brass buttons have always made a young man appear to me as at his best.
After retiring at night, my unwilling desire to be in amplexu adolescentis did not permit me to sleep. Through long hours of wakefulness I writhed on my bed and repeatedly groaned in despair. ' Am I being tried by fire? " I would ask myself. "' For every one will be salted with fire,' says the scripture. Are others so tried by fire as I have been through a large part of my life? Maybe this is what God is doing to me in implanting the strongest of desires and then forbidding my gratifying them."
Even in the midst of almost continuous prayer, my delirious imagination brought before me obscene images, which I repeatedly tried in vain to expel from my mind. Several times during the struggle I would rise and walk up and down the room for a few moments. After retiring for perhaps the third or fourth time, I would rise once more, go raving about the room like an insane person, and if it had not been for the lateness of the hour, about midnight, I would have gone out in search of fellatio, which could alone pacify me. I was at last able to fall asleep only by making the resolution to undertake the search on the following evening. But on several evenings I postponed it because of the overwhelming dread of setting out, as well as because the desire was not so insistent until it became time to go to bed.
During these terrible days, I felt that a crisis in my life was at hand. I felt that I stood at the dividing of the ways, one leading to honor and self-approbation the other to ignominy and the blasting of all my legitimate ambi-
