Growing up in a Baptist family in the Midwest was not the easiest way to learn about sex. Fortunately, it was at a time when the media was progressing just fast enough to make sure that a clever kid would get a chance to peek at a pair of breasts on cable now and then if he was sneaky enough. No matter how my parents tried, I was going to figure out what this sex stuff was all about.
My friend Joe and I had known each other since age 8. We were neighbors and classmates, so we were together for basically the entire duration of our most formative years, and had talked about sex since our earliest stirrings of puberty. One thing that helped us along our path was the fact that his stepfather had a lot of Playboys under his bed, and the fact that my family had cable TV at a very early stage, before it was widely available. In fact, my solo masturbatory career began in earnest with the Cinemax premiere of My Tutor starring Caren Kaye when I was about 12. After the first few fumblings and cursory explorations of my anatomy for several weeks, I thought I had the basics pretty well down, when one Friday night while my family slept, this cinematic footnote happened to appear on my television. I vaguely remembered seeing a trailer for it about a year before and, remembering it as being another teen sex comedy, I sat back on the couch, hands at the ready, and eagerly awaited the nudity on screen. (This may be hard for some younger readers to relate to. You see, nudity — even on cable — was still an event in those days, and celebrities didn't walk around half-undressed gyrating all over MTV like they do now. Hell, when I was 13, if I had seen Lynda Carter in that dress J-Lo wore to the Grammys, I would have never stopped masturbating!) The first part of the film contained a few vaguely titillating scenes — and, after all, I was 13, so I didn't need much stimulation. I played with my penis the only way I knew how at this point: kind of a circular motion, up and down. For the last month I had been doing this for what seemed like hours at a time, although I had not yet masturbated to orgasm. I had always reached a sort of plateau, after which I was satisfied for a bit, but I had never ejaculated. After about a half-hour of watching and exploring my body I felt myself start to reach that familiar plateau. Or so I thought. I remember it vividly: It was a scene where the lovely Caren Kaye, who reminded me of one of my teachers at the time, drops her towel and goes for a skinny dip in a pool. As her beautiful, natural breasts fell into view, my brain and body began to work together completely independent of my conscious mind. I immediately felt a warm numbness deep within my abdomen, and my hand involuntarily convulsed around my penis. My eyes closed for a moment and, when they opened, she was emerging from the pool dripping wet, and her breasts were coming straight toward me in full, glorious view of the camera. I had seen naked women on TV before, but something about this scene at this time just flipped a switch in my brain. My eyes rolled back in my head as I felt what seemed to be a massive shock wave of total relief flooding down and out my body, and I think I passed out for a second or two.
When I came around a moment later, I was light-headed, euphoric, and strangely warm and wet. I had ejaculated clear semen all over my hand, and it felt amazing. I felt the urge, for just a moment, to go clean up, but as I stroked myself softly to savor every last bit of feeling, I found myself climbing the plateau again almost instantly. I sat and stroked for a few minutes and seemed to develop a kind of natural rhythm. I slid my hand over my now-lubricated penis, and it was an entirely new sensation. I couldn't have imagined anything feeling better than what I had just done, but this was wonderful. After just a few blissful moments, the movie came to the big nude love scene. As I saw what was about to happen, the anticipation grew in me to an even stronger level than before. The actors took off each other's clothes and began to touch each other. The man laid Caren down on the bed and began to kiss her nipple, and I felt myself start to orgasm again, just as strongly as before.
When I opened my eyes this time, they were still having sex, but I was suddenly very satiated and immediately got up to wipe myself off. I noticed that although the orgasm had felt just the same, it didn't seem that I had ejaculated any more the second time. But no matter — I had done it! I felt that I had somehow gone through a rite of passage of some sort. I had learned how to masturbate myself to orgasm, and it was the best thing I had ever learned in my life! There was no stopping me now; I was young, I was on summer vacation, I had premium channels, and my best friend had a big ol' stash of Playboys.
Joe and I always dug into his dad's Playboy stash anytime we had a free second. Right around the time of my discovery, he got his hands on the Playboy issue featuring Suzanne Somers. This was a big deal for us then. One night, a few weekends later, he managed to smuggle the magazine over to my house during a sleepover. There were about 4 of us there, and we all looked at the magazine all night long. Like 13-year-olds will do, we started fighting over it, and one of the guys made some comment that we were fighting for it so we could masturbate to it after everybody else went to sleep. Well, these were the good old days of shame, so no matter what we all did in our private lives, we all digressed from the issue and went about other business.
The next morning, everybody left except Joe. We huddled in my room, poring over the photos of Ms. Somers and discussing the possibility of being able to have sex with a girl with the penis between the breasts (which happily turned out to be possible). We had noticed each other's erections before on a few occasions; these things are unavoidable. This particular morning, we were both straining in our briefs pretty hard. I was trying to burn the image of one of the pictures in particular to my memory so as to use it for masturbatory material as soon as he walked out the door later that day — when he asked me if I had ever "jacked off" before. The phrase had been kicking around school for the last year or so with all the kids, and it was the kind of thing you denied on the playground. But here, in the company of my friend, I said yes. He said he had tried it, too, but not much had happened. I was sure he was simply doing something wrong and missing out on the greatest experience of his life, and I advised him to keep at it. We sort of talked around the subject as we continued to peruse the magazine all afternoon. Not much was said (because we didn't really know what we wanted to say), except that we were both curious of the other's habits — which was undeniable and perhaps unavoidable as well.
