The Guide to Getting It On (59 page)

Wanking Protocol—When You Have A Roommate

Even if they’re not particularly horny, a lot of people masturbate in bed at night to help turn their brains off. This can be especially necessary when you’ve had a full or stressful day and you need as much sleep as possible. Lying there awake just makes you feel more stressed.

Firing up a 30-amp vibrator or humping your teddy bear until his stuffing starts to explode is usually not a problem when you have your own room. But tender moments with yourself can be few and far between when you have a roommate. Add to this the fact that most of us would find it less embarrassing to be walked in on while we are having sex with a partner than when we’ve got our hands between our legs.

The usual solution is to wait quietly until your roommate is making sleeping noises. This is not as easy as it sounds, since your roommate is probably waiting for you to make sleeping noises as well. Fortunately, there are common-sense solutions that they usually don’t tell you about at your college orientation.

First, is to pull out your trusty copy of
The Guide,
point to this page, and say to your roommate, “I wonder if we should talk about this?”

Of course, there are those roommate situations where you’d rather be anally penetrated by a herd of buffaloes before talking about masturbation, but let’s say your current roommate is reasonable and probably has some of the same needs that you do. So here are some solutions that roommates in the past have found to be helpful. Some roommates are most comfortable only adopting the first solution, others are more adventurous. It depends on your situation and your comfort level:

• You agree to share with each other your class and work schedules, and if there is a change, you will notify your roommate, especially if a class was cancelled and you’re returning early. A quick text, call or a long, loud series of knocks on the door accompanied by a thoughtful, “I can come back in ten minutes” shows consideration.
  
• You agree that if you are leaving and won’t be right back, to tell your roommate, “I’ll be gone for at least ??? minutes.” Don’t come back before then unless it’s totally necessary, in which case you’ll knock loudly and wait to hear “Come on in” before coming on in.
  
• You agree that after the lights are out, it’s fine to masturbate as long as you are reasonable about it. While it’s usually impossible to be totally silent, one doesn’t need to sound like a porn star, nor do you need to have porn blaring. (Get used to using your fantasies for masturbation. Porn can be annoying and distracting to roommates.)
  
• You agree that it’s okay to rub one out first thing in the morning while you are still in bed to help to tame a raging A.M. erection or to relieve a crippling case of sunrise horniness.
  
• You agree that if one of you has a significant other at a different school or on a another part of the planet, you will try to work out specific times when that person can be alone to chat, Skype or be on the phone with his or her lover. That way, if they want to get themselves off while aided by the sound of their lover’s voice or from the cam that’s between his or her legs, there’s no problem. However, this is one of those privileges that a less-than-sensitive roommate can easily abuse, so the one doing the phoning needs to be fair, reasonable and not overdue it.
  
• You agree that if one of you is seeing a person who is abstinence-only or not interested in sex—that upon returning from an evening with this person, at least fifteen of alone time will be provided.
  

Wanking Protocol — Two things to avoid:
Masturbating with earphones or plugs in your ears, as you won’t be able to hear your roommate’s warning knock or keys in the door. And never, ever masturbate in a bathroom stall unless it’s in your own dorm and it’s pretty well understood that everyone does it. The problem with relieving yourself in a public rest room is that it could be against the law and you could get busted if there’s a sting operation going on. It doesn’t matter if you have the stall door locked and are being discreet.

Wanking Protocol — Cleanup:
Tissues and toilet paper remain the usual standbys for guys to masturbate into, although socks and dark-colored underwear are strong contenders. For males who are wanking in the shower, do not leave a wad of your hair and clumpy spunk stuck to the drain cover. That’s gross. Also, it’s better to use hair conditioner for lube than soap, because soap can make your urethra burn. Although, when the conditioner claims to add volume or thickness, your penis is not what they had in mind.

Some Seriously Twisted Lunacy from Kellogg’s of Battle Creek

That should have read “Corn Flakes” instead of Wheaties, since Kellogg’s Corn Flakes were created to give children more stamina so they wouldn’t want to do horrible things like masturbate. John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., founderof the flake, told anyone who would listen that masturbation was a worse sin and “more immoral” than adultery. He called it the “most heinous, revolting, and unnatural vice.”

Kellogg proposed a six-point program for every American male that included taking cold enemas every day and wearing a wet girdle to bed every night to help prevent masturbation. His advice for parents whose children were caught masturbating included bandaging the genitals and covering them with cages, tying the child’s hands together, and circumcision without anesthesia. He felt that the pain would be a helpful punishment for the act that had been committed. Whatever foreskin was left should be sewn shut over the glans of the penis to keep the young man from having erections. Kellogg was an interesting guy.

Kellogg’s cereal is still known as “Kellogg’s of Battle Creek.” Battle Creek was the name of his mental asylum, where he served his special cold cereals to help keep the inmates from masturbating. The finest medical minds of the day couldn’t quite agree on the specific horrors that masturbation would cause. Some claimed it caused a man to become feeble, lackluster, feminized, impotent and to have underdeveloped genitals. Others claimed it had the opposite effect, turning the young men into sex fiends who would have uncontrolled eruptions of lust and blow the family fortune on prostitutes. Ads in popular papers promised to cure “the excesses of youth” and “underdeveloped genitals,” which were what happened if you masturbated.

