But there was more, too. She also perused medical journals, where she could sometimes find the queerest and most outlandish reports of the human body. She read soberly recounted theories of Adam and Eve’s possible hermaphroditism. She read scientific accounts of genital hair that grew in such freakish abundance that it could be harvested and sold as wigs. She read statistics on the health of prostitutes in the Boston area. She read reports of sailors who claimed they had mated with seals. She read comparisons of penis sizes across different races and cultures, and across different mammalian varieties.
She knew she should not be reading any of this material, but she could not stop herself. She wanted to know all she could learn. All this reading filled her mind with a veritable circus parade of bodies—stripped and whipped, degraded and debased, yearning and disassembled (only to be put back together again later, for more debasement). She had also developed a fixation with the idea of putting things into her mouth—things, to be specific, that a lady should never desire to put into her mouth. Parts of other people’s bodies, and the like. Most of all, the male member. She desired the male member in her mouth even more than she desired it in her quim, because she wanted the closest possible engagement with the thing. She liked to study things intimately, even microscopically, so it made sense that she longed to see and even taste the most hidden aspect of a man—his most secret nest of being. The thought of all this, coupled with a heightened awareness of her own lips and tongue, became a problematic obsession, which would accumulate within her until she was quite overcome by it. She could solve this problem only with her fingertips, and she could solve it only in the binding closet—in that safe and insulating darkness, with all the familiar smells of leather and glue around her, and the good reliable lock on the door. She could solve it only with one hand between her legs and the other inside her mouth.
Alma knew that her self-violation was the very pinnacle of wrongness, and that it might even bring harm to her health. Again, unable to stop herself from finding things out, she had researched the subject, and what she had learned was not encouraging. In one British medical journal, she read that children brought up with healthy food and fresh air should never feel the faintest sexual impression whatsoever within their bodies, nor should they seek sensual information. The simple amusements of rural life, the author claimed, should entertain young people sufficiently that they should not be overcome with a desire to explore their genitalia at all. In another medical journal, she learned that sexual precocity can be brought on by bedwetting, by too many beatings in childhood, by irritation of the rectal area due to worms, or (and here Alma’s breath had tightened) by “premature intellectual growth.” That must have been what had happened to her, she thought. For if the mind is overly fostered at a young age, then perversions will inevitably arise, and the victim will seek self-indulgent substitutes for intercourse. This was primarily a problem in the development of boys, she read, but it was, in rare cases, expressed in girls. Young people who self-indulged in their own bodies would someday grow into married people who tormented their spouses with the urge for intercourse every night of the week, until the family would fall into sickness, decay, and bankruptcy. Self-indulgence also destroyed the health of the body, creating a rounded back and a limping gait.
The habit, in other words, did not advertise itself well. But Alma had not originally intended to make such a habit of self-pleasure. She made the most earnest and sincere vows to stop. Or she did so initially. She promised herself that she would stop reading salacious material. She promised herself she would stop indulging in sensual reveries about George Hawkes and his damp shock of dark hair. She would never imagine putting his hidden member in her mouth again. She swore never again to visit the binding closet, not even if a book needed repair!
Inevitably, her resolve would wither. She promised herself that she would visit the binding closet just one more time. Just one more time, she would allow her head to fill with these stirring and abhorrent thoughts. Just one more time, she would swirl her fingers about her quim and lips, feeling her legs clench and her face grow heated, and her body yank loose once more into a stew of marvelous havoc. Just one more time.
And then, perhaps, once more again.
Soon it became obvious there was no defeating this, and eventually Alma had no choice but to silently sanction her own behavior and continue on with it. How else could she have dispatched the desire that amassed itself in her, every hour of the day? Moreover, the effects of this self-befoulment upon her health and spirit appeared so markedly different from the warnings in the journals that for a while she wondered if she was doing it incorrectly, such that it was accidentally beneficial, rather than harmful? What else could explain the fact that her secret activity did not bring on any of the dire effects about which the medical journals warned? The act brought Alma relief, not sickness. It flushed her cheeks with healthy color, rather than draining her countenance of all vitality. Yes, the compulsion brought her a sense of shame, but always—once the act was complete—she felt herself swept up into a vivid and precise state of mental clarity. Straight from the binding closet she would run back to her research, where she would labor with a renewed sense of priority, catapulted back into study by energetic lucidity, by a bodily pulse of useful, thrilling animation. It was always afterward that she was at her brightest, her most awake. It was always afterward that her work truly thrived.
What’s more, Alma now had a place to work. She had a study of her own—or at least she had something that she called a study. After she had cleared all her father’s superfluous books from the carriage house, she had taken over one of the larger, disused ground-floor tack rooms for herself, and had turned it into a place of scholarly refuge. It was a lovely situation. The White Acre carriage house was a beautiful brick building, regal and serene, with tall, vaulted ceilings and wide, generous windows. Alma’s study was the finest space within that structure, blessed with steady northern light, a clean tile floor, and a view of her mother’s immaculate Grecian garden. The room smelled of hay and dust and horses, and was filled with an agreeable clutter of books, sieves, plates, pans, specimens, correspondence, jars, and old sweets tins. For Alma’s nineteenth birthday, her mother had given her a camera lucida, which allowed her to magnify and trace botanical specimens for more accurate scientific drawing. She now owned a fine set of Italian prisms, too, which made her feel a bit like Newton. She had a good solid desk, and a wide, simple laboratory bench, for performing experiments. She used old barrels for seats, rather than formal chairs, as she found them easier to get around with her skirts. She had a pair of marvelous German microscopes, which she had learned to operate—as George Hawkes had noticed!—with the deft touch of a master embroiderer. Initially the winters in the study had been unpleasant (cold enough that her ink wouldn’t flow), but Alma soon set herself up with a small Franklin stove, and she personally chinked up the cracks in the walls with dried moss, such that eventually her study became as cozy and lovely a refuge as anyone could hope for, all the year round.