Ritualistic

(Note: all characters are of legal, consenting age)

John is and always will be my besetting weakness.

Even after I had so recently defeated James Moriarty, the greatest criminal mastermind to darken London's streets, who else aside from John could send me rambling around London for almost three months, plucking petals from the metaphorical daisy and bemoaning the infinite tragedy of it all like some mawkish schoolboy?

When I watched him walk slump-shouldered away from the roaring basin of Reichenbach Falls, I wasn't sure that I would prove capable of following through with the plans which were rapidly beginning to coalesce in my mind. By which I mean that I was uncertain I would be capable of living without John as I had so contentedly many years before. When I returned to London three years later with Moran in my sights, I had surrendered the vanity of my independence. I may have proven that I could survive without John, but I had also realized that I simply didn't want to, and that this wanting was laden with romantic rather than platonic attachment.

I was bothered far less by the fact that I had developed such an affection for another man than I was by the fact that I had allowed one to develop at all. I've never had any qualms about inverts, perhaps because I perceive my own lack of passionate interest in either sex to be a similar aberration. I also confess to harboring a deep but secret glee that my feelings for John have quite accidentally and innocently confirmed every accusation of failed manhood which my father had ever levelled at me, and my only regret was that he was no longer alive to learn of it. Therefore it was not my own sense of morality or ideas about my personality that sent me on my agonized wanderings that spring of 1894.

Nor was it, somewhat oddly enough, any substantial concern about rejection. By that point I had become all but certain that John was at least partially inverted, a conclusion I had drawn from innumerable little observations that I'd made over the years, which had been bolstered by John's tendency to talk in his sleep; thus I harbored little anxiety about the potential for violent rejection on the grounds of John's moral disgust or indignation. He is also so endlessly tolerant and forgiving of my peculiarities and oversights that I had no fear of losing John's friendship entirely should the confession of the true nature of my attachment to him not be received in kind.

The two things which caused me so much doubt and self-recrimination and misery that spring were the loss of my independence which I believed an explicitly recognized romantic relationship with John would entail, and my concomitant initiation into the Ritual. While my anxiety about the former was more intense, it was relatively short-lived; it didn't take much consideration for me to realize that I had wandered into the labyrinth of emotional entanglement with John long before I had become conscious of it myself, and I had left no trail of twine in my wake. For good or for ill, I was lost, and bemoaning the fact was only so much crying over spilt milk.

My anxieties about the Ritual were more nebulous but they nagged at me endlessly, as all insoluble problems do when I have taken them up for contemplation. I had at last run up against a puzzle for which my own powers of observation and deduction were useless, and clues to which none of my previously relied upon sources could guide me. Even had my enquiries been about performing the Ritual with a woman, my own library and that of the British Museum could have provided me little guidance outside of anatomical illustrations, physiological descriptions, and the vagueries of 14th-century troubadours. It was absurd to even consider referring to the expertise of colleagues such as Lestrade, most of whom were involved with the law, in one form or another; brother Mycroft had no more interest or experience with the whole circus than I had at the time; and asking advice of the sailors and male prostitutes who would have had firsthand, personal experience with my chosen variant of the Ritual would have been an invitation to a good, sound robbing, at best.

Thus it was that I found myself, a 36-year old man and one whom John has portrayed as the most unerringly brilliant citizen of the Empire since Sir Isaac Newton, splashing through every filthy puddle in London that rain-drenched spring, asking myself such mortifying questions as: How often did a normal couple engage in the Ritual? How often would John expect me to do so? What if I lacked the stamina for a regular expenditure of such vital energy? What if my penis wouldn't become erect? What if the Ritual were unpleasant or even excruciating and I was unable to participate?

The latter was a distinct possibility due to an unusual abnormality with which I am afflicted, one which makes coming into physical contact with other people often intolerable. I know neither the name for this malady, if there is one, nor whether its origins are mental or physiological; I myself suspect that they are both, and that, whatever the abnormality may be, it is something that has plagued me for as long as I can remember. It is an ineffable, varying phenomenon, and one unaccompanied by the type of physical signs and symptoms which lend one's complaints substance and veracity, so that I have difficulty describing it convincingly myself.

