companied usually by little or no genital activity. Such affairs are normally ended by the younger partners' growing out of them; if they do not, they risk becoming true inverts*. The elder partner will usually cherish the memory of the affair but find it possible to transfer his affections to girls; if he does not, he risks becoming a “normal” adult homosexual, perhaps a sodomite*.

It will be noticed that there is an almost total division between the emotional and physical aspects of sexual activity which, ideally at least, are united in adults. This division is of course characteristic of adolescent boys at the same time "romantic" and "obscene", they find it very difficult to love and desire the same person. It is fairly general rule that genital activity and shared affection do not occur together in adolescent homosexuality; thus one of the chief secondary dangers of getting into the habit is that boys may never get away from this difficulty. Englishmen notoriously find it hard to unite the two sides of sex. Englishwomen, like adolescent girls, on the other hand are more likely to suffer from atrophy of physical desire altogether.

Another general rule is that these forms of homosexual' behaviour do not overlap. By this I do not mean that each boy confines himself to one of them; on the contrary he may take part in more than one at a time -experimenting with contemporaries and being seduced by seniors, or being seduced and seducing in his turn, or being in love with one boy and seducing another. The point is that with each separate partner his behaviour will take only one of these forms. Thus contemporaries seldom feel emotional when they experiment with each other, and an older boy will seldom love the boy he seduces or seduce the boy he loves. There are exceptions, but they are rare. Oddly enough, the boy's equivalent of a girl's crush a romantic attachment to a much younger boy which seems to have been common in the past, was almost unknown at my school; its place was taken by "B", I suppose because of the general atmosphere of sexual freedom nowadays.

* these terms are borrowed from André Gide.

mattachine REVIEW

"A" was of little interest, even to the participants, but "B" and "C" were both much talked about. Affairs were usually common knowledge and both boys were subjected to a certain amount of gossip and chaffing. But even adolescent boys are surprisingly respectful of each other and there was remarkable toleration of those involved. Seduction of younger by older boys was not treated with the same respect, and the participants were often despised or at best pitied (sometimes envied by less uninhibited boys!). It was generally known which senior boys chased juniors and which juniors were comlaisant; detailed information might pass around among those who were interested about what so-and-so liked or such-and-such would do. I think there was little of the cattiness said to be the rule among adult homosexuals (vid. 'Hemlock and After') and certainly common among girls and young women.

As for the techniques involved, buggery and other récherché practices were unheard of (at least by me). The normal practice was mutual masturbation, accompanied when the elder partner was more unselfish or imaginative by love-play not unlike that of adult heterosexuality, and varied at times by simulated (often intercrural) intercourse. A more unpleasant sort of event was the forcing of a small boy by one or more seniors to take part in vaguely sadistic practices; these were never (to my knowledge) drastic but were nevertheless cruel (cf. Robert Musil's account of a German military school in 'Young Törless'); debagging was a mild form of this. In the case of "C" there was petting, similar to that with girls but almost always without kisses. The basic motive for most of the physical manifestations of homosexuality was the satisfaction of the older boy, even if he did take care to ensure that of his partner. Very seldom would the younger initiate it (even if he enjoyed it, which was not always the case), and it was thought odd for him to do so. Thus the motives involved were "normal"-that is to say, explicable in terms of adult male sexuality-even if the actions were undesirable and perhaps dangerous.