Part 2

Since I last wrote I had started afresh. I have three times lost control over myself, and but an hour ago, the last time. It is terrible. With such noble thoughts that come upon me sometimes, such beautiful ideas when I feel in tune with everything in the world, and then always the hellish reaction. Oh, God! what a sorry mess you have made of things. How could you do it? You have made a terrible mistake--to make me such a shattered wreck before I was out of my youth; to take from me everything, strip me naked so that I can say now that I am absolutely indifferent to everything except to express myself before I die. That idea has taken possession of me. If only I can write such a book as will express all these mad imaginings, hopeless longings, the void in my life, complete absence of feminine companionship, doubly trying to one of my hot passionate moods. Harlots disgust me increasingly. It is not morality, for I have come to the state where things are not moral and immoral--they are just so. I would not consider it immoral to-night, for instance, to have intercourse with a girl who pleased me, but I cannot sacrifice what I have in me on the couch of one who sells her passion. I want love, if I understand it aright. And yet this is not an ever-consuming passion. I had just as much, or nearly so much, longing for education up till lately, and have only dropped the idea of going to college because I feel the approach of dissolution unless I can get up north, rouse my physical self and mayhap feel for once physically fit. Lately I have realized that there is something deeper than I before realized in all these things. My brain is over-tired, fagged out, wearied with too much thought, worry, reading, hate, fear--I know not what--but a change must come soon. It cannot go on. Perhaps there is something organically wrong with me--God, if you exist, you should have given me some manly vigor commensurate with the mental strength I imagine I have, and after all, is my mind weak or has my poor, weak body and abuse merely dragged it down, and is it capable of resurrection? It seems impossible that I should be born to get so near to some things which touch the deepest strings of human conduct, the deepest emotions of heart and brain, to have such a keen sense of humor, to see the tragedy underlying it all, to feel a sympathetic note with the foibles and weaknesses of others, even as I laugh at them or become cynical about them, to walk by the sea and drink in her varying moods, the misty ethereal early mornings, the calmness of gradually settling twilight on a day when the waves scarcely ripple, the blood-red sunsets with ever-changing cloud effects; the deep, mysterious shadows on a dark night, with the moon reflected from behind the clouds; the night when the moon is in her glory; the day when an overcast sky symbolizes my overcast soul. These and more have I thrilled with, and all for naught. Give me but strength for a few more years and I will vindicate myself; but I must break away from this agony soon, overpowering, overwhelming--Why, O God?

=--, April 19, 1912, 9:10 P. M.= It is just ten days since my terrible night of agony, and I now hope again. Following that night I had almost a week of peace, a nervous sort of calm which, however, was better than the other. Then another fall, and the last one to-night, I really hope the last. It certainly has been my salvation that I always come back strong in the fight again after a blow, but there are several things which have weakened me, and it is in spirit only that I recover; the physical weakness remains and increases. Nerves, as a strong man mentally I should hesitate to confess it, but I am worse than the average woman in my hysterical nervous state lately, and, moreover, I feel very often that there is something vitally wrong deeper, either that, or I am considerably run down, so much so, in fact, that a good night’s sleep is a Godsend; a calm, quiet day--joy; and yet I would not want too many of the latter, for my adventurous spirit defies my body and says, “Be up and doing.” Now, to-night I am feeling calm and hopeful and I must win out on one thing at least. This will help me with others.

True, I have by no means found myself yet. I still am pulled in many directions, but a hopeful sign is the abhorrence nearly always with me now of the low, common and vulgar. I could overlook in myself a little laxness in many things, but I never forgive myself the vulgar act and speech, despite my lack of moral code at present and my artistic indifference, to which is added lately, but only temporarily, I hope, a lethargic indifference, born of that ever-recurring tired feeling.

An idea which has gradually been forming in my mind I hope to begin to put into definite form just four weeks from to-night, and I then hope to have four clean weeks behind me as a start for my year’s abstention from passion. During this time, while endeavoring to obtain a foothold in the magazine field with short stories, my big idea is to write a novel of the various struggles and emotions of an ambitious, erratic youth, with a premature weariness, and unless pre-empted by another, I shall very probably call this “A Youth Who Was Prematurely Tired,” suggested by a criticism of Mademoiselle de Maupin, but this is to be altogether different, and is to touch the depths of agony and despair contrasted with the heights of ecstasy and the fierce, hungry longings, terrible disappointments, unrelieved passion, loneliness, ambition, morbidity, deep poetic feeling, and the other emotions of a sensitive, over-nervous youth of artistic temperament and large insight tempered by many paradoxes in character.

