sick man, as well as a criminal.
While it is commonly and casually supposed that most Peeping Toms follow the male-spying-on-fe-male pattern, this is not according to the facts. Many homosexuals and latent homosexuals suffer from the same compulsion to voyeuristic activity, the object of their desire being the sight of male sex organs. In many individual cases, the peeper has never participated in a homosexual act-some may never-but none will admit any homosexual tendency with regard to his make-up. In some instances, the individual may have had only a fleeting homosexual experience in youth and his peeping is a result of the inner conflict between two sexual sides of his personality.
Ralph E. grew up in a strict Protestant environment in his home in the Pacific Northwest. His father was both domineering and demanding, making a point to impress on Ralph the importance of manliness and leading a clean, Christian life. Ralph recalls there was little warmth in his father's attitude toward him; consequently he turned toward his mother early in childhood. Events made him even more dependent on his maternal parent and Ralph describes himself as having been tied to his mother's apron strings....
The death of Ralph's father intensified the closeness between mother and son. After his passing, his mother became overly protective of him and he recalls that he was seldom out of her sight. Jim was ten when he lost his father and his mother asked him to share her bed at night because she was lonely. Ralph remembers waking one night soon after this began, pressed close to his mother's body and experiencing an erection. He was confused and embarrassed when she took hold of his penis and tried to turn away from her. However, his mother held him close, comforting him with assurances that it was alright-it was only natural for a young boy to become erect in this fashion. She began to stroke him and caress him and Ralph remembers how excited he became, his breathing accelerated and his heart beating wildly. When his excitement became apparent to his mother, she reassured him again that his arousal was only natural and normal and told him to relax and let her take charge of him. She turned Ralph onto his back and masturbated him to orgasm.
The incident was burned into Ralph's mind and, after the cessation of his excitement, his guilt began to grow. He took care to avoid it happening again because, in his mind, sexual activity between mother and son was something totally taboo and monumentally sinful ... His mother, however, did not let the matter rest. One night, holding Ralph close, she bared her bosom and asked him to suck on it, pretending he was a baby. In the light of adult knowledge, Ralph feels sure she experienced orgasm, telling him afterward it was "very nice" and told him he should do this for her now and then to "relieve her tensions."
While Ralph loved his mother and would do anything for her, these contacts repulsed him. He never allowed her to know it but secretly longed for the day he might return to his own room for sleep. When Ralph turned fifteen, his mother began seeing a man with whom she had become acquainted and Ralph got his wish to go back to his own room. His mother's requirements of him ended and, that summer, he asked to be allowed to go away to camp and his mother agreed the experience would be good for him.
At camp, Ralph was assigned a cabin with an older boy. It was equipped with a double bed and, at bedtime, when Ralph was getting on his pajamas, the older boy got into bed naked, saying he preferred to sleep in the nude and suggesting Ralph try it. Nothing happened that night or the next, Ralph relates, but then:
"The third night Bob began asking me a lot of questions about my sex life, wanting to know such things as if I'd ever slept with a girl-which I assured him I hadn't. Then he wanted to know if I masturbated and I confessed that, now and then, I did. He replied that I'd gone two nights without it and he doubted I was man enough. Then he pulled the sheet back to show me his erection in the moonlight; took my hand and put his (penis) into it, asking me if that didn't feel like a real man's.
"By this time, I was erect-probably from all the talk about sex-or maybe seeing Bob's had helped cause it. Anyhow he reached over and took mine in his hand, commenting that it felt good. I tried to remove my hand from his but he made me keep it there, playing with me slowly until I got so excited I was panting and gasping. When I came to a climax, it was great but I told him it was 'alright.' Then he lay back and told me it was my turn, taking my hand and showing me how he liked it done.
"Later we began talking about it. I told him I didn't feel right because it was what homosexuals did and he laughed, saying I was crazy. Masturbating each other didn't make us homosexuals, he explained, saying it was more fun than being with a girl. Girls were dirty and carried disease, according to him. Well, this seemed logical enough to me and we repeated almost every night of the month I spent at camp."
