My Life And Loves, vol 5

by Frank Harris

  I withdrew almost at once. Mrs. Redfern straightened up with a laugh.

  “There's life in an old dog yet!” she said gaily. “I hope, Mr. Harris, I won't have to wait so long for your next favor.”

  With some misgivings, but as gently as possible, I assured her that she would not have to wait long, that I should certainly not wait until I had been invited.

  “I've only known one other man who loved it as much as you do, sir,” she cried, “and that was my late husband. He was tarred with the same black brush!”

  “Black indeed!” I cried. “Why black?”

  “Oh, Mr. Harris, you're terrible!” said the pretty and ecstatic Mrs. Redfern. She meant it. Truly it is only the bohemian who can be free, not the proletarian. Poor Mrs. Redfern, in spite of the delight which she took in all amorous affairs, was unable to scale off that irritating and essentially ignorant sense of Original Sin. The girls, thank God, were not thus tainted. They enjoyed the whole affair immensely as was obvious from their merry giggles and happy faces, both at the time and afterward.

  Our session ended late. Winnie had to hurry so as not to arrive too late for the evening meal at her parents' house. Shortly afterward, Mrs. Redfern left with her pretty May.

  When they had gone and I had a moment to relax after my endeavors, it occurred to me that there must have been one time in history, pre-history perhaps, when the full possibilities of a game like leapfrog were not only understood but exploited. The game was certainly known to the Greeks. To what end they played it, apart from its being a species of physical exercise, is unhappily nowhere recorded. Even were it a fact, as some recent historians assert, that the Greek youth indulged in the practice of homosexuality, I would not wish the truth buried in the remote past from which it can never rise up and be good ground for caution in our attitudes, self-control in our behavior, and wisdom in our judgment. The Truth, I have always believed, was never so detrimental to human affairs as was falsity; it should be remembered that if we had all truth, we should be possessed of all understanding. I felt that I had nothing to reproach myself with for the afternoon's pleasures; obviously, we had come together because each of us in his or her heart desired that it should be so. Would it have any effect on the future? Human love is in many ways delicate. Had I transgressed against the inviolable laws of subtlety? I didn't think so and I proved to be right, for the gambol destroyed neither the intimacy between Winnie and me, nor that between myself and dear May. Not a bit of it!

  A week later, Mrs. Redfern was all aflame with a new project. The woman was indefatigable in her pursuit of the god Eros. Again, in reference to that lady, I must admit I sensed the taint of an ulterior motive, but I didn't blame her. Everybody is naturally eager to earn all the money he can get. Why then should I have blamed the poor woman? She made a great to-do of something she hoped to bring that would astonish me.

  “It's only to be had in the best houses,” she declared.

  “What is it?” I wanted to know.

  “They call it the hedge-hog,” she replied, “but that tells you nothing. If I can get it for you, you will have to admit that India has taught you one thing worth knowing.”

  A few days later she drew out the object she'd named and showed it to me; it was a silver ring with a number of very fine tiny feathers brought in all around it. The ring was not closed, and Mrs. Redfern slipped it over my thumb and said:

  “There! If you use that you will make all the girls crazy for you.”

  “Really,” I exclaimed, “you mean if I put it on it will give them more pleasure?”

  “Try it!” she returned. “Don't tell them, but try and you will soon see that I've made you a wonder worker.”

  “All right,” I said, “I'm much obliged to you, and if you turn out to be a good prophet, I'll be liberal with my rewards.”

  “I'm sure you will,” she smiled, “but if you would try it the second time instead of the first, I'd feel even surer.”

  “Why the second time?” I asked.

  “You know perfectly well,” she exclaimed laughing. “You know that nine girls out of ten feel more the second time than they do the first, and if you use my tickler when they are already thrilling, you will have wonderful results. You wait and see!”

  “I'll try it this very evening,” I said, “and tomorrow I shall let you know all about it.”