Perhaps the most concise explanation would be to simply say that being touched by another person distracts me excessively so that I can think of little else until I am relieved of the stimulus. Depending on where, how, and sometimes by whom I am touched, the degree of distraction varies from mere annoyance to dire, virtually uncontrollable emotional anxiety, and is sometimes accompanied by a sensation of physical discomfort, as if my skin were excessively tender or raw.

It was this aberration of my anatomy that worried me perhaps most of all, specifically my fear that it would prevent me from fully participating in the Ritual and drive John into the arms of someone else for physical satisfaction. This was nearly too upsetting to contemplate. I could vie for John's affection by matching wits with any other man in England, I could at least hold my own in a physical confrontation even with the bulkiest of brutes, but I feared that my tactile abnormality would deter my ability to compete with other men's intimate prowess. Yet I dared not mention the problem to John, since to preclude the possibility of intimate congress would make the change in our relationship from platonic to romantic merely a theoretical one, and then why should I bother bringing it up at all? Not to mention that confessing my difficulties with one of the most fundamental forms of human contact would likely bode ill for my suitability as a mate and lifelong companion.

It was a crucial problem, and one for which I had precious little data from which to infer. An exhaustive review of my past provided precisely two previous experiences adjacent to the Ritual, neither of which seemed helpful to my predicament at the time. I will detail both below, in chronological order.

.........

1.

Sometime in the early years of my childhood and youth I had established two so-called "secret" lairs - one indoors, in the attic of the dilapidated and disused north wing of my father's house, and the other outdoors, in the woods which lined the back of his estate. Although I preferred to entertain the idea that my lairs were secret, they could be more accurately described as being merely irksome to access for the three people I most wished to avoid: Sherrinford, Mycroft, and my father.

I spent most of my free time, often days at a stretch when I grew older, enjoying my solitude in one or the other of these places, and I added on to each of them piecemeal so that they became quite elaborate over the years. The outdoor lair, always my preference when weather permitted, eventually encompassed a type of bivouac enclosure built off of a small rock ledge, beneath which were a hammock, a small, improvised clay oven for heat; and shelves for books and my meager dishes; there was also a small root cellar/pantry, replete with trap door of which I was especially proud; a fire pit; and simple improvised furnishings such as a table and chair.

I got a particular and malicious pleasure out of provisioning my lairs with anything and everything I could scavenge from my father's house, and his constant accusations of theft against his employees were one of the reasons he could never retain a steady domestic staff, which was always the crux of any time he spent at home. It was a result that I found imminently satisfying.

I had selected the site for my outdoor lair mainly for the brook which flowed nearby, a gorgeous little stream that ran deep and swift ten yards from my enclosure, whose limpid waters served my need for hydration and hygiene and whose musically murmured babblings lulled me to sleep at night. Beside this brook grew a wonderfully old and well-developed weeping birch tree, arrayed with sturdy, relatively straight lower branches, which quickly became one of my favorite places to perch and read.

I was doing just that one day, stretched out prone upon the second-lowest limb, forearms and book propped in the branch's first bifurcation, when I was subjected to one of those unbidden and inconvenient engorgements of the penis that are particularly bothersome during adolescence. Whilst attempting to make adjustments for my comfort, I became aware that I had been unknowingly laying atop a groove in the branch, which further investigation revealed to be a relatively wide and lengthy scar, presumably caused from the loss of a major sub-branch early in the tree's development. The sides of the scar were convex and, like its bottom, smooth aside from some faint striations.

