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“Don’t know what it is you want, do you, brother? Where is it you want me to play with you? Is it here, or here?” And she touched my stomach, and my loins, both sending shivers of frustration through me… “Or do you want it here, lover boy.” And she began sensuously stroking across my pubic hair till I nearly screamed… “Or is it here, darling,” and she slid her hand beneath my back and caressed lightly with her fingers on my backsides.

“Or do you want something different, little brother. Are you ashamed to say it.” Her fingers were in my pubic hair again, stroking and stroking. Getting closer. “Or maybe you don’t even know the name of it. But you want me to touch it, don’t you, Lars? Don’t you?” I couldn’t speak. I was being lifted and lifted on a tremendous wave. “You have to ask for it, though, Lars. You have to ask for it so I’ll know you really don’t dislike it. Say: Please, little sister Gunilla.” Her fingers were so close.

“Please,” I heard myself gasping. “O please, little sister Gunilla.” Her fingers reached me. Her hot hands clasped me. The great wave broke and I fell in a welter of joy. Spurt after spurt after spurt fountained from me all over her and the bed and me. My mind was buried in the masses of the wave. Just before it closed over me, I heard her marvelous laugh, and she kissed me. And ran away. Darkness and joy flooded me. I fainted.

Chapter Four

After she had gone I just lay there in the darkness, my head spinning. From time to time I shuddered convulsively. At first I did not even try to gather my wits. Everything was unreal and whirling: the darkness, the experience of unknown and forbidden emotions, and the fantastic events preceding. Everywhere was that odd, musky smell of her.

When the shock of her sudden exit had passed a little, I sat up, retrieved the sheet, which had fallen to the floor, and tried to sleep. I was dazed-too much so for thought. The peace and the happiness I felt was in the musk smell, but I remember, just as I fell asleep, the smell from the distant past.

My dreams were broken and incomprehensible. There was something about me and a little girl, and something else about being in bed with my mother. And that smell. About warmth and happiness. But it was all fragmentary and unreal.

When I woke in the morning it was with the memory of Gunilla flowing in my mind and tugging at me with that strange excitement. I opened my eyes and the whole room was sunlight. I looked at the chandelier, the arm chair, the cupboard, the door, and finally at the place beside me on the bed where she had lain. All these things had been felt, but not seen, and now, in the bright light, it seemed impossible: a part of my dream. And as such I basked in it) full of wonder. Full of joy.

But then the spots on the sheet recalled that it had actually happened-a thought, a realization which immediately brought back my sense of shame, and with it, of fear. What did it all mean? And those forbidden places she had me touch -was this-could it be right? I remembered parts of the dream, and I was certain this was very wrong. Why had Gunilla done it? In the orphanage we had been strictly taught not to have anything to do with our organs except when urinating. Only the wicked would even think of it, and yet, here was my sister doing all these things. I did not understand.

And there was the scene between Father and the maid, and before that, Father and Gunilla. This had something to do with it. In fact, this clean, respectable house seemed steeped in it, overflowing with it. My head began to ache with the confusion. Why had it been so fantastically pleasurable? From my own experience I could’ well comprehend why one wanted to do it, but why should these noble people permit themselves to do it if it were wrong. Even I, wicked as I was, had never permitted myself to do things that were wrong before-except something in my childhood-but I couldn’t remember that.

I thought of asking Mother. She had told me to ask her about anything that bothered me. But, not only was I far too shy to discuss this subject with her as yet, but also, since it involved others who had acted as though they did not want to be discovered, I could not speak without betraying them.

That was it! The concealment. Father acting a bit that way -although I couldn’t be sure-Annie begging him to stop, and saying it was wrong, and finally Gunilla not wanting the lights on. I just couldn’t put it together and I was left as always with that sense of shame as though it were I who made things evil wherever I went.

But perhaps the strangest thing was my confusion over the emotions I had felt: the curiosity, the excitement, the timidity, with only a slight feeling of shame. Perhaps this was because in the dark it was all so unreal, so phantom-like, so much like The Arabian Nights as Gunilla had said.

I could not fathom it all, and, feeling hungry, decided to get up and dress so that I could go down to eat. I put on a shirt and a pair of jeans so I could play outside, and left the room.

I went outside first. It was a perfect summer day. I sat down on the grass beneath one of the dining room windows, leaning my back against the side of the house.

The window above my head was open, and voices were coming from inside. It was Mother and Father, talking over breakfast. I was just about to go in and join them when the mention of my name caused me instinctively to stop and listen.

“…but I’m worried about Lars with the girls,” Mother was saying. “Whatever it was in his past that caused all his difficulties, and which caused him to be put away under the strange stipulations about women which we learned about- whatever it was-it is sure to be activated violently by this contact with the girls. Probably already has. After all, he never had even seen a picture of one before!”

“But how can it do him harm, Karin,” Father replied. “After all, he had to see a girl sometime, and then to learn about them. Seems to me that the quicker it happens the better. And about time, I might add!”

“Yes, yes, Bill, of course! But don’t you think the process should be a bit-well-gradual? Little by little rather than all at a swoop? After all, a whole multitude of things are natural to the girls-particularly to Gunilla, which would be impossible for him to take in at a gulp after the background he’s had. And I’m afraid it is bound to happen around Nilla, and that it will only corrupt him.”

“Humph! Are you sure, Karin, that you aren’t just worried that she will get to him before you have a chance to do just that yourself?”

“Bill, can’t you ever be serious!” For the first time I heard a sharp tone in Mother’s voice. Then: “I-well-hope to be able to adjust him to Swedish life and the freedom we have won and the progress in ideas about sex in society which we have made. But I don’t want him spoiled first. He’s our son now, and we must protect him.

“Especially from corruption, Bill. Isn’t there some way he can be adjusted a bit before he has to meet it all?”

“Maybe a little corruption is good for him. Sven Lindstrom, our principle Swedish disciple of Freud and Jung, wrote a long book which is a continuation of the investigations Freud was making in BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE. He calls it CORRUPTION AS A PURGATIVE-I have a copy upstairs if you’d like to read it. Anyway, in this book he expounds how corruption is necessary in our lives from time to time in order to cleanse the psyche of exaggerated conditioned responses and the harm which they create through inhibition. He says that only by the periodic catharsis produced by this corrupting of the natural drives can the psyche be cleansed, and the Super-ego prevented from strangling our natural responses.”

Mother seemed to pause a bit after this. Then:

“I only fear that what he is talking about is for the normally developed person. Lars is a special case.”

They went on to other matters, and then Father left for his office in town.