Several weeks after his return home, Ralph saw that Bob had been arrested for homosexual activities with young boys. Upon reading this, Ralph was again seized by guilt because of his experiences with Bob; and feeling his initial feeling had been correct ... that what he and Bob did were acts of homosexuality, for which he held complete distaste. Ralph had been highly incensed when one of his schoolmates had called him a sissy, saying he was queer. Also, his mother had referred to a woman acquaintance, scornfully, saying she suspected her of being a homosexual. This, to Ralph was a condition to be despised.
At about eighteen, Ralph had his first sexual experience with a girl-had dated Joan several times. One night, at a party, Joan got hold of some liquor, drank too much and ended up drunk. On their way home, she reached over, unzipped Ralph's trousers and took his penis out, taking it in her mouth. The action shocked Ralph and-in Joan's condition-worried him and he tried to free himself. Nausea overcame Joan, from the drink she'd had, and she was sick to her stomach before she could straighten up and lean out of the car.
Not only was Ralph shocked, but Joan's becoming sick revolted and disgusted him. Bob's remark about girls being dirty came to mind and Ralph found himself agreeing with the sentiment, heartily. He threw his suit away and showered twice before going to bed, resolved he would never date another girl.
Ralph was fond of tennis and played through high school; then was invited to join a tennis club his senior year. As he received coaching from a veteran, he tried to play every day possible during the week. Then the coach suggested he come in on week-ends if he could spare the time; Ralph was progressing but it would sharpen his game to go against some of the mature players.
The locker room was a bee-hive on Saturdays and Sundays and Ralph played two sets the first Saturday and then went into the locker-room to change. When he stepped into the shower, he relates he found himself surrounded by naked men. "I'd been in the shower with the kids around my age before, but twelve or so grown men was something I'd never experienced. Some were leaning against the wall, waiting for a shower stall.
"I couldn't keep my eyes off their organs and I felt myself beginning to get erect, hastily returning to my locker and getting into walking shorts. Then, for some reason, I got my shoes and socks and went back to a bench where I could see into the shower room to put them on. I hadn't planned it-but all of a sudden I was doing it. I lurked around the area where I could peep into the shower a couple of hours, pretending to be concentrating on a magazine which had an article on tennis in it.....
"That night, I dreamed about what I'd seen, the penises clear in my fantasies. I woke up with an erection and my hand was holding it. I was excited and I masturbated twice, thinking about the scene in the shower room again."
Ralph wasn't obvious about his interest in the shower room and got so he could shower without worrying about an erection. But he kept lingering in the locker-room and always in a position where he could see the naked bathers. A Club member who was a homosexual spotted his interest and began to stalk him. He knew better than to make a pass at any of the men in the club, but Ralph looked like a possible contact.
'I'll call him Frank," Ralph relates. "One Sunday there was a special match booked and there wasn't a person in the locker-room and I was about to give up and leave when Frank came in. I decided to shower before I left and, when I was in the stall, Frank came in. He was naked, too, and reached out to take my penis in his hand. He smiled and asked me if it didn't feel good and put my hand on his. When he started rubbing mine, it did feel good and I got excited. He said we had to be careful not to be seen and suggested we go to his apartment.
"When we got to his place," Ralph recalls, "his whole attitude changed. He told me to strip down and he'd give me a rub-down. When he'd rubbed my back, he turned me over and started manipulating my (penis). When I was fully erect and excited, he went to the end of the table and, turning me on my side, made me perform fellatio. I didn't want to but he got tough. When he climaxed, he made me lie there while he did it to me. I didn't enjoy it much, all I wanted to do was get away from him but I couldn't. He even hit me once and I seemed to relax a little. I was afraid of him and that excited me more. Finally I reached an orgasm while he was (fellating). Then he bent me over the table and (sodomized) me which hurt like hell and made me bleed. I was glad to get away from there and I decided it wasn't for me.
"I tried dating girls again; even tried intercourse with one of them but it bombed out. The girl was willing-she was ready for any guy in pants-but I couldn't get an erection. I went back to watching the shower room at the club and finally, one of the members got me aside and told me they thought it best I resign. I wasn't about to argue-he was very kind but he told me the club frowned on such interest by males in other males..."