To keep Dr. Kellogg spinning in his grave, this book encourages its readers to occasionally masturbate while eating a bowl of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.

How Guys Learn

“When I was ten, an older friend showed me how to masturbate. He had a full ejaculation; nothing came out of my penis. Astronauts were first orbiting the earth, and I believed that technology could fix anything. So I decided to create a jack-off machine. Planning and building it kept me busy for days. But it didn’t make anything more come out of my penis than my hand did. Time, rather than technology, was the answer to that problem.”
male age 45

A lot of males learn to masturbate from other guys, friends, porn or a big brother. Males who don’t learn about jerking off from other guys eventually learn on their own. That’s because a teenager has to be pretty numb to himself to miss the connection between soaping his penis up in the shower and the nice feelings that result. Also, when lying face down on a mattress with a hard-on, most guys are eventually compelled to hump or rub. More than other human organs, the penis pleads to be yanked, stroked and squeezed. (Anyone who has raised daughter in a non-repressive environment might disagree, saying that clitoral hoods get a pretty good working out, as well.)

If they haven’t seen porn or heard about ejaculation before having their first ejaculation, some guys will experience anything from concern to terror the first time they produce semen, e.g., “Oh no, I broke something,” to “Please God, I’ll never ever do it again! I promise, just make it OK.” Then they do it again the next day. Today’s porn-saavy young males might have the opposite concern, “Mine doesn’t squirt worth squat; where’s the wad?”

The Group Thing

“I can understand all sorts of things about guys’ sexuality, except why they jerk off together. It seems so gay. Why do they do it?”
female age 23

Good question. The majority of men will tell you that they have never jerked off with another male. For those who have, it may have to do with the maturation process. Most young guys need little encouragement to take their pants off and explore. Getting naked can be so exciting for some boys that they get hard-ons from that alone. It’s also natural for boys to share experiences, whether it’s checking out an abandoned house or cave or showing each other what you do with your dick. After all, you would want to show your best friend the model you just built or take turns doing the latest skateboard trick, so why wouldn’t you want to jerk off together?

“When we became teens, some of us boys would get together for a masturbation meeting in the treehouse, but it was more the thrill of something exciting and forbidden than anything else.
male age 26

Plenty of men will say, “No way. You’d never catch me jerking off with another guy when I was a kid.” Others will say, “Sure, that’s how we did it.”

As for masturbatory etiquette, some males have guy-like tea parties called circle jerks where they stand around and masturbate. There might be games connected with this, like who shoots the farthest or who comes the fastest (it’s interesting how priorities change as you get older!). It’s even been said that some young men feel excluded until they have been allowed to beat off with members of the local gang. The urge to beat off together seems to peak before high-school age and drops off significantly after that. However, there are some adult males who appear to be straight who enjoy masturbating together. Perhaps this isn’t as much of a contradiction in terms as it seems. Straight men sure enjoy watching other men ejaculate in porn movies. Perhaps it’s acceptable to be curious about another guy’s ejaculation if he’s just had his penis in a woman’s body, but not acceptable if it’s just two guys together.

The following answers to a survey in the newsletter
Sex & Health
help to summarize some of what’s involved:

“While partying with fraternity brothers, someone suggested a contest to see who could ejaculate the farthest. Each of the five of us took our turn in a tiled shower room. Surprisingly, the least endowed among us won!”

“Sometimes when I’m camping with a couple of my buddies and our girlfriends are otherwise occupied, we get to joking about sex. We soon get so aroused that when one of us whips it out to pee, we start joking and the others whip theirs out, too. Then we just start stroking ourselves and talking about our favorite techniques. We don’t touch each other, but we do comment on each other’s members and may cheer one another on to climax. We’re all good friends and have become much closer sharing our sexuality this way.”

Sex & Health
had a large male readership. 95% of the men characterized themselves as strictly heterosexual; most were married and many had children. Still, a number reported fantasizing about masturbating with other men, e.g., ‘Although I’m happily married with two children, I do sometimes fantasize about masturbating with friends. I’ve thought about asking one friend in particular, but I haven’t had the nerve.’ ”

How Girls Learn

“When I was young, climbing a flagpole always brought on such intense tingling feelings that I was only able to hold on tight and my legs would clamp around the pole. When the feelings subsided enough, I would resume climbing.”
female age 37

“It was my freshman year of high school. I was kissing this guy and was getting really turned on. He put his hand on my inner thigh and I was going crazy! This was my first heavy petting session. I didn’t quite know what to make of it. When I got home, I went to the bathroom. My underwear was very wet. I went to touch myself and BAM!—instant orgasm! My very first. I’ve never had it that easy since.”
female age 27

“When I had my first orgasm I kept saying, ‘Oh my God!’ over and over. I was really shocked because I didn’t know I could do that to myself!”
female age 25