John Edward Cooper’s Notes
Sunday 10th July 1966
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1966 ***Sexual content!***  Suddenly, in my diary, for the first time, the symbol “•” appears. I had successfully resisted doing it probably since before the beginning of the year. My memory, at any rate, suggests an abstinence of the order of six months’ duration. The reason for abstaining was my feeling of “conviction” when I yielded to the urge to do it. As we have seen, my reading of the Bible had led me to scriptures like ...Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.And I found that I could not do an act of “•” without having specific lustful fantasies: it was not a case of just releasing pent-up sexual tension by doing “•” absent-mindedly; I always had in mind an object of my lust (or more than one) while doing it. I therefore felt that I had to give it up. Never to do it again seemed a goal too hard to achieve, so I took my abstaining a day at a time; on the first day, I said to myself, “Well, it’s only a day not to do it; I can make it through one day without giving in to it.” On the second day, I said more or less the same thing; and then day followed day till I thought myself free of it. When J— H— had his talk with me on Wednesday 9th February 1966, a month or more on, I had begun to feel safe. He wanted a word with me, in private, and, yes, it was about “•”; he was distressed by the burden of it, and needed to “confess” to someone. He was clearly thoroughly ashamed of himself, and he was confused because he did not think that if he really were a Christian he would be capable of such lurid fantasies. He told me about them in graphic detail. “I even imagine myself getting on top of her,” he lowered his voice to tell me in his croaky Lancashire burr. I shared with him the method I had used to get free of such things. Audrey had two summer dresses made of white cotton with printed patterns on them. One had dark blue flowers or dots and was sleeveless with a somewhat scooped neckline. The other was short-sleeved, came right up to the neck, and had a cerise-coloured vertical band on the front of the high-waisted bodice with brass imitation buttons on it; there were similar features on the sleeves. One might suppose that I would find the first dress the sexier of the two because of the slightly greater amount of skin it showed off. But on Sunday 10th July 1966, it was the other one which came to mind. I was alone in my bedroom, feeling sexually aroused, and I kept touching myself, then saying, “No, I mustn’t!” But then a vision of Audrey appeared in my mind’s eye, with her breasts bulging roundly in the bodice of the cerise-trimmed dress. Suddenly, there was my dick in my hand, and no more than about ten “•”-strokes later, it was over: I had given in, I had fallen. I managed to resist giving way again for eight more days, then after that perhaps two days were free of it,[1] then just the odd few days. But mostly it was on me like an avalanche. [1] I managed to resist giving way again for eight more days, then after that perhaps two days were free of it: See 17th–23rd July 1966. The Cumberland Hostel was an old people’s home in Fleetwood, and people from the Full Gospel Church would go there from time to time to conduct a service, usually after the church’s own Sunday-evening Gospel Meeting. I mentioned another such service in my diary-entry for Sunday 20th March 1966. The “Church of England lot” chiefly comprised the Makinsons, as far as I remember: Ron and his wife, and his son Ian and daughter Heather. They were members of All Hallows Church, Bispham, and had come into a “charismatic” type of experience. Because this was not welcomed in their church, they started to attend ours. In their number also, I think, was Mark Sumner, who had formerly been a Jehovah’s Witness. He played bass guitar and was part of a group called Truth (cf. Wednesday 7th September 1966). (Ian was probably one of those baptised on Sunday 7th August 1966.) I assume that there was no Sunday School teacher-training class on Sunday 10th July 1966; see notes at 5th June 1966. |
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