Ralph's next effort at voyeurism was in a succession of public wash rooms-hotel, bus station, airport and department store. He was arrested on suspicion of homosexual activity; was released for lack of evidence. The janitor at the bus station had pointed him out to a policeman, telling the officer Ralph had been hanging around the washroom at regular intervals.
Ralph joined the YMCA, and was picked up by one of the residents who was a homosexual and caught him masturbating in the shower room; he threatened to turn Ralph in if he didn't go to his room with him. At the conclusion of this experience, Ralph determined he'd reached a new low, but he couldn't shake his fascination for male sex organs and his masturbation fantasies concerned these, entirely. He next tried spying on people in a trailer court and when he caught a couple in intercourse, would imagine it was his body being penetrated and would masturbate with exceptionally vigorous climax.
A special officer who patrolled the trailer court area at infrequent intervals spotted him one night, calling a police prowl car and then holding Ralph until he was in custody. Because of his previous arrest on suspicion of homosexual activity, the court was not lenient and Ralph got six months and a $500 fine....
It is apparent that Ralph is homosexual, but even in this inclination, he seems to be more confused than confirmed. His only satisfactory sexual release seems to be through masturbation while watching male sex organs. Facetiously, it may be observed that, for Ralph, the only situation which fits his desires is that of an invisible man in the men's showers. Although he denies his homosexuality, it is evident through his own experiences that-while he does not enjoy homosexual acts-he is incapable of enjoying heterosexual activity. His masochistic bent makes it hardly-likely he will ever take the initiative in seeking out another male who might be to his liking.
Ralph is deeply confused. Denied the normal sexual experiences of the average young boy; forced by a domineering father to turn to an over-protective mother, Ralph began to identify with the feminine to be the further confused by his mother's overt sexual activity, which instilled in him a repugnance for sexual contact with females. Further, the sense of guilt engendered by his mother's unfortunate action, projected in Ralph's consciousness to further estrange him from desire for female partners.
His initial experience in homosexuality had a lasting effect upon Ralph, evidenced by his continued professed aversion to homosexuality and his rationalization of his conduct with the older boy. Though not actively seeking homosexual activity, he did not refuse when Frank propositioned him at the tennis club. His experience with Joan no doubt put the finish to any possibility Ralph might have muddled through to an eventual acceptance of heterosexual activity. He was ripe for homosexual experience when he encountered Frank. His admission that his fear of Frank only heightened his excitement is significant.
There is no doubt of Ralph's being a Peeping Tom-his criminality is a matter of record-his future, in his confused, unidentified attitudes does not seem an enviable one.
While the case histories cited thus far in this chapter have dealt with individuals whose experience reflects a parental domination in the matter of sex orientation in childhood, The Institute for Sex Research findings indicate that among the sex offenders studied, the great majority indicated that most of their early sex information came from their contemporaries, their acquaintances and their friends. It has long been the widely-held opinion that there is, probably, no more inaccurate, misleading and dangerous source of information on this subject. It does have one advantage. It is so variable, contradictory and illogical that it does, in some cases, contribute something akin to its own antidote-if a youngster believes all of it, he has the best chance of escaping the peril of getting "hung up" on one basic idea. There's not that much unity of opinion among young people, which might 'brain-wash' an individual with the resultant path leading to deviation or inhibition.
From a practical standpoint, there is little to be said for the parental source of sexual information. Most opposition to sex education in schools springs from a fear of sex-the feeling that information on the subject may lead to participation. This fear is parental in source, thus the reluctance of most parents to undertake the sexual orientation task. There is also a misconception in the minds of many parents which holds that children are completely devoid of sexual information-our behavioral codes demand that this highly unlikely, nay impossible condition, be described as "innocence." The very use of the word immediately convicts the adult of regarding sex as a sin.
