Part One of a three-part series.

I'm a late-40s male who has been married over 20 years and masturbated for about 35. Though I can honestly say I am above average in looks, I have always far preferred my private pleasures to the anxiety and uncertainties of searching out partners for casual sex. While I'd classify myself as being on the straight side of Kinsey's 7-point scale, marriage never slowed down my masturbation fun — it just added another type of regular sex. I do enjoy my left hand: It's always there for me. I don't have to worry about its moods, or about adequate foreplay or premature ejaculation. I can do whatever turns me on without worry of offending it, and it doesn't make any demands, before or after.

Early Years
My first sexual experience was with my sister when I was about 3; she must have been about 8. She and her friends had been playing doctor, and she decided to teach me. We went down in the basement, and I took off my clothes and got on the "examining table." She then proceeded to very gently "take my temperature." I remember the anal sensation as being very pleasant. For better or worse, she and her friends got caught shortly after that, and she never "doctored" me again. Having no brothers, and being brought up in the sexually repressed era of the 1950s, I learned about sex through experimentation and exploration. The first time I remember being really sexually aroused was 2 or 3 years later, when I was 5 or 6. Three neighborhood girls decided to show my friends and me their panties, to prove to us they were no big thing for us to be so interested in. (Their plan failed.) They put their skirts over their heads and danced around. I can't say whether I had an erection or not, but I know I felt sexually frustrated — I wanted something and didn't know what it was. I don't truly remember having an erection until I started getting terrific ones walking home from school with my girl friend in 6th grade. I was about 12 and didn't know what to do with erections except be embarrassed and walk with my notebook in front of me. When I was alone, it felt good to hold it in my hand.

One day I was in the bathroom playing with it and thought about rubbing some of my mother's hand lotion on it. That felt pretty good! I kept doing it, and all of a sudden it got all tight, it started spasming, and I felt a really interesting sensation in my lower groin. (Nothing came out, except a couple drops of clear, sticky liquid.) I had no idea what had happened, but I thought maybe I'd busted something! During the next day, I got to thinking that it felt pretty good, so maybe I should try it again (and again, and again...).

A friend of mine had a paper route on the college campus and sometimes got paid in used "skin magazines." Now, this was in the early 1960s, when "the air was clean and sex was dirty," and you never saw a hint of pubic hair or genitals of any sort, except in nudist magazines (which were only slightly better than no picture at all). I still spent nearly every afternoon during junior high school holding my best friend in my left hand and a skin magazine in my right, fantasizing about hidden delights. (As an aside, I am right handed but masturbate and urinate with my left. In later years, I noticed that my father also used his left hand when urinating. It was interesting to see the JackinWorld survey on this.) Though my parents told me I was not supposed to do "it," I can't help but think they preferred "it" to an unwanted pregnancy, and pretty much ignored it. Since both my parents worked, I had plenty of free time after school to experiment.

In the course of my explorations, I discovered I have a particularly sensitive spot on my penis, in addition to the head. About an inch below the head, on the line of what I assume is circumcision scar tissue, there is an area over the tube that carries urine (urethra) that is extremely sensitive. On rare occasions, when particularly aroused, I have been able to have an orgasm by rubbing only that area with the tip of my index finger — sometimes even through my outer clothing (as on one of the first occasions I saw an x-rated movie). Perhaps this is the fabled "male G-spot." I don't know, but I'm glad I found it.

I'm also lucky I was never told masturbation was a sin, or would cause tell-tale signs on my body, or any of the other lies that fools torture adolescents with. However, I quickly learned that other boys were not as lucky, and that I should be very careful whom I confided in.

I did have a pleasant experience with a school friend, though. Eddie and I had been pals through junior high school. He was always a big talker about all the cool things he had done, and he was a football player, too. One spring afternoon, when we were in 9th grade, he came over to my house after school. We were alone in the house, goofing around. Somehow we got into a water fight and both got soaked. We went down to the basement, stripped down, and put our clothes in the dryer. While we were standing around waiting for them to dry, we got to talking about sex. I don't remember whether he or I started getting an erection first, but pretty soon we both decided to masturbate together. At the end of the summer, he had me over to spend the night. We slept in the same bed and masturbated each other. I remember thinking it was a lot harder to reach orgasm with someone else's hand than it was with my own. That fall we both got our driver's licenses and started dating girls, like we were supposed to. We never got together again after that summer, and never mentioned it, but we shared stories about our girlfriends and what they'd let us do. We remained friends through college, got married, and still see each other at high school reunions. I think we both really enjoyed it, and would probably have continued if we hadn't been worried about being "queer." (At that time you either were or you weren't — there was no in between.)

Read Part Two.


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