  “All right,” she replied, “that will suit me. Meantime, I'm after another instrument that will surprise you still more and make every girl crazy for you.”

  “Thanks to you, I laughed, “I think I shall indeed learn something memorable from India.”

  “The greatest country in the world,” she said solemnly, “for love-tools, or foods, or excitants; they know more here about sex sensations and how to vivify and intensify them than anywhere else. Try my tickler and you'll see.”

  That evening Winnie came to spend a couple of hours with me. At first she seemed less passionate than usualI inserted my fingers, then my cock into her pussy, to little availbut after half an hour or so of love's dalliance, when I thought she had reached the height of feeling, I slipped the ring onto my shaft and penetrated her once again.

  In a moment I knew that Mrs. Redfern was justified. Almost at once Winnie spread her thighs feverishly and soon, for the first time, began to move her body uncontrollably and utter strange sounds, now whimpering, now gasping: “Oh! I can't stand it. Oh! Stop, please, or I shall go mad. Oh! Oh! Oh!”

  Of course, I didn't stop. Her cries and pleas raised my level of excitation until I pistoned into her uncontrollably. All thought was driven from my head except for the overwhelming need to bury my enormous swollen cock in her tight little cunt.

  The tickler had something to do with it, I dare say. The feathers all around the edge stimulated each and every nerve of Winnie's tender flesh as I fucked her. To her it must have seemed as though she were incredibly full of cock that touched her innermost recesses in new and exciting ways.

  She was unable to resist the ring, and my lust, for long. I drove into her again and again, feeling the head of my instrument butting the walls of her womb, while she let down of flood of pearly nectar that inundated my candystick. As she did so, she clamped her legs around my back and drew me more deeply into her. This was the final straw, and I began to spurt into her.

  When I had finished, I withdrew and removed the tickler and soon Winnie was all questions: “Why did you never make me feel so intensely before? I didn't feel particularly naughty tonight, but you made me lose all self-control. I never enjoyed it so keenly. Oh, you're wonderful, Frank. I'm all yours, you know, but now you've made me crazy. How did you do it so wonderfully?”

  Of course, I kept my secret. For Winnie and me it led to an astonishing series of experiences. Passion provokes passion and when one gives intense pleasure, one is summoned to repeat the event. Again and again I used the tickler; varying the motions, the tempo of my pressures and their soft oscillation, and each time with some new thrill of delight. I often heard her cry: “Oh, you are in me and that is Paradise for me! My cunt opens to you, and at the same time you excite me, tease me so that I could bite you. When I am all yours, you make me feel most intensely: I cannot explain.”

  At the same time I noticed that as her passion increased, so too did her love; she became radiant, more and more devoted to me and would wait for hours for me to see her. Indeed, it was this trait of absolute devotion which eventually led to our separation.

  I resolved now to try the tickler as soon as possible with May. Somehow or other, I felt sure that May's response would be extraordinary, for though I had not yet caused her to lose control, I knew she was passionately endowed; her kisses promised much and after a few kisses she used to tremble from head to foot. It was as though her honey-colored flesh became alive. I could never forget it. So I resolved to use the hedgehog at the proper time. I would beg her to come soon and have a memorable night.

  Next day, I gave Mrs. Redfern fifty pounds and asked her to br
ing May that night. She could not, she told me. She would have to give the girl a couple of days' notice if I wanted her for the whole night. And so it was arranged.

  On the appointed evening I made everything ready, down to a divan with a rough tiger skin thrown over it. Such was to be the bower of our bliss. We would make love on the tough hide of the old jungle beast. May delighted with our couchshe couldn't withhold from fingering it with her slender brown fingers.

  “I'm glad it's not alive!” she said with a laugh which was all the more attractive for its slightly Oriental quality.

