Theory of Slavery | Hamilton

III

My younger years have passed on the outskirts of the country, in a Law academy for boys. I was twelve when I was taken to the academy, a fragile-looking young jackdaw. It was back when Jefferson had just inherited his first plantation and when slavery had not yet poisoned the North. Of course, I was welcomed everywhere with pleasure, since my father recommended me. Until the fourth year I had been ranked as the first pupil, had withdrawn entirely into the study of all conceivable suits and claims, into the chicane subtleties of property, hereditary, land and other business lawsuits, into the memorizing and logical analysis of quashed decisions. Everyone treated me carefully and considerately, with some sort of solicitous, somewhat mawkish, commiseration, which chimes so well with the inner, backstage customs of expensive schools. Father was very proud of me. It was well that the pupil and the preceptor were, though none too soon, parted.

Although, soon law began to bore me. There were more than a few talented lads like me, and there was always a danger of their talents leading them astray, either into secret lust, or a latent desire for lawlessness. Barely snatched away, speaking figuratively, from the maternal breast; from the care of devoted nurses, the boys were irresistibly and sweetly drawn to a search for truth, and whose fault is it that some young people of to-day see that truth and that discipline in such stupid and ridiculous things, as partying and abolitionism.

It all began during my fifth year. What that "truth" of mine is, of that there will be only too much said later. Radical Abolitionism used to be in fashion back then. In the solitary years of my dreamy life in the academy it sprang up in my mind before I had finished the fourth year, and from that time perhaps never left me for an instant. It absorbed my whole existence. Till then I had lived in dreams; from my childhood upwards I have lived in the world of dreams, always of a certain pink color. But after this great and all-absorbing idea turned up, my dreams gained in force, took a definite shape. The academy hindered my ideas; I finished the fifth year with the worst grades.

If you were lucky to live in Buffalo from 1916 to 1918, you might have seen me. Every Saturday a colony of the young, simple, and expensive youth were at bars and hotels. I was one of those young Americans who would get roaring drunk and then explode violently with the first percussions of the Charleston. This was our foolish protest. My grades turned into the triumph of commonplaceness and mediocrity, while my spree became absolutely violent. I spent thousands a month, playing desperately in gambling circles and drinking. I made myself at home everywhere, talked with noisy gaiety, saying anything that came into my head without restraint. And of course it could never have occurred to me how it will end.

As for secret lust, it's complicated. Starting from the third year, obscene texts and photographs began passing around. My peers loved to whisper in corners and, embracing in dark corridors, to tell in each other's ears improbable histories of adventures with women. The fifth year some of my friends had already known sex. But no matter how strange this may seem, even these drawings, and obscene photographic cards, did not arouse a delightful curiosity in me. Chaste books from the school library were enough. Love for me had always been surrounded with a tantalizing veil; some sort of crepe, unseizable, but tempting; I did not wish to know the obscene details. However, as soon as my friends began openly visiting public houses, I began too; but those were different public houses.

I am not ashamed of myself now. I'm perverted. But back then I saw it as something vile and shameful. Special bars were usually located in the basements of cafes and pubs; my favorite bar was underneath the "Three Oysters" restaurant. The air down there was sour and full of fumes, with a mixture of alcohol vapours and the smell of human emanations; there was nothing but beer on the menu, and transvestites were dancing on a wooden stage. They were for the greater part hoarse or snuffling half-women, dressed in colorful rags, with the faces of pomaded apes, with their hair licked down. They were shaking their asses, playing harmonicas and making unseemly sweet eyes at the public. But, despite their asexuality, they still had not lost the chiefest instinctive aspiration of women—to please.