I laid back down with my body repositioned slightly so that my penis, laid along this miraculously convenient groove, now fit comfortably between the branch and my lower belly, and thusly I continued to read. It wasn't long before I somehow realized - probably through fidgeting or shaking my feet as I tend to do - that the movement of my penis within the confines of that scar was more interesting than whatever I had been trying to read, and I quickly abandoned the book in pursuit of experimentation. I found that pressing tightly down with my belly, wrapping my lower legs around the limb for purchase, and slightly moving my penis back and forth along the groove of the scar produced extraordinarily pleasurable sensations - much more so than the sensations that I had previously produced with my own hand. It was the first time I had ever experienced an episode of self-abuse free from any degree of discomfort, and it was so thrilling that I soiled my trousers.

Previous to this discovery I had rarely indulged in self-stimulation of this kind due to my abnormality, which caused my penis to feel overly tender when erect. While I was capable of inducing ejaculation by the traditional method, the vaguely grueling discomfort generated by so much direct stimulation seemed to override the enjoyment I might have otherwise experienced, and climax became more the cessation of irritation than the pinnacle of ecstasy.

In any case, after I discovered that the weeping birch was fortuitously suited to rectify a symptom of my abnormality, the tree and I carried on something of a relationship for some time thereafter. I now had an easy way to deal with the nagging sensation of recalcitrant erections, and I confess that it also made me feel somewhat reassured about my manhood; while it wasn't something that seemed worthwhile to focus on to any great extent, it was yet a relief to know that I was at least anatomically capable of the normal male reproductive response.

For the reader who is curious as to my thoughts during my intimate encounters with the tree: I largely focused on the sensation I was experiencing, as my goal was to stop rubbing against the tree with just enough time remaining to roll over and extract my penis from my trousers/drawers (unbuttoned/untied prior to the act) and yet avoid having to finish off with my hand. It was a fine balance. Occasionally I would daydream that an imaginary cloud of a tangible yet vaporous substance surrounded me as I rocked against the branch. In my daydream I would be nude and the tangible cloud would cover me completely, filling my every crevice, nook, and cranny to exert a gentle, all-encompassing pressure against every square inch of my body. Trying to imagine such a sensation excited me tremendously for reasons which remain unclear.

2.

Because my talents and interests lie largely within the intellectual rather than the physical realm, I have never been able to muster up much bother about acquiring the conventional trappings of manhood. The concern that I lacked in that area was more than compensated for by my father, who, around the same time that he began dragging me along on many of his travels to the continent with Mycroft, started up a harangue about my supposed effeminacy and excessive sensitivity which lasted until I left for college.

To this day I cannot understand why my father singled me out for this campaign of eternal disappointment. I was the only one of his sons who had taken to any kind of sport, after all; I was winning fencing and boxing competitions while Sherrinford was busy learning how to be one of the landed gentry and Mycroft was buried in obscure mathematic calculations. Perhaps when his wife conceived me so enxpectedly at the age of forty-one my father had imagined his later years would be made bright and cheerful with the antics of a sturdy, lively, and rambunctious boy who mimicked the boorish misbehavior that my father had believed was charming in his own youth; perhaps he was upset that one of his only exhortations which I ever obeyed was not to take advantage of the female domestics - a decree which he himself was incapable of honoring, as I once caught him rutting with the scullery maid.

Whatever his objections to me may have been, they had clearly led him to an opprobrious opinion of my nascent manhood. That is why my father, coming home raging drunk one night after an evening of cards with his old cavalry squadmates, dragged me into his carriage and barked at the driver to make haste for the Abbey.

Every schoolboy in the North Riding knew that the Abbey was a brothel, and some of them even had a more or less accurate idea of what went on in such establishments; unfortunately I did not number among either group. Once my father led me into the Abbey's parlor, however, furnished lavishly as it was with silk, mirrors, polished wood, and perhaps a dozen highly painted and perfumed slatterns, gesturing towards the latter and telling me to pick from amongst them, I understood something of what my father had in mind for me. When I flatly and immediately refused to participate, a humiliating scene ensued which I prefer to leave, dim with dust and cobwebs, at the furthest reaches of my memory. The fracas ended with my father propelling me by the collar up a flight of stairs and down a corridor, much to the amusement of several women we passed along the way, before slinging me into one of the rooms near the end. I tripped over the threshold and went sprawling onto my hands and knees.

