It was in Shanghai that I first learned that various poisons and aliments are supposed to increase desire or intensify sensation, but I found them no more efficacious than the spiritual theories of Mr. Sinnett. Indeed, in time I came to explain the wide use of drugs throughout China with reference to the curious insensitiveness of Chinese women.
I was taken by a Chinese I met shortly after my arrival from Burma to one of the famous “opium dens” for which China is famous. Frankly, I was very disappointed. I achieved neither the desired physical effect nor that intense state of clear vision attained by Coleridge on the eve on which he wrote “Kubla Khan.” I smoked the prescribed twenty pipes again and again without ever achieving either object.
This was especially true in regards to sex. My friend had obtained a young Chinese woman for me. When I was “high” I was to make love to her. We were taken to the place of our assignation in a rickshaw and once in the room, the Chinese girl immediately put herself at my disposal. A few words of description would not be out of place since, in spite of the fact that I was disappointed with the effect the drug had on me, the girl herself was the picture of loveliness.
She lay cool and naked as yellow marble on the gaudy red-covered divan, her little hands crossed on her full breast and her legs together. Her nipples were large and dark, though they were not engorged, even when I removed my clothes and I stood naked before her, my cock standing straight out in anticipation of the pleasure to come. Her hair was thick and lay in crushed tresses under her back. Between her thighs, under a glossy chevron of hair, her pussy lips were obvious, larger than I personally would have expected, but pretty and warmly moist to the touch. But she made no response as I laid my hand on her mount She remained as cool as a cucumber through the entire operation.
Only the slightest tremor passed through her limbs as I applied my lips to hers, and even when I hovered on the verge of fucking her, it was merely a matter of opening her legs. She had gathered her knees up and they fell open like the pages of a heavy book. I shrugged and moved up closer to her slit, placing the head of my cock against that warmly throbbing entrance. Usually, it has been my experience that a woman will respond to this with either some gesture or word, or even a moan signaling her rising passion. But with this one there was nothing. I entered her slowly, studying her eyes, which remained expressionless through the entire affair. I pumped her slowly, then hard, almost brutally, in an effort to elicit some sort of response. When I reached forward and took her breasts in my hands and squeezed the nipples, not harshly, I thought I saw a flicker of emotion, perhaps discomfort, but she soon reverted to type. I sighed inwardly and simply continued to saw between her legs.
For myself, I soon arrived at the point at which I wished for the frantically passionate limbs of Winnie, or of some other almost perfect mistress, but was met in my flood instead by the same soft impassivity which I came to think of as being characteristic of Chinese women. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but that does not detract from the validity of the broad generalization. This girl, like many other girls I met in China, seemed to be entirely without passion, and the drug, in spite of the fact that I had followed all instructions given to me with the utmost care, had no effect whatsoever on the intensity of my orgasm.
I was indeed slightly disgusted by the whole affair afterwards. Its passivity, its obvious one-sidedness, struck me as coming very close to the kind of thing I have always been at pains to avoid. For me, love must froth into intensity from “twin rills;” that is why I have always considered prostitution to be sordid.
Those who delivered their speeches on the virtue of drugs were not satisfied. My friend in particular felt that I ought to give it another trial. I did so, but with similar results. In the end, I could see no point in my trying again. Then someone told me that I should have tried cocaine. Once again, giving my advisor the benefit of the doubt, I submitted to the test. The effect was slightly different but, if anything, made me feel even less passionate than I was under opium; it was just as inoperative. Finally, an English doctor who had lived for years in Peking, vaunted the benefits of ether, and in this case I am bound to say I could trace a distinct stimulation of desire. But this good result was offset by the evil effect of the intoxicant itself. For a couple of days afterwards I felt sick and out of sorts. I was unable to work and had no mind at all for love. In conclusion, no drug or poison seems to be worth recommending.
Exciting foods and drinks were to me just as disappointing. There is one thing, however, I do find worth mentioning.
In Peking one day, I was shown an apparatus which deserves description as it was intended to give pleasure to Chinese women. It consisted of an oval-shaped ball, or rather a kind of egg in silver or ivory, the size of a small fowl's egg. The Chinese screw off the top of the egg and fill it half-full of mercury, then screw it up again and grease it carefully.
