circle jerk

I grew up on a farm, and although I had seen animals having sex, I hadn't had "the talk" from my parents when I first learned about masturbation. I was about 11 and my brother 9 1/2 when we had the preacher's boys (our same ages) sleeping over one summer night in a makeshift tent. The conversation worked around to girls and sex. They asked if we knew about masturbation; we said, "What's that?" So they explained, and we tried it, with amazing results in a few minutes. Having no terms for any of this, I called the orgasm a "thrill" — which it was.

I was exposed to masturbation at a very young age. I started doing it when I was 8, but back then I had no idea what I was doing. I just remember humping the couch and having this incredible feeling come over me every time I did it. I didn't know what it was called; I just referred to it as "the penis game." My religious parents would sometimes catch me doing it and warned me against it, not because they thought it was immoral, but because they thought I was too young to be exposed to sex.

This is a shameless account of the masturbatory experiences of a man who has masturbated regularly since he was 14 and who now, as he approaches 60, considers masturbation to be one of the most enjoyable sexual experiences of all and an art in its own right.

The first sexual thing I can remember happened at about age 9. I had left my bed, probably to get a glass of water, and on my way to the kitchen I saw that the lounge-room light was on. I went down the hall, and at the door I saw my father lying on the couch with his clothing pushed down to his knees and up to his chest. My mother was kneeling down beside the couch with my father's penis in her mouth. I watched for only 5 or 10 seconds before my mother realized I was there and sprang up, alerting my father, who also sprang up and started to adjust his clothing.

[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.