I was really naive when I hit puberty. I was about 12 and was at summer camp for the first time when I "discovered" my penis. It seemed to go from little-boy-size to a 5" erection practically overnight, but I had no idea what to do with it. At camp, we had 5 kids and a counselor in each tent. The counselor was never around when we had to be in bed, so there was always a lot of talk among the boys.
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Satin pillows
One of my first masturbation memories is of being in our basement alone watching TV. I was about 11, and the movie "Bye Bye Birdie," starring Ann-Margret, was on. She was still a teenager then, and damn, was she cute. It was the early '60s, and we just got our first color TV (yes, kids, there was a time without color TV).
All signs point to pleasure
As a boy of 6 I stayed on my uncle's farm for the summer. His 2 daughters were older than me by 6 and 7 years. Being farm girls they knew about sex and loved to take me to the attic where spare featherbeds were kept. There we all got naked and on those big, fluffy mattresses they taught me the basics of sex. I remember my little penis getting hard, and how it felt good when they would ride it (without penetration). But they rode it so long it got sore and I insisted on playing a different game.
Venture forth
I don't really remember discovering masturbation on a specific occasion, but I do remember that when I was about 10 or 11 I used to find it fun to lie on my stomach in bed with my penis between the fingers of my hand and move my hips up and down. I did this because it felt good and didn't associate it with sex, and so I wasn't at all embarrassed about it -- though my dad did try to stop me from doing it on more than one occasion. It felt too good to stop, though, so I would carry on again as soon as he left.
Wet dream? Forget it
I'm not sure how old I was the first time I masturbated -- 10 or 11, I think. I hadn't started puberty yet, I know that much. I've always like to read, and one day I had run out of library books and was desperate so I was reading my mother's "MS" Magazine. There was an Ann Landers-type column, and some woman had written that when she was a little girl her mother caught her in the bathtub with the water running onto her clitoris. She was so upset that even as an adult she could take showers only.
Marital masturbation
I am a female in my late 50s; my husband wrote Biography #8. I grew up in a large family in a house with only 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. Also, my parents were silent about sexual matters. I suppose those two factors account for the fact that I did not masturbate as a child or teenager. I was so ignorant of matters sexual that until I was probably 13, I was unaware the vagina existed. I believed that the anus was the female sexual orifice.
Standard practice
I am in my 50s and live in the center of Europe. The first time I came in contact with masturbation was when I was about 4. A same-age friend of mine and I were playing in a small forest, when an older guy of 10 or 12 joined us. Soon we were sitting under the bushes and discussing all sorts of things. We must have been talking about the opposite sex, when the older boy undid his trousers and started to rub his penis. He invited us to do the same, but with our 3 to 4 centimeters only at the time, we both were ashamed to unpack our treasure.
Cosmic flight of joyous gratification
[This biography is by the same reader who wrote Shimmying up swing poles.]
I feel strange saying I began masturbating at age 11 between the 6th and 7th grades, but I read about other boys starting to "do IT" as early as age 8. Well, I did do something at that age, but couldn't identify "it" as sexual or something to be embarrassed about until I touched my penis one summer's night after the 6th grade. The discovery was awesome, but the approaches to "it" using the thumb above and the index finger below were scary.
Saturday Night Live
The first time I masturbated I was 10 or 11 and was watching "Saturday Night Live" with my 15-year-old stepsister. I think we were playing truth or dare, and the topic of masturbation came up. I was like, "Huh?" She explained it to me with almost no details or anything. That night, BOY -- did I have a good time. I masturbated about 4 times (all dry). I think I was even making sex noises -- "uhhs" and "oohs." The next day I went to school and told my friends about it. On Friday they all came over to my house, where we all masturbated.
Bear with me
The first time I masturbated I was 11. I remember rubbing up against this big stuffed bear I had and then feeling great. I would do this before I went to sleep for about 2 years, and then I realized a liquid was coming out, so I began to masturbate in dirty socks and underwear. I grew up in a Catholic family, and in Catholic school I learned it was a sin to masturbate -- but it never made me stop, at least not for more than 2 weeks.