The woman puts it into her pussy and stretches herself on a rocking chair, giving it a swinging movement to and fro. This rocking provokes the alternative moving of mercury to one end and the other of the egg, making it slide about in the soft canal and producing a special sort of sexual excitement. The oval end helps the slipping out of the apparatus when the woman gets up.
I had such an egg for a long time in my possession. In fact, I had several of them, but I have given them all away. I must admit that their action is marvelous. This history of my last egg is worth recording.
I had perhaps six or seven in my possession when I returned to England, five of which I left there in the hands of a woman I knew in London who afterwards, and very dishonestly, sold them for the astounding price of fifty pounds each. Believing myself to have five kept safely in England, I took two to America with me, one of which I couldn't resist parting with to a sweet Brazilian woman whom I met on the boat. We had great fun with it. The other I smuggled safely past Customs and carried with me to New York. Naturally, as it was the last I had with mealas! it was the last I was ever to seeI deliberated for a long time before parting with it. There were three ladies who competed for the favorGloria S., a model, Joan B., a chorus girl, and Elsa M., a married woman whose husband appeared to be completely asexual. Frankly, I had decided in favor of the last from the beginning. She, poor soul, had most need of it. The other two had plenty of male admirers only too willing to be of service to them. But somehow or other, I had made up my mind that Elsa would have to earn it. For all I knew, it was the only such egg in existence in America!
I showed it to her one day.
“Oh, how exciting! Is it for me?”
I laughed banteringly. “Do you think you deserve it?” I said with a tone of insinuation.
“How can you say such a thing?” Elsa cried. “You've had your way with me for over a month now. What more can I do to earn it?”
“We shall see,” I said mysteriously.
A week latershe was frantic for it by that timeI laid down the following conditions. She was to invite at least eight guests to dinner including myself. Then after dinner, she was to retire and insert the egg, returning to the sitting room where I would be guarding the rocking chair against all comers. When she came in, I would rise and offer her the chair which she would accept, and then, in front of her husband and her guests, she was to move to and fro on the rocking chair until she achieved an orgasm.
Elsa laughed happily, evidently taking as much pleasure as I did in the idea of doing anything so daring in a conventional sitting room. The dinner was arranged and on the appropriate evening I wrapped the greased egg in glass paper and carried it to her house. She received it from me without a word and went about attending to the guests who had already arrived.
Her husband was a bluff, hearty man in his early forties, an insurance agent, I believe. I smiled to myself when I thought of how shocked he would be if his wife were to tell him of our project. After dinner, the guests retired to the sitting room where one of them sat down and played a few airs on the piano. Elsa, as good as her word, disappeared for five minutes and returned to the room. No one glanced at us as I stood up and saw her comfortably seated in the rocking chair. I pressed her hand and retired to a spectator's seat.
The rocking chair began to move, Elsa's eyes closed, and the intimate oscillation began. At first no one noticed, and then, gradually, amidst the strains of Sinding's “Rustle of Spring,” it became apparent to all present that Elsa was breathing heavily. At first, the guests affected not to notice. They made a conscious effort to concentrate on the music which came from the piano, but Elsa's eyes were now tightly closed, her jaw set, and a slight tenseness was evident at her temples. Her breathing became labored. At last, in obvious alarm, her husband rose and tiptoed quietly across to her.
“Elsa, dearElsa!”
The only answer was a delirious groan which caused the pianist to capitulate completely. The piano was silent. All eyes turned to take in the scene of the panting wife and the embarrassed husband who took hold of one of Elsa's hands and began slapping it in a ridiculous and futile way.
“Shall I send for the doctor, darling?”
There was no answer. Elsa was now smiling happily and she lay back in the chair, her eyes closed, without movement.
It was time for me to intervene.
“A spell of giddiness evidently,” I said in a professional tone. All eyes gratefully received the information which, although it explained nothing, appeared to do so. “I think perhaps if the guests were to” I left my sentence unfinished.
“Of course. Of course.” They were already taking their leave, talking in hushed tones and apologizing for their presence to Elsa's husband. He shook each hand in turn, in a daze.
While he was seeing them out, Elsa removed the egg, winked at me, and relaxed in her chair. I met her husband on his return.