Thus, the atmosphere in which parental sex information exists is an unpleasant one, not-likely to produce good results. The situation-with regard to a child being considered "innocent" of sexual knowledge-has already called the third strike on the parent-instructor before he or she steps up to the plate. The fact that children do acquire information concerning sex-and usually long before the parents are moved to do anything about it on their own-has already activated the pattern of secrecy the child follows with regard to things sexual and from this depository, the parent is invariably shut out.
There is no possibility that one parent out of ten combines the factors of a fully happy and satisfactory sexual adjustment with his or her mate-a practical attitude with regard to the sexual functions and manifestations-an unbiased or unemotional view of sex in its many facets-sufficient knowledge of the maturation progress in the individual child-nor enough teaching ability to qualify as an instructor in anything, let alone in this highly critical and tremendously emotional area.
No one would concede, for instance, that a father who was devoted to golf and spent some time at it without appreciable progress-being best described as a duffer who couldn't break a hundred without a sizeable handicap-will ever be able to teach his son the game and set him on the road of the touring pros. This is just not acceptable in the practical view of things as they are. Yet, for the most part, parental instruction in sex matters is in the hands of those who, quite often, may not have as much demonstrated ability as the above duffer.
So, the parent may step into what he or she considers, from the outset, a disagreeable task; immediately being excluded from the secret store house the child maintains; approach the task as an authoritarian imposing his or her will on an inferior; and proceed-possibly recognizing there is no rapport-to stumble and fumble around to no effective purpose ... except to further strengthen the bonds of secrecy which already secure what the child has already found out. Kids can be pretty cruel in their assessments-many parents might be appalled at the reaction of the young to their inept attempts to instruct them about sex.
To this point, the situation is of the classic military description: SNAFU. The description pretty generally fits any usually-existing condition in human experience and so the individual child is left to sort out the mess to the best of his or her individual ability. The truly terrible hazard is contributed by those parents who approach sex instruction as a brain-washing project, continually exposing a child (before he has acquired much, if any, information) to a running reiteration of warning against a certain thing or things until (as in the case of Charles M. in this chapter) it builds a Frankenstein monster which destroys the individual it was hopefully and misguidedly thought to protect.
The Kinsey data indicate that the great preponderance of sex offenders had acquired their early sexual information from their peers, friends and acquaintances; however in this classification they differed little from the control group. The peepers were only a couple of percentage points below the overall incidence of the imprisoned with regard to the source of sexual information. It seems remarkable that, with regard to comparing the sources of sex information for both the group in and out of prison, very little of it came from parents.
While the peepers, largely conform to the overall preponderance in the source for sexual knowledge, about twice as many of them had such information from their fathers as from their mothers. This seems to be the only notable "bulge" in an otherwise pretty flat array of figures and the only conjecture it inspires here is that the male proclivity for that which the eye produces in sex experience might have colored the information they sought to pass on.
It would seem apparent to the most casual observer that there is a massive confusion existing with regard to everything concerning sex in our society. With the wide variation in existing sexual statutes from state to state, the wide divergence and emotionally-held concepts of "right and wrong" which privately exist, the teeming profusion of differences among individuals in the impacts and impressions derived from the same or differing facts of sex, it's not at all strange that some of us are in prison for misuse or misinterpretation of sexual facts.
Among the ranks of criminal voyeurs, homosexuality is present in a little more than half the individuals. There is no way of knowing what the proportion might be in the population, considered as a whole. Suffice it to say, that the aberration of peeping is not confined to any particular segment of offenders or un-apprehended participants. It might be that the additional burden of a homosexual condition, added to the compulsion to peep, may have contributed to the imprisonment of those numbers among the populace so additionally burdened.
The only thing we have for certain is the fact that peepers are of both heterosexual and homosexual persuasion and, most often, the latter classification resists and denies its involvement or preference for homosexual practices. It may well be that, in those individuals still at large, the latent homosexual urge may find much of its gratification in peeping-by this means averting actual physical participation in relations which they profess an aversion.
The unfortunate thing, for such problem people, is that the danger of falling into the criminal classification is ever-present. Their choice is a nothing. They can strive with all their might to repress their compulsive urges-and this, according to the best psychiatric authority, will bring them to the status of neurotics. Usually denied the capability for heterosexual participation and encountering at least surface aversion to homosexuality, personally-what can they do but peep if they refrain from the other "solutions" to their problem?