I have found myself enough to see the necessity of one course at least, that is, to preserve a dignified silence. The coarse, vulgar familiarity of the fellows I have met has jarred on me more and more, and I see that my only escape in the future is to maintain a reserve and a dignity beyond which no man may penetrate. Anything I reveal will be by writing, not by speech. I have made considerable progress, but still have to fight a foolish talkativeness on occasions.

Another policy I expect I will follow later, at least, will be the cultivation of courtesy and a more gentlemanly treatment of others, friends and otherwise.

I only have to overcome one or two little weaknesses, and to recover what I have lost physically to be able to win out--and I will.

=--, Sunday, April 21, 1912.= After another relapse last night, I am beginning to think that much of my so-called idealism is merely a pitiable, boyish, conceited foolishness. This has often come to my mind, but I hesitated to express it; but if I am sincere I must record the other side of the question. To-day may or may not be the beginning of a more sensible outlook as far as my erratic, artistic temperament will permit. In any case this strain, self-imposed for the most part, must stop even if I have to throw over a few pet theories. I must be human even at the expense of virtue. I almost congratulate myself that I can at least laugh at my own foibles and enjoy the joke, just as I cannot help, cynically to a certain extent, pointing out others’ foolish earnestness over nothing. My sense of humor is indeed my saving grace.

* * * *

=Havana, Friday, April 26, 1912.= Hope dispelled, but I am making progress. Since my awakening the last few months of last year and the first of this year, the reactions have been short and sharp for the most part. Probably the worst one began a little over a week ago and culminated yesterday. During this week, while I have not had more than one very bad night, there was a perceptible diminution of my spirit of fight and I temporarily slipped back into the old mood of indifference. However, I have recovered, stronger I hope, from the temporary weakness.

* * * *

=Havana, Wednesday, May 1, 1912, 4:20 A. M.= Slowly but surely the net is tightening. The past few months have been such a hell as I hope few young men in their bare majority have passed through. Day by day the work at the office becomes more of a burden, a yoke. Come 11:15 or time for lunch (almuerzo or breakfast here), and I feel as if I were leaving prison. Strive as I may to concentrate my mind on routine work I look forward to getting away soon after arrival. Breakfast and an hour’s (more or less) reading revive me temporarily, and I generally manage to get in an hour or two hours in the afternoon before the utter weariness, brain fag and nervous fatigue, takes possession of me, and the previous day’s ordeal is repeated. The strain of this and the necessity of showing a semblance of interest in the work (which, lately, however, I have not done to any great extent), repeated day after day in monotonous regularity is only part of the hell, but a part of such deadliness that I doubt if I am able to complete my allotted time of contract, which I had made up my mind to force myself to do for the sake of the money.

This has been another potent cause of general decline. Having made up my mind to return home to work out my future, I began to retrench more and more, eliminating amusement for the most part--almost the sole one now is moving pictures, which takes my mind away from myself for two or three nights a week. I enjoy them here for one reason, _i. e._, they present long pictures in a number of parts which present good dramas of life. These pictures are French for the most part, and now I hardly understand how I ever took any interest or received pleasure from the prevailing American pictures, as I always loved drama and continued story, vaudeville never appealing to me. But for this one little thing, present conditions would be unbearable, which is why I touch upon it at greater length than the story of these days would seem to warrant. One of the principal pleasures of my life has been the theatre. I always had an abiding and ever-present liking for dramatic action and situation, as well as good comedy--burlesque, vaudeville, moving pictures, farce, and the like, only had a limited appeal, although I must say that “Seven Days” was a farce which I greatly enjoyed. Coming to Havana I had to drop the theatre entirely,--not that I was such an inveterate theatre-goer before (owing to financial circumstances)--because of lack of understanding and lately lack of energy to exert myself to attempt to understand, my hearing not being any too good at best; a greater reason was the absence of good plays and the outrageous prices. I ignore entirely the numerous small theatres devoted to pandering to the lowest instincts of the ignorant black, mulatto and even white. Under these circumstances I turned to the moving picture theatre, and by only attending when there is at least one longer picture which promises dramatic action, I managed to derive considerable pleasure from this class of entertainment, no doubt to a great extent due to the fact that that was the only thing which took me out of myself, so that I lived in the play--except my reading. These two have kept me going during these months--when I tire of reading or by reason of a peculiar nervousness do not feel like reading, if there is a good picture I go, otherwise I make myself read and am soon reconciled for the evening. Sometimes a walk by the sea during the evening helps me much.