  I invited her to get undressed. She did so with alacrity. Once again, the sight of her naked beauty set my blood afire. She must have felt similarly, for the tips of her pert breasts were fiercely erect and the look in her eyes was one of passionate anticipation and submission. Then I lifted her warm body and laid it on top of the harshly striped tiger skin. I bent down over her pale loins and began to excite her with the tip of my tongue. By this time, the hair had grown thinly over the mound and I must say I welcomed the faint and silky chevron which did something at least to lessen the effect of the stubborn, almost unwomanly sex.

  Soon she responded with an agitated movement of her haunches, breathing deeply the while and articulating soundless words with her lips. When she was quite excited, I mounted her in the normal way. I fucked her in slow, luxurious fashion, allowing the full length of my cock to enter and withdraw from her while my belly slid along hers. Our pubic bones ground together on the down stroke, and I rotated my hips and mashed myself against her so as to spread the lips of her pussy. The heat rose within me almost at once and I was hard put not to explode within her delightful grotto before we experienced greater pleasure, though I am sure she would have been just as accepting had I selfishly tended to my own needs, for that was her gracious way.

  Only then, remembering the advice of Mrs. Redfern, did I attempt to use love's instrument. A few minutes later we were again thrusting passionately against one another, only this time I was armed with the feathered silver ring. She did not respond to its use as quickly as Winnie, nor as passionately. Yet, to my astonishment, she guessed what the instrument was; the priests had educated her sexually to complete understanding. Of course, when I offered her a new dress and a new hat, and a pair of gloves, I found enthusiastic response in her. May was much more susceptible to a financial manifestation of gratitude than to passion.

  What curious differences there are in women. Winnie took all such gifts as a matter of course, but responded to a new touch of sensuality as a violin to the bow. Of course, it probably had something to do with the difference in station between the two girls. Passion among the Indians flows free. A gift is more appreciated in the Orient. Naturally, because of the heights of passion and abandon to which I could arouse the dear girl, I often preferred Winnie to May. I have always said that Winnie won me so completely that I never learned India thoroughly; she so obsessed me that I could spare no time for anyone else or any other thing. For those hours that we lay together entwined, I shall be forever grateful to her.

  But alas! Her devotion made her family think. Her father had her followed once to my hotel and at length her mother came to me and begged me for the girl's sake to go away and leave her, or she would never be able to get married. It nearly broke my heart to give my consent, but finally I did so and went on to Burma.

  Mrs. Redfern was greatly put out by my decision. She advised me not to go to Burma. “It's a filthy place, sir!” she said. If you must go, take my advice and have nothing to do with women while you're there.”

  I thanked her for her advice and reiterated my decision to quit Bombay for the sake of Winnie's future. Finally, I think Mrs. Redfern almost came to agree with me that it was the only thing to be done.

  In Rangoon there began for me a series of adventures which forced me to the conclusion that the Burmese half-caste girl is one of the most fascinating creatures in God's world, and she is certainly one of the prettiest and best-formed; she is cheap, too. Many are sold at age fifteen to eighteenand even youngerby their parents and seldom cost even twenty pounds. I would have bought many had I known what to do with them afterward, but I hadn't the heart to use them for a short time and then leave them penniless and free in a big city. I was thus limited by a dictate of conscience to buy only those few for whom I could provide after my eventual leave-taking. I hesitated a long time between the numbers of two and three, but finally discretion had the better part of greed and lust, and I decided to content myself with two.

  Their names? I forget their original names because I heard them only at the beginning. I decided to call them Rose and Lily. Burning my boats behind me as I do, I had no need of their names, for I had no intention of writing them through the intermediary of a missionary once I was gone. It was unfortunate that we couldn't speak each other's language, but the girls seemed to have a sixth sense of knowing what it was I wanted of them, and they were ever at my side with fruit and other refreshments at the very moment when the desire overtook me. Had I a longer writing life, I would certainly spend one year writing the detailed history of my short marriage to these two Burmese maidens, both barely past their eighteenth year, but I have still much to record and daily, in spite of my will, my sight fails the more. I shall have to content myself with describing one or two of their antics.