Such unfortunates are in a position similar to the man with impaired vision who cannot find his way out of the powder magazine-without lighting a match.
Beyond whatever else the eye of the compulsive peeper may see, there is the grim, forbidding bulk of prison walls, waiting for him....
CHAPTER SEVEN
WE-THE PEEPERS
In the preceding chapters, we have observed the full amplitude of variety in voyeurism, from the casual, overt and approved voyeur to the compulsive, deviate and criminal peeping Tom. We have noted that far fewer females than males are affected by optical stimuli, generally-yet the feminine devotees have experienced an expansion in their enjoyment of sex through their acquisition of this additional sensory assist. We have marked the dangers existing in the two, proximate sources of sex information for the young; and we have seen that, for the criminal voyeur, unquestionably, there is no satisfactory solution for his problem.
It is a sad paradox that our advanced civilization, in which we take so much pride and satisfaction-with its truly remarkable material contributions toward making our lives more liveable, more comfortable and safer-that we have, at the same time, produced for much of our population, side-effects which add up to less security, far less comfort and considerably greater hazard. While we triumphantly solve one problem, we ignore the fact we have created two others.
Especially in considerations of sexual behavior is this tendency apparent, with the result that today, in our society, there are those who realize the futility of trying to exist happily within the tangled anomalies of acceptable behavior which are in apposition and opposition to nature's continuing, persistent and irresistible demands. These have been aptly described as sex rebels-and their numbers reputed great.
Glenn S. is best described as a happy voyeur and takes frank delight in it. "I look because I'm convinced girls dress to display their charms, admit it or not. Right now, I'm in the happy position of not having yet found the girl I want to marry, although I intend to, when and if the one I want is agreeable. Meanwhile, I go my merry way and look over the entire stock of merchandise. Out to dinner or in the office, these new fashions seem to give the girls a lot of trouble in keeping covered yet I notice none of them have renounced them for Mother Hubbards-it's my opinion the girls like 'em or they wouldn't wear 'em. It's a continuous needling process with the office girls. If they persist in sitting around with most of their legs showing, I look. Now and then they struggle to pull down skirts that have no more pull down to them; sometimes they give me a half-exasperated "Oh! Glenn!".
"If we get into bantering discussion of it-as happens at times, depending on the highly variable character of the female's feelings at any given time-it always turns out that some mysterious force makes them dress that way-they really don't want to. This is always implied. But when you point out that if they don't want to be looked at, all they have to do is go back to below-the-knees dresses, they look at you like you're crazy. It's a gas....
"I don't know what the shouting is all about, anyhow. I have ample opportunities for sex with some (what I consider) pretty smart-looking girls. Most of them are self-supporting, working at fairly responsible jobs. They like the same things I do-fun and sex. I enjoy living and looking contributes a lot of spice to it because it stimulates me and helps to keep me finding new friends among the girls..."
Jean M., a southern housewife is one whose childhood experience included the sight of boys' genitalia to which was connected the sexual activity of self-erotication. Her peeping was not done in secret; it was part of a mutual experimentation carried on in farm buildings, in the woods-wherever the opportunity and her playmates were both available. She required some time to achieve orgasm, from the time she first began, but was successful for the first time when she was in the company of boys with their genitals exposed. Thus, before she had reached puberty, Jean was fairly well set in a pattern of masturbation with the actual sight of boys' genitals as the trigger; as well as secret self-erotication with accompanying fantasies about the same objects as stimulants.
Her first coital experience occurred in high school. Between that time and the gradual cessation of her childhood activity, her family had moved into town from the farm on which she was raised and her contacts with her former sexual experimenters were largely cut off. Jean confesses to some attempts to peep into neighboring residences but with very little success; managed, with difficulty, to obtain a small stock of magazines which offered pictures of naked or near-nude males, which had to suffice for the interim. When a boy attempted coitus with Jean for the first time, she was repelled by the pain, largely and would not complete the act with her partner. He had to be satisfied with her masturbating him to orgasm. At the start of her junior year in high school, Jean had formed a fast friendship with a girl named Willa and, by the end of summer vacation, they had pretty largely divulged all their sex secrets to each other.
