"Just Jack"

Masturbation is a very personal thing.

By that I mean that what we enjoy, and how we enjoy it, is as unique, I think, as the number of people
who do it. Which is just about everybody. (Stop lying, we know you do it too.)

I masturbate fairly frequently now that my wife is suffering though her woes. Depending upon my stress level it may go from three or four times a week to daily. And on infrequent occasions I am a fucking teenager again.

I'm a middle-aged man. I have been doing it for years, which means I pretty well have it down to a science. I know what excites me, and this may vary each time I need to get off. From pure mental fantasy to down and out internet porn, I have a variety of "motivators" at my disposal. As a lover of the written word, literary porn is a good way for me to get up. I enjoy reading well-written erotica.

It probably started back in my teens when finding ways to excite myself wasn't as easy as turning on a computer (pardon the pun). Yeah, we - meaning me and my buddies - inevitably found those stashes of magazines our father and older brothers had collected. In my case my parents both kept magazines in their drawers. Penthouse for Dad and Viva for my Mom.

(It's probably access to this latter which allowed me enough latitude to access bisexuality. I was as stimulated by the guys as I was by the women. One photo series involved a man and woman in and near a swimming pool - and it was the first time I'd seen a photograph where the man was erect. I can still summon the images in my mind, and it obviously had a lasting impact on my sexuality. Putting a marker on this topic...I'll have to delve into that in a later column.)

Penthouse Letters was also formative. Smaller, and easier to hide, it became my go-to for excitement.

A single issue could provide hours of enjoyment as far as I was concerned.

Masturbation also played a role in my sexual development in college. One girlfriend was hellbent in remaining a "virgin". Her definition of "sex" was strictly vaginal penetration, as she had no qualms about a cock in any other orifice. Unfortunately she was lousy at blowjobs ("Teeth!") and I wasn't too into anal sex, which left a lot of manual stuff at our disposal.

So it became a game as to which of us was the more daring at masturbating each other. And we got quite creative. Under a blanket in the dorm community room while watching tv with a half dozen other people. I started that one. Got her off twice in the course of a single movie, and nobody let on that they knew what I was doing. The only clue I had she was enjoying herself was the gradual digging of her nails into my arm, which was itself exciting knowing what I was doing to her under the blanket.

At other times we would relax in my dorm room (I was fortunate in that my roommate at the time spent virtually all night in the school's computer lab). My girlfriend and I'd spend time studying, watching tv or talking, all the time holding and jacking/jilling each other casually. My favorite times involved her lying nude on my bed, me sitting next to her with a book in one hand and casually jilling her with the other. Like me, she loved reading Penthouse Letters and would often have one open as I was getting her off.

Obviously we had fewer occasions when she could get me off - the inevitable pre-cum and cum shot made things a lot messier if there wasn't a ready receptacle. This limited my options a bit more than hers. In my room we had the assorted towel or washcloth, but couldn't bring those things along when we went somewhere. We had to be ready, somehow, for my orgasm since walking around afterward with a lapfull of cum wasn't my idea of discretion or fun. And she hated the taste of cum, so swallowing it was out.

We had the assorted handjobs in the university's quad (nighttime) and once or twice in the back seat of a friend's car as we all went out for the evening - or more likely headed back to the dorms after a night on the town. But I don't like the sensation of cold cum in my briefs, and even if your cumshot is outside there is some leakage afterward if you can't clean up or urinate. Guys will be nodding at this.

(I recall vividly her rushing to my room one evening, completely flustered. She told me she'd been masturbating on her bed, totally nude after a shower, when her roommate walked in. There was the usual jumping up, covering and apologies in both directions, but being caught really turned my girlfriend on. I made her tell me about it in detail, including what she'd been fantasizing about and her position facing the door. It really got her going and we immediately got her off. This particular  fantasy became fodder for other things, but we'll leave that for a future column. I had a similar experience a couple of years later when a friend walked in as I was jacking in my apartment's private bathroom. He wasn't part of our group, just a casual acquaintance. Poor guy was almost beside himself trying to apologize through the rapidly slammed door...insisting he hadn't seen a thing. Needless to say Lil Rambler lost his interest, frustrating my day.)

I also enjoyed the occasional communal jack with some of my closer dorm buddies. It was nothing formal but a couple of the guys in the dorm were not only hornier than even I was, but they thought nothing of jacking off in their rooms with the doors open. The general rule was that if you walked in on someone they just finished off. You could join them, leave or talk while they did their thing, but - in our little group - it was part of the bonding. A guy thing. Some more intimate bisexual experimentation went on, but that was kept behind closed doors.

All of which was part of my formative time. Jacking is just another form of sexual stimulation, and, as I noted above, it's become more important with my wife's problems. Just a fact of life.

Undoubtedly a psychologist will uncover a lot should I ever enter therapy. Masturbation always seems to raise an eyebrow if you admit to doing it frequently. But for now it's between me, my cock and anyone who wanders in without knocking.