love thyself…but do it carefully.
As any book in the personal growth section will tell you, you cannot truly begin to love another until you learn how to love yourself. You would think this would be difficult to screw up. It can prove challenging, however, especially when you realize the biggest demons of all…may live inside. The first step in healing a dysfunctional relationship with yourself is to admit you have a problem. The second is to realize you're not alone. The stories in this chapter touch upon the self-destructive side of self-pleasure….
CAUGHT DICK-HANDED
by Zach Steel
I grew up surrounded by vaginas. The only penis I ever knew was my own. I remember one day in my early childhood, years before my parents' divorce, sharing a pee with my father. I remember his huge penis, lying in the palm of his hand, emitting a thick, steady rainbow of urine next to my small penis, held between my thumb and pointer finger, casting a much thinner, very erratic stream, similar to what happens when you put your thumb over the opening of a hose. I was all over the place, hitting the front of the bowl so it would spray back a bit on our legs, then into the bowl, crossing through his stream, and up the far side of the bowl and out again, making more of a mess behind the toilet. No one was laughing. I obviously had a problem. The hole at the end of my penis is shaped like a peanut, making it very hard to control what happens with my stream. I was dancing all over the place, trying to anticipate where my pee would land by moving my feet around while angling my penis in all directions to see which combinations worked best. My father just stood there, his piss the mighty and constant baritone below my strange and arrhythmic soprano. That was it. From there on out, all vaginas.
A few years later, six vaginas and I-my mother's vagina, my three sisters' vaginas, a nanny's vagina, and a dog's vagina-all crammed into the Volvo and headed to California, leaving my father and his penis behind. The front seat looked like this: vagina vagina vagina. The backseat was like this: vagina penis vagina. That was my childhood in a Volvo, only slightly more intimate. They might not have always been sitting next to me, but they were always lurking.
Needless to say, it took me a while to figure out how to jerk off. Years and years of boners were left to their own devices to find their way back to a state of calm. To this day, I still don't know how most boys figured it out. For me, it was a matter of simulating what I thought a vagina looked like with my two hands. I put the palms of my hands together in a clap position, opened them ever so slightly, rotated the shape so my fingers pointed at the ground, and held it at crotch level. I then proceeded to hump that shape, not realizing that it would have been much easier to have moved the shape back and forth as opposed to my entire body. It wasn't long before I threw realism out the door and just went with the traditional finger donut, still humping the fixed shape. It was this technique that resulted in my first orgasm. Two soaring pearls shot out, one and then the next, and landed on the tiled wall in front of me. I stared at them, red-faced, gasping for air as they slowly worked their way down the bathroom wall, preferring the grouted lanes to the wily and slick tile surface. It was time for a shower.
I stood under the hot water, in shock, on the verge of tears over the pleasure that I had just discovered. Seconds later, I found myself at it again, only this time, slightly bored and confused. Was that it? Did I break it? Why is it so red and tingly? Do I have to wait? How long? I had to find out. During this shower-a shower of fury and bewilderment-I discovered the incredible ecstasy my swift and dexterous arm muscles could produce. While maintaining stillness in the rest of my body, my pelvis severely tucked under and my toes spread wide and tensed upward, I attacked myself, ferociously jutting my finger donut back and forth and back and forth around me. Imagine this in slow motion, because otherwise you won't be able to see it. Within the hour, I had revived that tired snake and produced another one and a half not-so-heaven-bound pearls of joy. As I watched those cream worms slither down the drain, maintaining their constitution even after a gentle toeing, I decided it was time for a break. I had made my case. I began my regimen of two-a-days.
I kept this pace for the next few years, one session in my morning shower, one before I went to sleep, and a midday workout thrown in every so often. Rarely did I let the gift of a boner go without a proper how-do-you-do. It was never easy, though. Women and girls abounded in my home, and I had to work for my successes, waking up a half hour earlier, staying up later, covering my tracks like a criminal. I was a criminal.
The bathroom was my main location. I shared a room with my younger sister, so that was rarely available, and every other room in the house had street-level windows, so to be safe I just stayed in the bathroom. Even so, I had to remain quiet. The bathroom was attached to my other two sisters' rooms, and they were light sleepers. I took precautions. I always released into the sink-easy cleanup and no plop when my ejaculate hit the surface. I always faced a wall so that my body would deflect the sound waves from going under the door and into the bedrooms. This positioning was also a safeguard against anyone walking in, so they would only see my butt, and I could start crying or something so they would think I was just going through some shit, not necessarily masturbating. After all, how would they know what boys did when they masturbated, and if it differed from what they did when they were just going through some shit?