“There's no necessity to call a doctor,” I said as impressively as possible. “I have ascertained the cause. It is a kind of nervous fatigue. Your dear wife would be the better for a short holiday.”
“If you think so, Mr. Harris. We'll arrange it at once. Poor Elsa. What a fright she gave us all!”
I bade them goodnight and took my leave, well pleased with the success of my practical joke. To this day I am quite sure not one of those people suspect what the exact nature of the “malady” was. Elsa went for a fortnight's holiday to Maine. Her husband remained in New York. She and I spent two idyllic weeks by the sea.
So much for the egg. It was one of the few interesting things that came out of my China visit. The truth is, I had gone to China full of hope. Was that not the destination of the great Marco Polo? The account of his adventures had been with me almost since childhood. Thus, it is understandable that I came away from that country more deeply disappointed than I can say. I had looked upon Lao-Tse as one of the greatest of thinkers. I knew that here and there were wonderful works of art; I felt sure I would meet men and women on the topmost levels of life, and, if I must confess it, I was certain that some woman at least would give me unforgettable hours. Well, on my second visit to China I spent nearly a year in the country. I never met a great man, and only one woman who could find a place in my picture gallery. And even that one will remain anonymous.
Yet here and there I was brought to admiration. I got to know a man in the north of China who had the most wonderful carpets in the world. One he showed me I must describeit was some three centuries old, all deep blue and straw colored with an astonishing depth of texture, and across the center of the blue a hesitating path perhaps a foot broad, where the blue was worn down to pale amber. When I asked him why it was like that, he replied simply: “That is the way to the Lord's chair worn by innumerable feet in three hundred years.”
Now and then, but too rarely, I came across some word or thought worthy of Lao-Tse himself. I remember very well how my friend who owned the carpets told me once that China was the most moral country in the world. “Time and again,” he said, “we have been assaulted and invaded. We always drive the intruder back, but we never take possession of his country in revenge as European nations do. Believe me, we Chinese are the only people who are above revenge.”
It seemed to me a great observation. And history bore it out. I often asked myself whether it could have anything to do with the strangely hidden sexual life of China. What, after all, has been written about it? The absence of collated evidence was always a surprise to me, but only up until the day when I came to gather together my own memories and impressions. All the world has heard of the Japanese geishas, and I shall have something to say of them when I come to write down my experiences in Japan, but one could search for a lifetime without finding their counterpart in China.
A hundred times I was astonished by the coldness of Chinese girls and women. They would give themselves easily enough, as simply indeed as the Indian of the bazaar, but they did not even pretend to feel any pleasure, much less indulge in any orgasm. I was never more patient with women in my life, using every refinement garnered from a long life of practical love, but I continued to be disappointed, and in every case my fears were justified. That is to say, I came to expect disappointment and I was seldom even slightly surprised. After a few months, I began to regard them with complete indifference. When I picked one out because of her eyes or mouth or complexion, I did so more like a butcher than a lover, so the whole affair lacked that hard gem-like quality of the real act of love.
Of course, I did not know the language, and so the indifference of the women is partly explained. Much of my success in the Anglo-Saxon countries can no doubt be attributed to the fact that I approached the women with the articulateness of a practiced writer. Still, I cannot but regard Chinese women as the coldest of the Children of Eve.
Some of them were beautiful. As a rule, the eyes were funny and there were few faces that would seem to a European ideally lovely, but now and then even that happened. I would suddenly be struck by the superb grace of the facial bone structure, or by the wet fullness of lips. Far more frequently, the figures were perfectly formed even according to our Western standards. The women were for the most part small, but their buttocks would be perfectly spheroid, soft and firm at the same time, and their naked bellies, almost innocent of hair, were smooth and perfect in their warm plasticity. Their breasts were perhaps the most attractive part of them; firm, with almost mauve nipples, held highly on their upper torsos, rather larger than those generally to be found on European women. They were very beautiful. But passion, real sensual feeling, was far more rare than the perfections of physique: Only now and again did I come across it, and then usually in the most unlikely surroundings.
