self-touching

Updated: May 3, 2025

Here I gave myself up to the old insipid privy shifts of my self-viewing, self-touching self-enjoying, in fine, to all the means of self knowledge I could devise, in search of the pleasure that fled before me, and tantalized with that unknown something that was out of my reach; thus all only served to enflame myself, and to provoke violently my desires, whilst the one thing needful to their satisfaction was not at hand, and I could have bit my finger for representing it so ill.

John Cleland - Memoirs Of Fanny Hill: A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749)