Then one day, something amazing happened. I was doing my thing in the corner of the bathroom when I heard something coming from the house next door-a rhythmic springboard jostling coupled with earthy moaning. I covered myself up and walked out into the kitchen. The sound was overwhelming. A couple living directly on the other side of the kitchen wall were fucking like grizzly bears. I could hear everything: the bed hitting the wall, the passionate moaning, crotches slamming together. I was consumed. Blood was rushing everywhere. They were getting louder and louder. I whipped it out and went to work right there in the kitchen. I came wherever. I took a moment, cleaned up my work, and then scurried off to bed, never hearing the climax from next door, although I'm sure it happened. I didn't know who these people were. I didn't know what they looked like. Maybe a whore lived there, and it was a different guy every night. Maybe they were two four-hundred-pounders with moles and wounds all over their junk. I didn't care. All I knew was that beautiful things were happening next door, and I owed my life to these animals.
I officially changed my main location. Yes, it was riskier because there was no door to protect me on one side, but if I ever heard anyone coming, I could just pretend I was looking for a late-night snack and hide my erection in the refrigerator while acting absolutely appalled by anything happening next door. That never happened. Sometimes I would spend hours in the kitchen waiting for the next-door neighbors to start me up, and no one ever walked in on me. I guess I was the only member of the household with a late-night agenda.
I was gaining confidence. The house was mine. I was like a werewolf, but instead of turning into a wolf at night, I jerked off a lot. I was like a night watchman, but instead of sitting at a hotel desk all night, I jerked off in my kitchen. One of my sisters had gone off to college, uncluttering the house by a small percentage. My mother started working more, which meant she slept harder, which meant the nights were longer, which meant more time for me and the neighbors.
Tragically the next-door sex slowed down and then eventually came to a complete stop. My muses had departed; I needed something to fill the void, and soon. I couldn't go back to staring at the bathroom wall. That would be too painful. I needed to move forward, conquer new rooms, new inspiration. I tried jerking off in other rooms, in other chairs, lying down on the floor. It all felt empty. It was fine, but that's it. I needed something else.
Porn. Porn was what I needed. For some reason, I had always thought of porn as something you watch with a group of friends in awkward silence while trying to push your boner down. It never crossed my mind how enjoyable it would be to watch by yourself. Maybe it was because the only TV in the house was in the living room, which had a floor-to-ceiling bay window that looked directly out onto the street. It was risky, but I had to try it. Something had to change.
So I stole a video from one of my friends and made plans to watch it that night. I got intermittent boners the entire day thinking about what I was going to do to myself. I carried the video around all day in school, and every so often would sneak a peak at the cover and get a quick boner. The image was of a massive orgy with middle-aged men and women splayed about various bearskin rugs, scratching each other and showing their teeth. It was called Wet Fur or something. This was going to be extra special.
Night fell and I waited silently in bed for my sisters to go to sleep, then crept to my location. The moon shone through the bay window and cast a cold light upon the room, so I didn't need to turn on any lights. Perfect. Yes, I was exposed to the street, but who walked down our street at this hour anyway? I turned on the television and quickly turned the volume down. No volume. No, sir. I popped the video in and quickly fast-forwarded through the dialogue. There it was. Bonertime. I decided to take off all my clothes to really get down with myself. I sat on the floor, Indian-style, next to the couch to partially shield myself from the street. The TV, though, was completely visible. I was beginning to enjoy the danger. Like people who have sex after car crashes, the danger was turning me on. And so what if someone walked by? It's not like they would tap on the glass and tell me to stop. If I didn't turn around to see them, then they didn't exist.
On the TV, everyone was fucking everything. There were blowjobs, hand jobs, fingerings, licking, slamming, jamming, people putting it in the back door, keys jingling in the front door, door opening, my sister staring at me, me picking up the remote and taking way too long to find the pause button, and then whoosh. Silence. My sister and I staring at each other, bathed in the blue light that poured from the TV. I stood up for some reason.
"Zach," she said, disappointed.
"Sorry?" I said.