  Perhaps the strangest was the way they used to love to make a “fur collar” for me with their thighs. This was really a delightful procedure. Literally, they would twine their thighs into a kind of collar for me, my neck clamped between their soft mounds, and my head the only part of me to protrude upward between their dark bellies. The idea was that I should tickle them with my tongue until they allowed me to break free. Without exaggeration I sometimes was forced to struggle with themso tight was their holdfor as much as fifteen minutes.

  Another of their favorite tricks was to smear themselves all over with a sweet-smelling oil and then to wrestle with me until the oil from their bodies covered my own. Finally, there is the trick that some Burmese women have of smearing the male member with honey at every opportunity so that it and the female lips it penetrates are always sweet and tasty.

  But this was not what I was looking for. I had wearied of passion, with Winnie, with May, with Rose and Lilythe old wanderlust was awake in me. This time it was Japan and China that called. My time for traveling was limited, so I resolved to move on.

  One thing I might make mention of: The custom of living with native women and having half-breed children is practiced by Englishmen and Americans throughout the East. The children are superb. The Eurasian girl or boy in Burma is often an excellent specimen, both physically and mentally. It is unfortunate that the girl's lot is almost always unhappy and often tragic. This leads me to say that the complete understanding given by the Oriental mind to the act of love is in my opinion connected with the depths of spirit attained by certain of the eastern Holy Men. The Westerner is often shallow beside the Easterner. Which only goes to show the truth of one of my lifelong thesesthat a healthy sexual life is the prerequisite of a healthy spirit. What do I mean by “spirit”? To that question I shall offer at least part answer in the next chapter.

  I shall end here by saying that I believe Keats could be called as a witness for the defense of my point of view. Who can recall the lines of Ode on a Grecian Urn, an ode to the beauty of Greek youth, and still disagree?

  O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with breed

  Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

  With forest branches and the trodden weed:

  Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

  As doth eternity

  And he ends rightly with:

  Beauty is truth, truth beautythat is all

  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

  I thought of Keats quite frequently while on my travels. Burma struck me at once as a country whose gorgeous vegetation would have held magnificence for this most lush of English poets.
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  CHAPTER IV

  In my quarter of a century in London there were at least two men of conspicuous ability who came to the front by proclaiming the certainty of life after death. The one was a Mr. Sinnett who preached in a new magazine entitled Broad Views. “I know people,” he said boldly, “who not only remember their past lives, but are in a position, if it were worthwhile, to write a complete diary of every day of those antenatal lives. For all persons the faculty in due course of time will come.”

  Every soul now being born into the world, Mr. Sinnett insisted, went out of the world from 1,500 to 2,000 years ago. We are therefore all contemporaries of the Apostles and the Caesars, and the antenatal autobiographies of some of us ought to be worth reading. Dr. Anna Kingsford believed she was a reincarnation of Plato, and Mrs. Besant is said to be Hypatia come to life again, but these are mere assertions.

  Mr. Sinnett sets forth “what happens to the soul after the death of the body. The experiences that come on first when a human soul is emancipated from the prison of the flesh are not of a very exalted order. As consciousness fades from the physical vehicle, it carries with it the finer sheath of astral matter which has interpenetrated the coarser physical vehicle during life, and in this ethereal but still quite material envelope, it exists for a time in the region commonly called the astral plane.

  “On the astral plane the soul, in a vehicle of consciousness which is insusceptible to heat or cold, incapable of fatigue, subject to no waste, and therefore superior to the necessity of taking food, continues an existence for a variable period which in many of its aspects is so like the life just abandoned that uninstructed people who pass over find it impossible to believe that they are what is called dead. But that state of things, though, as it grows familiar, and as the field of view is enlarged, may be agreeable enough, and may be associated with the renewal of friendships and affections interrupted for a time by death, is not the stage of things that corresponds to the Heaven of religious teaching.