"Maybe you can do for him what nature didn't!" I heard my father's voice thunder before the door slammed. I heard the muffled sound of the laughing women in the hallway, noting that one of them called my father by his Christian name, and then the sound of a key turning on the inside of the door. I scrambled to my feet and spun around, finding myself in a tiny, ugly little room taken up largely by a bed, and facing an auburn-haired young woman in a dark green dress with a cheap tatted decolletage.

And whom did the young woman find herself facing? A rangy boy whose elbows and knees were the widest points of his limbs and whose clothes were in disarray, with a split lip just beginning to swell and wildly tousled hair. A boy who had yet to develop the usual preoccupations that had lured so many other men to that room, and one who strongly disliked being touched by strangers.

"Are you quite alright, you poor dear?" the woman said as she approached me with a coy sort of kindness, flouncing her skirts noisily as if she were flustered. Her brow furrowed as I began to back away from her with undisguised apprehension, but smoothed into an expression of amusement only moments later when my backside collided with the wall.

"Don't be frightened," the woman chuckled, taking the lapels of my coat coquettishly in her hands as I cringed against the wall. "A few little kisses will make it all better." Having assumed from her motherly tone and aspect that her intent was to tidy my bedraggled appearance, I was shocked when the woman instead pushed my lapels back nearly off of my shoulders, and even more shocked when she proceeded to give the front of my body a brief and professional manual examination. The clothes-straightening would have been bad enough, but I was utterly unprepared to be handled in such a crude manner. Too surprised and upset to react immediately, I could only manage to twist my head to the side where, just before I squeezed shut my eyelids, I espied that I was standing only two feet from a window.

"Relax, love," I heard the woman say as if from a distance, "or John Thomas will be too shy." My paralysis finally broke when she laid her hand on the side of my face and then attempted to smooth my hair.

Not only had I had quite enough of her disquieting mothering, I absolutely could not tolerate anyone fussing with my hair. So roughly did I cut up about having my hair combed and trimmed as a child that my father and governesses gave up completely and began letting me do it myself by the time I was school-aged. Therefore it was not only because my father had recently knocked me across the parlor of a brothel that my hair was so mussed, but also because every uncombed lock was likely a different length. It wasn't until I began attending college and living amongst my peers that I learned to tolerate having my hair barbered professionally, although I continue to view this necessary evil with deep displeasure even today. It makes my skin positively crawl.

Thus when the woman attempted to smooth down my hair I reacted instinctively by knocking her arm away and turning aside with deliberate roughness which sent her staggering backwards towards the bed. I wasted no time in unlocking the window near at hand which, due to screws placed in the frame, would only open halfway so that I nearly broke my neck jack-knifing my way out onto the roof of the front porch.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover the existence of the roof, as I had been prepared to push off from the window ledge directly down to the ground. Instead I was able to scurry to the edge of the roof and lower myself in a more controlled fashion. As I hit the ground I could hear the woman screaming out of the window above to alert the two touts who had been standing watch outside the premises and who proceeded to give me chase. Being sixteen and fairly fleet of foot, I took off down a side street and into a nearby patch of woods, where I was certain that I could outrun and hide from two grown men.

I walked home by a deliberately long and circuitous route - initially because I was wandering in a sort of daze but, subsequent to its cessation, I quickly built up to such a fury that I instinctively knew I needed to give myself time. I arrived home well after midnight, tore the sheet off my bed, and laid it on the floor downstairs in the entryway. Upon the middle of the sheet I piled anything I could quietly remove from the ground floor, whether I needed it at my outside lair or not - candles, matches, food, the ink and letter opener from my father's desk, some of his smaller souvenir weapons from the wall - such a random, bizarre, and often purposeless collection of articles that I must have lapsed back into the same dazed and mechanical state I had fallen into after escaping the brothel.