It was the older one from college. I had forgotten she was coming home for spring break. She was unaccounted for, and I was too obsessed with the bay window to even consider the front door. There were too many vaginas to keep track of. I couldn't avoid them forever. They would always be sitting right next to me even as I jerked off. It made me wonder if there had been other times that I had been caught and not even known about it. Maybe when I was in the kitchen listening to the neighbors, one of them might have walked in and I was too focused on my work to notice. This was the end of a glorious time in my life. A carefree, anything-goes-on-whatever-surface-in-any-room-in-the-house time of my life. Good-bye.
Epilogue:
Yeah, I still jerk off. But it's not the same. I got caught a couple more times in college by various roommates because I was just being stupid. The game is no longer fun. I live with my fiancée, who has caught me a few times but doesn't even care. She just continues doing whatever she was doing. Am I invisible, for God's sake?
A CUSHION FOR THE PUSHIN'
by Michael J. Nice
Like all good stories about teenage masturbation, my story begins with my grandmother. My grandmother lived with us in a separate in-law apartment attached to our house. Mo-Mo, as we called her, was slightly crippled from a pommel horse accident back when she was in high school. It was the 1940s, and they didn't have the proper hip realignment technology to fix the problem, so from that day forward, my grandmother walked with a limp. She would correct the limp by wearing one normal shoe, and one giant Super-Freak Pimp Shoe.
Because of her handicap, Mo-Mo always had to be propped up wherever she sat. On the sofa, a cushion would be placed under the existing cushion to give Mo some additional lift. Getting her into a comfortable seated position was like molding a horse out of Play-Doh; it's going to stand effectively for a minute, but as time goes by, it will eventually droop and become unrecognizable.
Mo-Mo's daybed was no exception. While watching The People's Court, Mo would adjust and prop herself up using what we referred to in my house as "bolsters." They weren't sofa cushions as much as they were elongated foam tube cushions. They were roughly three feet long, a foot and a half high, and maybe ten inches deep.
Meanwhile, I was a weird kid. I was a sexually confused fourteen-year-old with what I would call a slightly above-average libido. I would masturbate between two and thirty-seven times a day. One day, while Mo and my mom were out shopping, I was relaxing between my 2:15 jerk-off and my 2:23 jerk-off by watching some TV. I got to snuggling with one of those bolsters. I had never held another human in a sexual manner, so the experience of embracing something roughly as large as myself and getting an erection was new to me. This was a new frontier. I held the cushion tight and thrust my groin into it. I began to dry hump my grandmother's back-support bed cushion.
I stopped myself to assess the situation. Could this cushion be smuggled to my bedroom so further experimentation could occur? I immediately concluded that yes, it could; yes, it should; and yes, it would. I smuggled the cushion off to my bedroom. I was ferocious with my newfound love doll. It wasn't long after that I figured out that unzipping the fabric coverlet and dry humping the foam cushion inside was the way to go. And then the ultimate filthy, adolescent, sexual revelation: I realized that I could, quite realistically (or so I thought), simulate sex with an actual human being by slicing a slit, if you will, into the foam. This slit was then filled with Lubriderm skin care lotion; I mean, it had the word "lube" right in it. I was good to go. Sexual intercourse with an inanimate object was now within my horny grasp. Genius! I thought. I had become a perverted little Dr. Frankenstein, and the cushion was my sex monster.
My affair with the cushion lasted several months. I would sneak the cushion into my room, have my way with it, and return it, cleaned (for the most part), and no one was the wiser.
But as the weeks dragged on, my relationship with the cushion became strained. I couldn't put forth the effort to drag that thing up to my bedroom, fuck it, clean it, and then return it to my grandmother's bed. And I was mortified by the thought of ever being caught. Worse yet, what if, while cleaning the coverlet, my filthy fuck hole was discovered in the cushion? There was only one course of action. The cushion had to be eliminated.
And so, exhibiting the characteristics of a budding serial killer, I kidnapped my fuck-doll-cushion-thing after sunset one night and dragged it to a wooded area not far from my house. It saddened me that it had to end this way, but I knew this was the only way it could end. I took one last look at my first regular sex partner, threw it down, and covered it with sticks and leaves. I nodded a satisfied nod as I took my final glance, before turning and running off, knowing it was for the best.
No one ever questioned the whereabouts of that sofa cushion, and for a time I thought I'd gotten away with the perfect crime. Until the day came when my mom arrived home with a new set of cushions for Mo, and her first words to me were, "And Michael, you keep your grubby hands off these ones." I'm still not clear exactly what she meant by that.