I remember once going home with a pretty woman in Peking. She spoke a few words of English and paralyzed me by asking for her “little present” first. Shrugging my shoulders, I gave her a couple of pounds which seemed to please her greatly and put me even more on my guard. Love that is bought is not only usually passionless, it is also dangerous from the point of view of physical health. I made up my mind to take every precaution and use a sheath on my cock. I followed her into a rather dingy dwelling place, her small steps falling like a passionless refrain, like lead on my enthusiasm. But when we came to the bedroom I was astonished to find a young girl just entering womanhoodperhaps seventeenin the bed.
“My daughter,” said the woman. “She is sleeping and won't know anything. You don't mind?”
“No,” I said, but in fact I did. I made love very mechanically, taking care to use the sheath. I was afraid to vary the motion and intensity of my strokes for fear of waking the angelic girl beside us. I simply fucked her steadily in traditional fashion until my come bubbled from me with the same lack of enthusiasm that I'd demonstrated in performing the act. Then, when my cold little lover fell asleep, I lay awake and stared at the ceiling.
I was sleepless for hours. Then, all of a sudden, I became aware that the daughter was looking at me with wide, smiling eyes. As soon as our glances met, she came nearer to me and, as I stretched out my hand, she put it against her breasts. I caressed them softly. They were not yet fully mature, pale yellow discs of extraordinary beauty on which the nipples were just spreading and darkening. A lust for her mounted in me. Here was beauty indeed! Beauty, young and confiding, loveliness which, being as yet unspoiled, could be molded into mature passion with a little patience and doting love. I took the hardening tips of her breasts in my mouth and caressed them with an almost religious gentleness. She responded by breathing more heavily and by closing her huge, darkly-lashed eyes. I reached out with my arm and drew her slim, young body close. The skin was moist with a light sweat, but smelled pure and clean at the same time. Her lank little thighs closed round one of mine to bring her soft, almost unhaired cunt firmly against the muscles of my leg. Then she directed my mouth against hers and coaxed me to kiss her softly and with growing voluptuousness.
What a find! What an incredible coincidence! To be seduced and disappointed by the mother, only to find oneself an hour later in the sweetly adoring arms of the daughter! I caressed her dry little pussy slit with my fingers until it was wet. My fingers moved smoothly inwards to one of the tightest tunnels it had ever been my good fortune to discover. She whimpered slightly as I eased gently in and out.
Suddenly, she made me desist, got up from the bed, arranged a heap of bedclothes on the floor away from her mother, and drew me down to her. I spent the next half hour kissing her delightful body. A more delicate instrument of love it would have been difficult to find. She responded warmly to every caress and to every exploration of her clitoris. How sweet and touching it was when finally, in response to so much lovemaking, she rolled over on her back and placed my ramrod at her tight little entrance.
Clasping the buttocks underneath, I prepared myself, knowing that in these things hesitation is love's worst enemy. I whispered softly in her ear, words which I'm not sure she understood, but it didn't matter. Without further delay, I thrust forward brutally and embedded my member up to the hilt in her soft flesh. She uttered one long moan, almost like the noise a queen cat makes the first time it knows a male. Then, when she became used to the presence of the foreign body within her cleft and close to the deepest part of her, I eased inwards and outwards slowly, working up to a gradual compact rhythm which she appeared to welcome avidly. I felt her little nails bite deeply into my shoulders as bravely she tried to contain her pain. But as the movement became easier, the grip of her fingers relaxed and her hands, as delicate as butterfly wings, caressed the close-knit sensuality of my buttocks, to urge me to complete her violation. That first violation, if not grasped courageously by a male who is not afraid to assert himself, can be ruined utterly, setting up innumerable complexes in a young soul which only needs to be treated surely and tenderly to open outwards into life like a magnificent flower. Beware of pity, of sentimentality at such times. That has ever been my motto, and I have never found cause to regret it. So I fucked her forcefully, ramming my stiff pole in and out in a paroxysm of lust. A few moments later, this delicious creature was meeting my thrusts like a woman long-accustomed, to the movements of love. I continued to pump her, exploring her cavern with the full length of my cock, slamming my belly against hers until my balls flopped against her smooth upturned buttocks.
I had turned to her and had found to my astonishment an extraordinary mistress, passionate at once and devoted, who apparently had mastered the whole art of love. This girl not only gave herself with complete abandon, but sought at the same time to excite her lover to the utmost and to give him every possible thrill. She spoke English, too, far better than her mother, and I soon came to the conclusion that her whole sexual nature had been abnormally developed by her mother's practices.
