During my 4th year at Michigan I stayed in a rooming house...supposedly a men's rooming house...[a couple] had the room next to mine. I didn't realize the situation until one evening I heard them screwing. They certainly made plenty of noise about it. I suppose the bitch was squealing so loud because she found it sexually exciting to advertise to everyone what she was doing. Anyhow, it made me very angry, for these reasons: It roused my sexual feelings, which was unpleasant because I had no means of gratifying them in a satisfactory way, and this sexual frustration distracted me from my thesis work. Moreover, it roused my jealousy, especially since this couple seemed to be vaunting their sexual activities by being so unabashedly noisy...
...I had long since lost interest in romantic ideas. But my desire for a wilderness life independent of civilization grew stronger than ever...I had made no progress against the social and psychological obstacles; I felt trapped in my pattern of life; I felt I lacked the social courage to break away...
...The Vietnam war was on, and, while I approved of exterminating gooks, I preferred to have someone other than myself get his legs blown off by a land mine. If I quit my mathematical career, I could expect to get drafted. Actually, I wasn't all that much afraid of being sent to Vietnam. While I abhored the idea of getting crippled, I was somewhat attracted by the idea of shooting it out with the Commies (I have always hated Communism and Socialism).
...During the summer following my 4th year at Michigan... I had become thoroughly discouraged with mathematics. Music, reading, and other hedonistic pursuits bored me if indulged in to more than a limited extent. Thus, my life began to seem completely empty. I felt that I had nothing to look forward to or to live for...There was much talk in the news media about eliminating draft deferments for teachers. I felt there was a serious risk that I might be drafted...I was full of hatred for organized society and for many of the people around me, and the fact that I could not get revenge on those I hated was an additional depressing factor. Thus my morale sank to the zero point. It was lower than at any other period before or since...
... I have noticed that when my morale is very low, I tend to become a slave to such trivial pleasures as I can get. For instance, I may eat an excessive amount of junk food...Another similar symptom of very low morale that I have experienced is a tendency to get excessively involved with sexual fantasies, masturbation, and perversion. I mean much beyond the normal periodic release of sexual tension through orgasm. With good morale, I would from time to time become excited, masturbate, and then forget about it...With low morale, I had a tendency to avoid orgasm for sometimes hours, so as to prolong the sexual fantasies and the perversions that I practiced; and after orgasm I was apt to get excited again.
...the extreme low morale that I experienced in the latter part of the summer after my 4th year at Michigan led to the second of the 2 episodes in my life that I am really ashamed of. I got into a state where, for I guess about the last 2 or 3 weeks of the summer, I was more or less sexually excited nearly all the time, with fantasies of myself as a woman. It makes me squirm to think of it, but I actually decided to make an effort to have a sex-change operation. It was not that I imagined I would be happy as a woman, or that I had a favorable view of womanhood, or any such thing as that. It was simply that the idea of being a woman, and having intercourse as such, was extremely titillating sexually. This was because, to me, femininity has always been extremely exciting sexually, whether the femininity was present in myself (as in my fantasies of being a woman) or in someone else; and because fantasies of taking a feminine role in sex provided ego-negation or self-surrender, if you prefer to call it that. (For my opinions concerning the sexual excitement provided by self-surrender, or what I have called ego-negation, see my recent journal notes. [Early 1979 journal notes.] I have since learned that a far more satisfactory sense of self-surrender in sex fantasies is obtained by loving a woman than by imagining myself in a physically feminine role, but I cannot feel a sufficiently unreserved and open-hearted kind of love for women when I feel rejected by them...
...Anyhow, during the stated period, I was constantly having sexual fantasies of myself as a woman. When the excitement got too intense, I would masturbate, but within a few minutes after orgasm I would get excited again. During those few minutes after orgasm I would feel intense revulsion. I would feel that death would be a better fate than having a sex-change operation.
But death was all I had to look forward to. As explained above, I had no hope for anything. Aside from the unwholesome pleasure of constant sexual excitement, everything seemed like a black, dismal dead-end. Thus it is not surprising that I would promptly get sexually excited again...
...When I got back to the U. of Michigan, I made an appointment to see one of their psychiatric counselors. You may be sure that my purpose in doing this was emphatically NOT to be 'cured' or 'treated' or have my mind altered or meddled with in any way...I knew that you can't just purchase a sex-change operation by walking into the surgeon's office and plunking down your money. You first have to be examined by psychiatrists who decide such an operation would be "good" for you. Anyhow, I didn't know where to go for such an operation. I knew that if I frankly revealed myself to the psychiatrist, he would not decide that such an operation would be good for me, because certainly I was not suited to a feminine role in life - my motive was exclusively erotic. But I hoped that, by putting on an act, I could con the psychiatrists into thinking me able for a feminine role, so that they would help me to obtain a sex-change operation. I seem to be pretty good at concealing my feelings and playing a role before other people, so it's possible I might have been able to fool the psychiatrists...
...However, as the time approached for the appointment, I felt a certain revulsion setting in. While I was sitting in the waiting room I turned completely against the idea of the operation. So when I went in to see the doctor, I just gave him a bullshit story about being depressed about the possibility of being drafted...
--
Ted's 1979 Autobiography
