Don't Worry

“I had just turned eighteen, and my father thought this was the time for a serious man-to-man, father-to-son talk with me. We talked about allowances and money—not a big issue, for I was fairly frugal in my habits and my only extravagance was books. And then my father got on to what was really worrying him. “You don’t seem to have many girlfriends,” he said. “Don’t you like girls?” “They’re all right,” I answered, wishing the conversation would stop. “Perhaps you prefer boys?” he persisted.

“Yes, I do—but it’s just a feeling—I have never ‘done’ anything,” and then I added, fearfully, “Don’t tell Ma—she won’t be able to take it.” But my father did tell her, and the next morning she came down with a face of thunder, a face I had never seen before. “You are an abomination,” she said. “I wish you had never been born.” Then she left and did not speak to me for several days.

When she did speak, there was no reference to what she had said (nor did she ever refer to the matter again), but something had come between us. My mother, so open and supportive in most ways, was harsh and inflexible in this area. A Bible reader like my father, she loved the Psalms and the Song of Solomon but was haunted by the terrible verses in Leviticus: “Thou shall not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”

My parents, as physicians, had many medical books, including several on “sexual pathology,” and I had dipped into Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld, and Havelock Ellis by the age of twelve. But I found it difficult to feel that I had a “condition,” that my identity could be reduced to a name or a diagnosis. My friends at school knew that I was “different,” if only because I excused myself from parties which would end in petting and necking.

Buried in chemistry and then in biology, I was not too aware of what was going on all around me—or inside me—and I had no crushes on anyone at school (although I was turned on by a full-size reproduction, at the head of the stairway, of the famous statue of a beautifully muscled, naked Laocoön trying to save his sons from the serpents).

I knew that the very idea of homosexuality aroused horror in some people; I suspected that this might be the case with my mother, which is why I said to my father, “Don’t tell Ma—she won’t be able to take it.” I should not, perhaps, have told my father; in general, I regarded my sexuality as nobody’s business but my own, not a secret, but not to be talked about. My closest friends, Eric and Jonathan, were aware of it, but we almost never discussed the subject. Jonathan said that he regarded me as “asexual.”

We are all creatures of our upbringings, our cultures, our times. And I have needed to remind myself, repeatedly, that my mother was born in the 1890s and had an Orthodox upbringing and that in England in the 1950s homosexual behavior was treated not only as a perversion but as a criminal offense. I have to remember, too, that sex is one of those areas—like religion and politics—where otherwise decent and rational people may have intense, irrational feelings.

My mother did not mean to be cruel, to wish me dead. She was suddenly overwhelmed, I now realize, and she probably regretted her words or perhaps partitioned them off in a closeted part of her mind. But her words haunted me for much of my life and played a major part in inhibiting and injecting with guilt what should have been a free and joyous expression of sexuality.

My brother David and his wife, Lili, learning of my lack of sexual experience, felt it could be attributed to shyness and that a good woman, even a good f**k, could set me to rights. Around Christmas of 1951, after my first term at Oxford, they took me to Paris with the intention not only of seeing the sights—the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower—but of taking me to a kindly whore who would put me through my paces, skillfully and patiently teaching me what sex was like.

A prostitute of suitable age and character was selected—David and Lili interviewed her first, explaining the situation—and I then went into her room. I was so frightened that my penis became limp with fear and my testicles tried to retreat into my abdominal cavity. The prostitute, who resembled one of my aunts, saw the situation at a glance.

She spoke good English (this had been one of the criteria for her selection), and she said, “Don’t worry—we’ll have a nice cup of tea instead.” She pulled out tea things and petits fours, put on a kettle, and asked what sort of tea I liked. “Lapsang,” I said. “I love the smoky smell.” By this time, I had recovered my voice and my confidence and chatted easily with her as we enjoyed our smoky tea. I stayed for half an hour, then left; my brother and his wife were waiting, expectantly, outside. “How was it, Oliver?” David demanded. “Terrific,” I said, wiping crumbs off my beard.”

~ Oliver Sacks, On the Move: A Life
Oliver Sacks, M.D. was a physician, a best-selling author, and a professor of neurology at the NYU School of Medicine. The New York Times has referred to him as “the poet laureate of medicine.”
He is best known for his collections of neurological case histories, including The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain and An Anthropologist on Mars. Awakenings, his book about a group of patients who had survived the great encephalitis lethargica epidemic of the early twentieth century, inspired the 1990 Academy Award-nominated feature film starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.
;