"I told her about my never having been penetrated," Jean revealed "and she urged me to have a date with the boy who first did it with her. I was scared, of course, but the idea of a new experience-and one that I recognized I should have-sold me. Willa said he'd been very patient and gentle with her. I didn't realize until much later what a rarity he was-but the pain completely turned me off and I had to quit, offering to relieve him by masturbation. He suggested another method-(fellatio)-but I refused, not being entirely sold on its acceptability, I guess....
"Comparing notes with Willa later, she reluctantly admitted that she had done this (performed fellatio) and that it had excited her to an appreciable extent and her partner went clear into orbit. She was concerned about my aversion to another coital attempt and finally, during summer vacation between junior and senior year, she persuaded me to try again.
"We had, on occasion, masturbated together and mutually. Her dad had a vibrator-a hand implement like a barber uses-to relieve tension in his neck and shoulder muscles. Occasionally Willa and I-on rare occasions when we were alone at her house-would use this in our sex play and I thought it was terrific. I finally had another date with a boy to try to find an opportunity to try coitus. We drove out in the country, near where I used to live, to a creek with a natural swimming hole, and went swimming. Afterward, we wandered into the woods and began kissing and this led, naturally, to other things. When I saw his erection, my excitement mounted immediately. He wasn't as big as the first boy had been and this time I experienced little discomfort-but I couldn't manage an orgasm.
"I had two more experiences that summer," Jean continued. "There was little or no pain, but I just couldn't secure satisfaction through penetration; I guess because there wasn't any visual stimulus. It wasn't until Willa hit on the daring plan to double date and try it-the thought of which scared me silly at first-that I achieved my first orgasm this way..."
Jean married, after she had finished high school and worked for about three years. Her husband, through their participation in pre-marital sex, knew of Jean's difficulty in obtaining satifsaction in coitus. They tried sex movies and some pornography but the best they could come up with at home was an arrangement of mirrors which gave the necessary impetus to Jean's response to visual stimulus. When Willa and her husband proposed swapping wives, Tom-Jean's husband-was very reluctant but, knowing Jean's difficulty, they agreed to a sex session with both couples present. Jean's response was so gratifying to him that they continued, their procedure including swapping partners before long. They have expanded their circle of contacts and, presently, are active in a restricted area (due to income size) with other swappers who live near them.
June R.-as a result of an incestuous attack by her drunken father (a widower for whom she kept house)-fell into active lesbianism as a result. She ran away from home and struck up a friendship with a girl in a rooming house who "brought her out" and confirmed her in her preference for girls.
So repulsed was she by the recollection of her father's physical attack, that it was two years before she allowed herself to be put in a position where a man tried coitus with her and again she was revolted.
"I was all at sea," she explains, "I'd broken up with this girl I'd been living with-but a male was simply repulsive to me. I moved from where I'd been living, into another place where I shared a bath with two other girls. One morning, while I was showering, one of them asked if I minded if she fixed her hair while I bathed. I was a little embarrassed but told her it was alright. To my surprise, she took off her robe and stood naked before the mirror as she arranged her hair-do. Suddenly, I could hardly tear my eyes away from her-she had a beautiful figure, with full, pink-tipped, pointed breasts. I went back to my room and masturbated afterward."
After that, June began to welcome communal use of the bathroom and, quite often, received stimulus from seeing the other girls in nudity or near-nudity to inspire her to self-gratification. Her next lesbian liaison was highly disturbing to June, the other girl insisting that June perform oral sex on her, which she had never done. She broke off this relationship with much difficulty, ending by being forced to move to another town. She had a high proficiency as a waitress and had no difficulty in obtaining employment. Fearful of encountering another such problem as with her last previous lesbian arrangement, she shuns lesbian approaches; continues to live in a rooming house where she shares a large space with two other girls, all using the same bath.