When I offered her money, she did not wish to take it, but wanted to know my hotel and the number of my room and whether she might come there the next day and at what hour. Of course, I fixed a time and was at the door waiting for her.
I think it is worth mentioning the strange manner in which she felt it necessary to express her devotion to me. She allowed me to undress her. But from there on she would allow me to do nothing. She removed my clothes, made me sit on an armchair and then sat down between my knees. With unutterable grace and tenderness she encouraged my passion to rise, stroking me with her fingers over all the surfaces of my groin, until I was standing mightily. I tried to raise her, but she made me desist, bent over, took me between her soft little lips and sent a hundred little darts of sensuality coursing through my sex. Gradually, I realized her purpose. She wished to accept my sperm in her mouth to prove the depth of her passion for me. As soon as that thought occurred to me, I relaxed in the chair. First, however, she straddled the chair and my thighs and lowered herself onto my enraged manhood. It disappeared entirely into her tight canal and the tingling that so quickly brought me to the heights of passion began almost at once. Then she raised herself without proceeding further in that fashion. She didn't hesitate to take my shaft from her pussy and bring it to her lips, all slicked up and dripping as it was. She sucked the head gently, admiring the angry red color of the velvety skin that deepened to purple before her eyes. Then she licked along the ridge that ran beneath the lance to the balls, alternating long, wet lashes with short, flicking strokes. I raised my hips under this exquisite torment and in response, she plunged her head down and swallowed me whole. Her head began to piston up and down as she fucked me with her mouth and throat. I felt myself utterly lose control and allowed the growth of the flood in my member which, a moment later, shuddered to its foundations as the slick flow of my passion thrust upwards into her doting mouth. When she felt it arrive, she swallowed voraciously, her eyes flickering with tenderness and her cool palms supporting between my thighs and urging the last drop of my vital fluid to flow upwards to her mouth. Only then did she rise and kiss me on the lips, almost as a religious neophyte will kiss the image of his god, and I took her on my knee and again we slowly excited one another towards love.
All the months I was in Peking I used to see her nearly every day. It was she who convinced me that passion and devotion, hard as they are to find there, are not unknown in China. She was the very soul of love.
Strange to say, she wanted a child, but there I could not agree. “If you had a child,” I said, “I should be tied to Peking always and I must eventually go away.”
“Then you don't love me,” was her reply.
“Oh yes I do,” I answered.
But I felt always that she had the best of the argument.
One day she told me that her mother, discovering what we were about, had asked for money. Naturally, I gave with both hands. No price within my power would have been too high for the pure and real devotion which she had for me. She was an adorable mistress.
One evening she wanted to know if I would like her better if she took all the hairs off her pussy as many women did. I said no, that I liked her better as she was, but she went on earnestly: “I have the salve and I shall use it if you say so. You know, there is nothing I would not do to keep your lovenothing!” I kissed her tenderly. If ever I was tempted to give up my life in which the wanderlust played so great a part, I was tempted then. The girl's love was infinite. I felt suddenly almost basely materialistic in the face of such passion. What more could a man desire? But then, we must face reality. My life's work was elsewhere. This affair, almost saintly as it was, could represent to a man like me no more than a pleasurable interlude. The problems of the world recalled me, like the voice which called Moses to his task. I faced up to the real, as all really dedicated men have in the past. It was high time to shake myself out of my lethargy and give more purpose, more depth and meaning, to my intellectual life. But parting from her was the hardest task I had in all my travels. When I finally left, I did so with a heavy heart.
Fortunately, I found an old banker who gave her from me a yearly pension. Three years afterwards she married an American and I had a letter from her in due course declaring that she was very happy and about to have a child.
Before going on to Japan, I stayed for a couple of months with an English friend and his wife in Hong Kong, but the residence there made little or no impression on me. They told me I should find nothing worthwhile in Japan, but in that they were not soothsayers. Still, for the time being, they gave me rest and change and I was in need of both.
I write all of these things quite frankly because I believe that Puritanism is not only dead, but deserved to die, and I feel sure that bodily pleasures of all sorts will be more and more sought after in the future.