A few years ago I came across a news article about a guy who had killed himself, by burning, after being under investigation over an 8-year-old girl from outside his family whom he felt he ‘loved’. He’d ventured out to a coastal beauty spot, sat there on the grass and doused himself in petrol which he set alight. His spectacular self-immolation was not witnessed by anybody, except his charred body with the petrol cans nearby was happened upon by an elderly dog-walking couple the next morning. There was a suicide note, in a heart-shaped tin box, on scene too:

My darling little angel, I will always love you, no matter what the world thinks. I am sorry if I ever hurt you; I don’t think I ever did. I hope you have a most happy life, I most dearly do. I love the sweetness of your voice, like drips of honey upon the cold and bitter fabric of this world. The sun shines from your soul, fresh and warming. Your hair, fine as silk, are as if golden strands weaved in the heavens themselves. I loved the way it falls around your tiny shoulders, a crown upon the white gleam of your skin. Most of all, your lovely personality; oh my Evie, I miss you I miss you I miss you, forever yours.

Stephen.

Stephen was actually only 29. I say ‘only’, since it’s obviously a little too old to be in a romantic relationship with a child, but I think such intensity in these things tends to have its fruition at a later age. It did with me, anyway, not that I’d ever worked myself up into quite such a state with somebody young. I could identify with the sentiments, though, and well imagine how one might feel as strongly carnally as one did spiritually with a pre-pubescent girl. Personally I felt 8 was a bit young - this guy really had a sickness - for me 10 would be more like it, because there’s more personality as a well as bit more body to relate to. In actual fact, the one obsession I’d had which came anywhere near this profundity of self-danger was for a 13-year-old, going through to when she was 15. More about her in another essay perhaps. For now, the question is posed:

Is it possible to actually be ‘in love’ with a child?

I’m narrowing it down to pre-pubescent child for this exercise, on the basis that of course it must be possible in the case of one 13 or over, because they are developed (developing at least) and they project many shoots of adult personality, therefore nature deems it so. It might be immoral and frowned upon by society - it certainly is by ours - but the potential for it was and always will be there in reality. So there, that’s my opinion. I’m also narrowing it down to girl, because as a hetero person as well as hetero child-liker I cannot contemplate feeling anything at all for a male kid in that way. I do not condemn those who do, but to me it needs a lashing of intrinsic homosexuality. So, can a grown man be in love, in the full sense, with a girl-child?

I think yes. There is ambiguity in it, though; but isn’t there always? Does not love of a female adult also have some kind of strings attached, an inbuilt selfishness and an aspect of ‘imbalance’ to be found somewhere? There’s no such thing as pure love, once said my priest friend, because there is always something in us that is sinful and wanting to get something out of it for ourselves. He was in fact responding to my pained insistences that I did feel just such pure love for my own sons, because I was despairing of the authorities’ safeguarding tyranny as I regarded it. It was not ‘pure’, even for them, he asserted. I disagreed with the cunt on that one, on the grounds that I was not capable of the slightest sexual urge towards my boys, and also that I would die for them if need be. That’s the twin way you measure pure love, as opposed to the romantic love displayed by Stephen.

Love of a non-family member, however - whatever their age - is a different matter. Here I can fully accept that it may never be pure, and possibly utterly cannot be. Not where there is the slightest issue of sexual attraction at stake (ie the opposite sex if you are a heterosexual person). This is because where there is such ‘love’ there is also bound to be a streak of ‘lust’, however small; and lust is a selfish thing. You may feel love in the sense that you delight in providing your partner with feelings of lust too, but methinks there’s no getting away from the fact you’re in it fundamentally because you want to experience orgasmic feelings. Without which, the ‘in-loveness’ would not be so appealing, and any claims you love the person would be put to the test. That’s why relationships fail so often when the honeymoon flourishes of passion begin to dim or downright stagnate.

So, love of a child; a girl-child. Anyone with any paedophile streak in them can certainly feel it - the word literally means ‘one who loves children’, after all - and experience a blend of endearment and lustiness which is well-nigh indivisible. Some brutes of course feel no such sensitivity and merely crave the sordid sex acts, and sadly at the extremes of this we have the sex-motivated child-murderers out there. Such men (or women) cannot be said to be in-love with the child, otherwise, for all their carnal urges, they would not countenance hurting them. This is where it becomes problematic, though: even those minor-attracted persons who would never in a month of Sundays cause injury to a child can surely not openly express their feelings in anyway to her without doing some degree of emotional damage?