"Shortly after I moved in, I had a little surprise in store for me. I found out the hard way that no one in the entire stinking joint fucked! All they did was suck! This was a sort of a sucking club and all the members lived on the premises! Man, was it embarrassing the way I found out that I had signed a two years lease on an apartment in a strictly sucking apartment building!"
The entire narrative of Clyde S- has to be viewed with calculated skepticism. Anyone who is as narcissistic as the subject of this case is, tends to have a strong inclination to exaggerate, suppress, and, generally, to distort reality. As a matter of fact, narcissism, which in a great number of cases is a defense -mechanism that attempts to conceal or suppress an inferiority complex, is a subconscious springboard for what might be termed psychopathological prevarications.
What can be accepted in the subject's narrative is that he is a country boy of a very limited education who is very much in love with himself because he is very much conscious of his inadequacies as a human being. Consequently, he tries his utmost to present himself in the image of what might be colloquially called "an irresistible stud." Even here, however, one must be cautious in discerning truth from fantasy. Thus his description of his affair with the young twins-Emmylou and Tammisue-out in the country is more than likely heavily colored. It is extremely doubtful that twelve-year-old girls, especially raised out in the country, would have carried on with the lack of aplomb natural to a city whore, which is the picture that the subject paints of the twins. It is also extremely doubtful that at such an early age either the girls or the subject had had enough background to engage in the sexual activities that he describes. Whatever the truth of that period in the life of the subject might have been, the fact remains that he found himself "bored" with the twins and decided to come out to Hollywood so that the rest of the world wouldn't miss out-in his opinion-on his existence.
It does not take an expert to recognize the fantasy world in which the subject exists, deluding himself with the grandeur of his being. The necessity of such a delusion is understandable when one accepts the fact that without it the subject must recognize himself for what he is: specifically, a male adult-physically-caught within immaturity-mentally.
In The Complete Home Medical Encyclopedia, Harold T. Hyman has the following to say on narcissism, homosexuality, and heterosexual maturation:
Together with functional and anatomic changes, processes of maturation take place in the psyche. As Freud first pointed out, the infant is wholly concerned with its own genital equipment (narcissism: from Narcissus, the lad who fell in love with his own image in a quiet pool). Arriving at school age, the interests and affections of boy or girl center on companions of the same sex (homosexuality; lesbianism or sapphism in the case of the female, uranism in the case of the male). And, while these youthful "crushes" are often nonphysical, they may include temporary experimentation with acts of overt genitalism (mutual masturbation; sodomy; fellatio; tribadism).
By high school age or before, interests and affections shift to individuals of the opposite sex (heterosexual maturation); sometimes with overwhelming intensity, as the boy becomes "girl crazy" (gynephilia) and the girl becomes "boy crazy" (anthrophilia). Finally, love interest focuses on "the one and only…"
It is apparent that the subject of this case is caught in a conflict between maturation and reluctance to mature. He is torn between being a man and enjoying the status of a boy; there is the overwhelming egocentricity with which he is trying to conceal his fears of not being able actually to satisfy a woman. His description of his taking Tammisue sexually in the shed notwithstanding.
In addition to narcissism, Clyde S- is constantly fearful of being taken for a homosexual. This fear is natural within the context of his narcissistic problem: he is constantly commenting on the attractiveness of his physique in general, and his genitals in particular. He must be subconsciously aware that if he finds his own male organ so precious in his own eyesight, then there is constantly the threat that a) some other male will see him as he sees himself, or that b) he will be attracted toward another male for the same reason that he is attracted to himself. This attitude, of course, underscores the fact that basically Clyde is quite ignorant of human sexuality. His attitude toward oral lovemaking is a case in point: he cringes at the idea of a woman performing fellatio on him; to him that type of sexual activity suggests homosexuality. And homosexuality as a possible end result of the subject's narcissism can not at this stage of analysis be ruled out. Particularly when one considers the situation in which Clyde S- finds himself toward the end of his narrative.
His having signed a two years' lease in an apartment building complex in which oral swapping is, so to speak, the rule of the land, is a move-whether conscious or, as the subject claims, unconscious, is irrelevant-that will more than likely do nothing other than strengthen his narcissistic tendencies and, possibly, place him in a position where his bisexual nature will be revealed to him, thereby playing an even greater havoc with his psyche since he will undoubtedly be then "convinced" of his homosexuality.
Perhaps the only encouraging statement that the subject makes, providing it is true, is that whenever he feels the urge for regular sexual intercourse he finds himself a mate outside the apartment building complex. Even here, however, if one analyzes the terminology that Clyde uses in the making of the preceding statement, which can be found in the last paragraph of his narrative, one cannot help but notice his general attitude toward the female sex. It is a derogatory one. Women, in the subject's eyes, are to be used sexually, nothing more. They are a masturbatory apparatus for the gratification of his sexual wants. At no -time in his narrative does Clyde mention emotional involvement or the possibility of such as far as he is concerned. And this omission supports the general conclusion that the subject is an immature, egotistical, and highly unstable individual.
One of the primary concomitants of emotional involvement is responsibility. Clyde S-, because of his emotional immaturity, has never considered becoming a man in the full sense of the word. He is too wrapped up with the image of his questionable studhood, with the complex of inferiority that conflicts with that image, and with the phobia of finding out what life is all about.
"I'll never forget how fast I moved into that fancy city apartment of mine. The main reason being that I was in one helluva hurry to get out to the pool so I could meet as many females as possible before the evening began. The manager had assured me that everything was very loose here and that all the tenants were exceedingly friendly.
"Naturally, I wanted to put that friendliness and looseness to the test as quickly as possible. All I had to do was to move in as rapidly as I could without calling attention to my obvious eagerness, and then I could prowl around and size up the female situation at close range.
"My plush apartment had a fancy long living room with built-in book shelves, a metal-covered fireplace, the thickest carpeting I had ever seen, and a a real, live balcony I could walk out on and look out over the pool.
"Back home, everyone had told me to be especially careful to get myself an upper apartment if there was more than one floor to the building I was gonna be living in. That way I wouldn't have to put up with anyone's tromping over my head all the time. Instead, I would be the one doing the tromping. That's how come I came to get a second-floor apartment-there were only two floors to the huge building. It must have run for miles and miles, but only along the ground, not up… like some.
"As soon as all my gear was stowed away, I learned where everything was-from the bathroom with that huge mirror, to the bedroom with its king-size bed and matching furniture. Man, there were more closets than I could ever have filled! The kitchen didn't interest me any, since I was sure I could get all the dolls I wanted to to make my meals for me. But I did remember the manager telling me something about what soap to use in the dishwasher and what not to put in the disposal. I can't even remember to this day what she said-only that she said something about them.