She has ample opportunity, thus, for her voyeuristic activity and has learned to gratify her desires without the use of her hands, silently, after the lights are out. June recognizes that her sexual pattern may be somewhat bizarre but she is ashamed of her former lesbian activity and will not re-enter it. Her sole stimulation she receives through seeing other females in the nude, relieving her excitement through masturbation....
Linden K., a door-to-door salesman, became addicted to peeping at an early age. "There were three daughters in the house next door," he revealed, "and my bedroom was right opposite theirs. I had learned to masturbate in company with some of my playmates when I was about seven or eight years old. There was a two-story structure out in our back yard, evidently left over from what had been farm land before the area was developed. My dad used it as a garage and everything we didn't want in the house accumulated out there. It was a great place to play and, up in the top floor, we had almost complete privacy. Just when some of the older boys I played with first displayed their sex organs and their proficiency at masturbation to me, I don't recall, exactly, but it must have been at around seven. I'd already started to school, I know.
"Seeing the other boys induced some sort of excitement in me, at first," Linden recalls. "Then, when they urged me to try it, I got a very enjoyable sensation out of manipulating my (penis) at their example. I didn't reach an orgasm right away: that came sometime later, but I do recall the fervent exchange of comments on girls between the older boys while they were bringing themselves to climax....
"I was an only child and I had never seen anything to stimulate me sexually around my home-until this family moved in next door. Two of the girls were blondes-twins-the third girl was a strawberry blonde, I think they called her. Her hair had reddish tints in it. Anyhow, one night after I'd gone to sleep, I was awakened and I heard the girls giggling and laughing next door. I rolled over in bed and looked out through the three-inch gap beneath the blind. Evidently, the three had been to some sort of party-they were getting undressed and laughing and chattering away as they did so. I immediately became excited as I watched the three of them remove their clothing, eventually to be naked before slipping into their pajamas. I'd never seen anything like it. The girls all had well-developed breasts (they were thirteen-fourteen years old) and not very much hair. My friends up in the loft had described the hair which women they'd seen possessed.
"I began to get an erection as I watched and reached down to grasp it. As I began to masturbate, my excitement and the pleasure of the sensations I was feeling increased. Before I reached a climax, the girls turned off the lights and went to bed, but I continued, in the dark, until I had an orgasm."
Linden recounts that, for the next two years, he kept a close watch on the girls next door, seldom turning on the light in his room and being careful to keep his blinds tight in the evening. Evidently, the girls were lulled by this seeming lack of activity directly across from them and sometimes he got a real thrill.
"One night they got to 'horsing' around with each other-giggling and touching each other on the breasts and (vulvas) while they were getting ready for bed. They were all naked and kept it up for about ten minutes until one of their parents called up from downstairs to quiet them down. I masturbated to climax twice while I was watching their antics..."
During this period a baby brother arrived at Linden's home and, when the baby was about a year and a half old, the younger of the girls next door acted as a baby-sitter. Despite the disparity in their ages, Ellen and Lin got on very well with each other and, during the time they were alone in the house together, advanced to the area of sexual experiment which never got beyond mutual masturbation. Linden finally confessed to Ellen that he'd peeped at them from his bedroom and masturbated and she thought it very funny, saying she was going to tell her sisters. Linden thought this not such a good idea, but Ellen said they'd get a big kick out of it. They did. One Saturday afternoon when both sets of parents were out and Ellen was baby-sitting with Lin's little brother, the other two girls came over-Marsha and Maria-and while the baby was asleep, the four of them participated in a peep/masturbation session. Linden recalls this was the greatest excitement he'd ever known up to that point. When Marsha ascertained that he did not ejaculate at climax, she asked him if he wouldn't like to do it the grown-up way (coitus) and Linden agreed, but said he didn't know how. Marsha showed him. She reached a climax but Lin didn't; then Maria asked him to do it with her. This time they both reached climax. The older sisters wouldn't let Ellen try, but the next time she baby-sat for Lin's parents, they experimented with coitus; over a period of weeks they managed to attain orgasm in the exercise....