Even with this, however, through it all lingers that sense of utter weariness, almost to the point of exhaustion. During the day I manage to escape the worst consequences by keeping my mind busy when absent from the office, and the early evening or night generally also is passed without too much worry. This leaves the periods of dull care at the office, hoping and waiting for the hour of getting away and bedtime and later night. A proof of how much I have retrogressed physically is, that from October to December, 1908, during my first few months in New York, I was able to work from eight in the morning until six at night, and three or four nights a week, with only an hour’s break for lunch and ... Now, working less than seven hours a day, the day every week is longer, more tiresome. The weakening of my powers has been gradual and to a certain extent unnoticeable, but it has been steady, inexorable, and now I am face to face with a condition which means the end of everything if continued for too long. During these years in my heart I have protested against it all. Taken away from school when I was leading the class, without any great effort either, by circumstances, I began a business career of hope and with boundless ambition and half-formed boyish ideals. The fact that I left school of my own accord outwardly does not detract from the fact that circumstances were gradually making it more imperative and I only took the bull by the horns, as I have done many times since. I remember with great vividness an incident of my early business career, when with ... store. I used to keep a credit book of returned goods, and had considerable dealings in this way with the girls of the various departments. I was then rather indifferent to feminine charms, although awakening sexual passion was entering into my emotional and mental states, and had been for a year or so. I was then fifteen or sixteen (I do not know whether this happened before or after my birthday). One of the girls, a rather flippant, but as I look back, a shrewd observer, came to my window in the office (which was on a similar plan to a bank, I having one window and the cashier another) with something or about something returned. I scowled for some reason or other, probably because I had a pressure of work. She then made an observation, the prophecy of which has been amply demonstrated--“you are a boy now, but you will never be a youth,” and something about my jumping into manhood. She was only a department store girl, but she hit the nail on the head exactly that time, as subsequent events have proven. In those days, after my little stories for ... I liked reading and probably looked forward to college at some time in the future in an indefinite way. I was very earnest and ambitious about my work, which continued more or less until some time last year, when the increasing tired feeling, nervousness, changing ideas, ideals and different outlook combined to bring on rapidly my present state, when I positively loathe my daily work. The principal reason for this, no doubt, is that I have neglected exercise almost entirely and now have reached the state where exhausted nature will not be denied.

I have already at frequent intervals commented on the disturbances which haunted my bedside, and to-night, or rather to-day and last night (for it is now a quarter of six and the candle before me is rapidly losing its efficacy) is only an example of the recurring frequency of my nervousness at bedtime ... off all temptation to indulge in sexual pleasures from the first of this year, and, although I have not succeeded entirely up to the present, having only five days of absolute abstention from excitement of any kind sexually and possibly several months from direct intercourse, behind me,--still I have radically changed from my excesses of the first few months in Havana, although even these were not excesses compared to the average of a vast number here and elsewhere.

This holding off naturally leaves out a vital source of relief for the all-compelling necessity of getting away from myself. Sometimes, from my twentieth year on, when the prospect of a nervous, sleepless night presented itself, sexual intercourse brought the much-needed relief, and sleep followed. And yet, such was the strength of the conventional atmosphere that I had been reared in and lived in, despite my radical views and supposed freedom of mind, I thought it was somehow or other wrong and underhand to seek relief in this way. I cussed myself for a weakling, fought, staved it off for weeks, and then succumbed again. It is only lately that I have seen a different light on the subject.

My views now are that our present system of sexual relations is absolutely false. This conclusion is more due to my own reasoning than to any radical literature I have read. First, there should be freedom. Any man should be allowed to have intercourse with a woman who was willing, as long as they did it for love. There should be no such thing as an illegitimate child. If a mother was not in a position to or willing to bring up her child, the State should do it. Of course, when I say there should be freedom, I do not say that, if one man was living with a woman (legally, of course, as all such relations would be legal without any question), I should be at perfect liberty to fool around, but if at any time their relations became such that they could not harmoniously keep it up any longer, divorce should be automatic. Marriage might be for a minimum period, and as much longer as the parties concerned cared to keep it up. There should be no coercion on either side. The woman should have the care of her children if she so desired, but if unable to take care of them, the State should do so. Even without a socialist state this could partly be put into effect.

