Saturday, September 25, 2010

I don’t know if every single living man does this in the course of his life, but I invested quite a bit of time and energy into exploring the different ways I could masturbate, and while the pace of experimentation has slowed as I’ve aged, I still love to explore what my penis has to offer.

One of the earliest variations I learned was from that time I was sitting in 8th grade social studies and a kid sitting nearby was stroking the underside of his penis through his underwear. I could see it clearly from my vantage point beside and slightly behind his desk near the back of the class. His fly was open and he was sitting back against the chair instead of leaning forward on his desk, and the bulge of his boner was right there, clearly exposed, the underside being brushed back and forth by the side of his thumb. Subtle enough so nobody would see him doing it unless they were viewing from my angle, but he was clearly masturbating right there in class, right where I could watch…

Of course, I was completely absorbed in watching him, even as I struggled to not be caught watching. I didn’t want to be seen staring and I didn’t want him to be caught either. I didn’t want it to stop.

I’d never seen another person masturbate before, and definitely not in a dangerous circumstance like IN CLASS, and it had never occured to me to just stimulate that one part of my penis, what I understand now to be the frenulum, that little trigger nerve on the underside just past the divit in the head. I would come to know that specific two inches better in the coming years and I have that kid to thank. I wish I could remember his name…

Holy crap, it was Joe Morris… (I really did just remember, but I’ve changed his name.) I don’t remember a lot of names from my childhood, and Joe and I were not friends… but I think that moment of crystalized childhood memory has preserved his name for me. He was, in that moment of middle-school recklessness, a trailblazer of sorts for someone he never suspected had caught him stroking his dick in class…

I started following his lead by doing exactly what I saw him do, though not in any place I might easily get caught. At home, in the living room, I lay back on the big blue sofa and opened my fly, keeping my already stiff and pulsing dick inside my briefs. My penis has always naturally oriented in an upward direction in my underpants, so it is natural that when hard the most easy access is to the underside and tip. I took my hand and just gently stroked up and down on those magical two inches with the side of my thumb, just as I’d seen Joe doing, paying close attention to the sensations growing inside my penis, that “tightening knot” feeling which seems to radiate from the core of the shaft.

I found that a faster rubbing than my usual slippery-piston method was natural and produced a more intense sensation of building pleasure. I also found that a specific change in the character of that pleasure happened when I judiciously avoided touching the head altogether. Later, I experimented with switching back and forth between the underside alone and the head alone, seeing how the alternating, specific stimulation felt different.

I discovered that a strong stream of water from the shower onto the magic underside felt great too. I facilitated this by wearing my briefs into the shower, so my dick would stay in the upright position, underside to the stream of water, and I could control exactly where the vibration of the tight stream would hit me with a slight movement of my hips and legs, and of course, no hands.

It was during this prolonged experiment of frenulum play that I began to get use to ejaculating in my briefs, a specific pleasure I would not call a fetish for me, but something I clearly enjoy doing and seeing others do.

I found a strap-on massager in my parent’s room which opened up a whole new world of sensation. It fit on the back of my hand, transforming the whole hand and each finger into an intense vibrator. It plugged into the wall and was so powerful it made my hand tingle for a long time after turning it off. I tried turning it on and cupping my whole crotch, moving my hand very slowly but mainly pressing it into my penis and testicles, feeling it respond with my hand and swelling up almost continuously toward an amazing and rather quick orgasm.

I bought a “Jacpak” that I’d seen advertised in one of the gay slicks, marketed by Jack Wrangler. It was a simple white vinyl sleeve with a specific smooth texture that I could blow up, grease up and fuck. It was beautifully low-tech and easy to clean, I could slide it up and down on my cock or wedge it between pillows or mattresses hum and cum into. I wish I could find an old ad for that thing. It was a sort of proto-fleshlight.

I also put my penis into socks, shirts, jocks, ripe melons, banana peels, raw meat…

I tried zapping it with an electrostim machine I had to rehabilitate my knee after surgery. I just strapped it to different parts of my dick instead of my quad muscles…

It’s interesting to me that I was less interested in putting things in my ass than in stimulating my cock itself, but I think that’s just how I’m wired. I like anal stimulation as much as any guy, but I’m far more dick-hungry than butt-hungry. I think it’s safe to say that I just don’t think about or crave a mouth or dick in my hole ever, although I really enjoy it a lot when it happens, it’s not on my A-list. I think about putting my dick inside other guys all the time… I’m also turned on by the thought of fucking a trans man… as long as he’s a hairy guy…

As I understand it, if a guy is not successfully conditioned to not masturbate, to avoid sexual pleasure through psychological aversion like religious condemnation, he is likely to follow his penis into all kinds of experimentation and exploration, including some incredibly dangerous places.

This almost universal drive to devote an unparalleled portion of one’s life to exploring a tiny percentage of our bodies’ real estate is emblematic of the innate importance of sexual pleasure and our evolutionary heritage of sperm competition, but also the ancient Greek aphorism, “Know thyself.” In the absence of aversive influences, we naturally delve into our own bodies and become explorers of our personal landscape.

I think it’s natural for us to gradually move from one area of exploration to another as our lives progress, and I think it’s likely that the suppression of sexual exploration prevalent in so many cultures frustrates that natural “moving on” process so that we become more obsessed with sex than we perhaps should be. 

My personal experience is that the more one knows the landscape of one’s own sexual response—the freer one feels to own one’s own mojo without reservation or hesitation or shame—the better one is equipped to share one’s true self with one’s fellow humans, the more easily we are able to connect intimately with one another.

I am so grateful to have had relatively little intense sexual aversion as a horny young pup, just the same ambient bullshit we all grow up with. I often wonder how different our lives would be if we were allowed and encouraged to masturbate and explore our bodies healthfully. I don’t believe that teaching children about sex is inappropriate, abusive or wrong in any way. I think that neglecting to be completely honest and positive about sex is abusive. We need to give our youngest explorers the tools to navigate their lives intelligently so we might eventually move out of this long, dark, frustrated sexuality we’ve been stuck in for centuries.

We are all natural explorers. It is part of our evolutionary heritage: To find out more—to go further—to explore deeper.