Linden's adult pattern is one of complete enjoyment of coital activity in sex-but a corner of his libido requires voyeuristic stimulation. He married at twenty-seven; introducing his wife to the swinging society after they'd been married about two years. He considers that his sex life is complete. His wife enjoys swinging-Linden finds complete satisfaction in a combination of coitus and being able to watch other females in the sex act ... he is quick to say that what he sees brings him to more satisfactory climaxes than sex without the additional stimulus. He is a confirmed voyeur.
Carleton N., the youngest of a family which numbered three sisters beside himself, was early exposed to his sisters dashing about in all stages of undress. Even the sight of them nude, on occasion, did not elicit more than a curious glance from him. At the age of seven, he had started into the bedroom of his parents one morning, when they were engaged in love play prior to coitus. The child could understand his mother's sounds of delight but was concerened when she moaned in climax. By the time he was ten years old, he had made occasion to spy on them on several other occasions; had finally reached the conclusion that what they were doing was pleasant to both of them. The last two or three occasions he spied on them (before being caught in the act and excluded by a locked bedroom door) he had become excited and masturbated while he watched. The last occasion, he reached a climax. This combination remained fixed in his memory as the most exciting moment of his life.
Carlton, in adult life, is a confirmed peeper. Naked girls do not excite him, particularly; the sight of girls engaging in homosexual activity does not stir him to more than moderate interest and excitement. He is addicted to viewing coitus and masturbating to climax while he is peeping. He has been arrested twice in the act of peeping; has served one jail sentence; has changed his city of residence four times in six years.
He works as a service station attendant and is good at his job. He is obsessed with his Peeping Tom activity; cannot obtain full sexual gratification and release without it. He has become an expert at fire escapes, trees, breaking and entering. His activities have expanded to include burglary but he confines his thefts to money, only. He wants nothing which can be traced to him.
Girls do not interest him-unless they're mindlessly involved in a sex act with another man-and the greater their excitement and enthusiastic response, the more vigorous and satisfying is Carlton's orgasm. There is little chance that he will avoid prison-but Carlton is exercising all his acquired skill and native shrewdness to indulge his addiction and stay free of the law....
These are the peepers. They come from every socio economic level; from happy and serene homes, as well as from broken homes. Their educational levels, religious affiliations, personal conduct outside their fixation tells us nothing-voyeurs include most of us and Peeping Toms may come from the house next door or turn out to be your first cousin.
Obviously, with the ability of the eye to bring attractive pictures to the consciousness, the opportunities for voyeurism are limitless. That nudity is frowned upon as a socially acceptable practice seems a tragedy. Many would be spared their involvement if nakedness were as common as clothing.
The difficulties arise from the professed attitudes which hold that sex is sinful, nasty, dirty-a shameful act. Yet, evidently, once a couple marries, the accepted character of sex changes. There is no approval, in our social customs, of sexual activity outside marriage; the laws of some states proscribe certain acts, even between married persons; and parents have been jailed for permitting their offspring to witness their acts of coitus. Obviously, there is something wrong, somewhere, in behavioral machinery which balks and stalls and is more noted for malfunction than for smooth operation. But publicly, the demand is for obedience to the rules of conduct which our civilization has accepted for so many centuries that adherence is a conditioned reflex; its adherents opposing any change in-ground rules.
Meanwhile, individuals continue to be damaged by the easy impressions of the eye and the body's erotic response to erotic stimuli. There are some who frankly enjoy and are benefited by voyeurism. In some segments of society, the female has accepted voyeurism as an acquired taste and enjoying the resulting amplification of the most enticing, exciting and fulfilling act of which the human body is capable.
On every hand, the appeals to the vision multiply; the inducements to look proliferate, the rewards from exercise of sight grow richer. There is some evidence our part of the world is beginning to apply the sense of sight as it was used in man's earliest times: to include the frank appraisal of desirability in the opposite sex-and the intensification of the satisfaction which stems from that desire.
It is to be hoped that We-the Peepers-are finding a path to that happy plateau in man's history where the furtive, secretive peep may be replaced by the acceptability of open and frank regard....