The White Slave Trade should be abolished as a trade. If a woman was herself willing to become the tool of every man who came along, she could not perhaps be restrained, but those who profit from it other than herself should be vigorously prosecuted. All diseased should be prohibited from sexual intercourse.

Even under the present state of society, there is a solution to one problem. Many young men, like myself, have strong sexual passions, but we do not like to consort with those who, starting out with a debased idea of sexual relations, have debauched it. Now we meet girls who are also passionate and who, were it not for the knowledge that their life would be ruined, would be only too glad to have intercourse with us on the basis of mutual sexual attraction and passion. This would bring relief to both of us from much of the deadly monotony of sordid, every-day affairs, if the girl could go on just the same as the man, she being allowed to have a child legally, which she could either take care of herself or delegate to the State’s care. This would take care of that large body of men who are not in a position to marry for various reasons, and that equally large body of women who are unable to find suitable husbands, but who feel the emptiness in their lives, and those women who want children and consider, or would consider if society would permit, that it is nobody’s business who the father is. It should be a crime to have intercourse when one is diseased, and the knowledge that one can with impunity have intercourse with a woman for love would deter a large number of men from having it with those who only give themselves for money and are liable to transmit disease. This would then leave those men who are morbidly fond of the baser forms of sexual perversion to the professional prostitutes and women (few comparatively), who naturally are attracted by, or are willing to put up with, the drunkenness and attendant beastliness of a certain kind of man, who we may hope, will be a smaller and smaller factor, as radicalism grows.

Thus, now, with radical views, I am endeavoring to attain my old state as before my twentieth year, for a year at least, so as to work this out with other problems, because in my present state of physical weakness I cannot afford to risk added weakness, and so fight this off every night, and hope soon my nature will have become resigned to this until my twenty-third birthday, when I hope to have a clearer plan of action.

Starting this with a nervous sleeplessness, I end at 6:30 A. M., over two hours later with a clear head, but, of course, the tired feeling lies there dormant.

=Havana, Friday, May 10, 1912.= Another birthday, my twenty-second, and I intend this year to be the best yet. The past one has been the worst and the best; the worst because of my acute nervousness and self-consciousness and my foolish actions during the early months in Havana; best because I woke up from a lethargy and blind groping in the dark to a conscious effort to find myself and be myself; and to this end I have dedicated my twenty-second year. I do not expect to work out things to a fine point during this time, but hope to decide on a broad, general scheme of life policy of procedure and philosophy; of necessity the major part of the details will take years to work out.

Hope and ambition, tempered by my experience, are dominant, and my calm periods are becoming of longer duration and more frequent occurrence, in fact, predominate to a gratifying extent lately as compared with what has gone before.

I start afresh on a year’s freedom from sexual excitement, or such is my plan, for not the least of the problems to work out is that of sex. It will be hell to hold myself in check entirely in every respect, but I feel I must, in order to collect my thoughts and feelings which were becoming rather confused on this, as on other subjects, owing to my changeable moods, passions and feelings.

I have the advantage of starting out on the broadest basis possible, the agnostic position as I understand it. I have not studied Spencer nor reduced my agnosticism to any dogmatic position of knowable or unknowable, but always it has been: I neither believe nor deny; my mind is open; I am willing to learn; to give all who have a serious message a hearing. True, up to the present I have not given much serious study to the problem, having read considerably more about philosophy than of it, but I have had that tendency, and, being young yet, it is perhaps best that I did not attempt to go too deeply into the problem ere this, and even now I shall go slow.

The question has unconsciously, however, narrowed itself down. I have given enough thought to the matter to reject the Christian theory of Christ being the son of God, and, leaving out most of the minor religions or philosophies which are obviously full of error (except as there may be a grain of truth here and there among the chaff), there is left such religions or philosophies as Theosophy, Monism, Spiritualism, and those which may be classed under the general head of Materialism (Rationalism, Free Thought, Positivism, etc., etc.), but as I do not see that any have as their basis Absolute Truth (that much abused word) I suspect I shall end where I began, as a Pragmatic Agnostic, denying that we have any Absolute Truth in our world, whatever may be beyond which we do not know. I have not read James; but will do so; and I think that I shall not give much attention to spiritualism, as no satisfactory evidence seems to support it, and there is too much charlatanism to offer a fair field for a truth-seeker.