Joe went home that afternoon and I masturbated to the burned-in image in my brain of Suzanne Somers lying nude on a rock. My ejaculations at this time were still clear and watery, and they just sort of dribbled out. I thought more about Joe; perhaps I was comforted by the fact that he was feeling the same feelings I was, and was aroused by the same stimuli. Before he had left that day, we had made plans for him to sleep over a few days later. We conspired about all the magazines he would bring over, and I made plans to try to tape some nudity off TV with our new VCR (another rarity in these days).
Over the next few days, for my masturbatory delight and for our viewing pleasure, I taped a succession of scenes. One I remember standing out was Jamie Lee Curtis in Love Letters. On the night Joe came over, he hadn't managed to get his hands on the Somers issue again (I was profoundly disappointed), but he did score an issue featuring Shannon Tweed. I recognized her as the girl I had taped in Hot Dog: The Movie a few days earlier. At this point I put on the tape to show him, and we both got a little more comfortable. We each had a magazine in hand, and after reading and freeze-framing the tape a little while, I was about to burst — partially because I couldn't contain it any longer, and partially because I wanted to see what would happen. I asked Joe if he minded if I masturbated. He said go ahead — he needed to touch himself, too. We both stuck our hands inside our shorts and began to masturbate. I was more aroused than I had ever been and was close to an orgasm within seconds. I looked over at Joe curiously and saw that he was fixated on the image on the television. The Jamie Lee Curtis scenes were on now, and I watched him stroke himself as he sat transfixed by it. He seemed to use a different motion than I did, though I didn't see how he was doing it exactly. He was stealing glances at my motions the same way and seemed to be trying to match my rhythm.
Suddenly it came over me, much sooner than I expected it, and I felt my shorts go awash with semen. I felt absolutely soaked down there, and I realized then that the more excited a man is, the more semen he ejaculates. I watched as Joe spasmed slightly soon afterward, and I saw his eyes roll back in his head. He let out a sigh and opened his eyes. He told me that he had an orgasm, but nothing came out. Meanwhile he could see how soaked I was and was fascinated. We were both obviously very aroused at our first instance of masturbation together, but we were a bit uncomfortable at first as well. We did the same thing one more time that night and again the next time he came over, and we started to become more comfortable with each other.
A week or so later, we made plans to sleepover together again. This time he didn't score any magazines to bring, but I had been taping scenes from movies off TV for weeks and had acquired a bit of a collection by now. We settled in to watch my tapes and began the by-now familiar process of touching ourselves and prolonging the experience to watch as much T and A as possible.
Though almost everything else is still very vivid to me, I can't honestly remember who said it first. It may have been me; it may have been him. Regardless, we were both thinking it. The words were "I'll jack you off if you jack me off." We agreed, and although we felt like we may be doing something homosexual, we reasoned (quite correctly, I believe) that since we both liked girls and were, in fact, watching nude women on TV (which is why we were aroused in the first place) that it did not make us gay. We slid our shorts down and saw each other's penises for the first time. His was uncircumcised; I had never seen this before. I was fascinated by it, as he was by the size of my penis compared to his. Although we were roughly the same length, mine was considerably thicker and fatter than his at this time. He also had less hair than I did, which I found interesting.
Almost in unison, we slid our hands around each other's penises. I was immediately struck by how hot his felt. I was right-handed and he was left-handed, so we just scooted close to each other in front of the TV and began to feel each other. Sybil Danning, from the movie They're Playing With Fire, was writhing atop a man, moaning. Unsure what to do, I gripped my hand around his penis and began to pump lightly. Before either of us could say a word, his body shook and I felt his penis convulse in my hand as he experienced his first ejaculation. His penis seemed to dribble out a fine sheen, coating itself and my hand. The second after I saw this, I felt my own penis, which he had barely gripped, start to ejaculate. The feeling rushed through me harder than ever, and my vision blurred for a moment. Joe's hand instinctively let go of my penis as it began to spurt, and I saw myself shoot a thick, white spurt 6 inches into the air and land on Joe's leg. He flinched, but he didn't pull away as my penis spurted again and shot another stream of semen onto my stomach. My hand was still on his penis, and I felt it twitching in time with mine. It was surely the most pleasure either of us had ever felt before. We had just experienced sex with another person for the first time, and through the haze we knew this would be a regular part of our relationship from then on.
Afterward, Joe immediately got up to wash his hands; he seemed more concerned about this than I did. I wiped mine on my regular rag and sat back down on the couch. When he came back, we had a brief reassuring discussion about our sexual orientation. I can only speak for me with certainty, but there were no romantic feelings involved at all; I never wanted to kiss Joe or to hold or cuddle with him, and I never really wanted to taste his semen or please him for his own sake, necessarily. We simply liked the feeling of us touching each other. We were not selfish, but we were not trying to please each other with the same emotional intent that a lover does. We were not willing, at that point or later, to ever really have sex with each other. We just decided that we could help each other get off. We accepted it, and as soon as we did, the floodgates opened. To this day, even with the reassurance of anonymity and the light of 18 years of wisdom, I still truly do not believe that what we had was a homosexual relationship. One thing we did have, though, was a hell of a lot of fun and a hell of a lot of orgasms!
We got it down to a science. He would come over to my house and spend the night (there was a great deal more privacy in my house than his, and I had cable and a VCR in my bedroom by now) and we would spend hours just talking about sex, watching naked girls, and getting each other off. We talked about the mechanics of sex with girls and fantasized about different scenarios; we lusted after girls in our class, and we wondered what a girl's hand or a girl's skin might feel like. We drooled over Madonna videos and Emmanuelle movies. We clamored for masturbation material wherever we could get it. But in the daytime, we still went out and played with our G.I. Joes and hung out at the mall. We learned and grew with each other. Eventually, though, we developed female relationships, and the sexual part of ours began to end. Before it had time to completely die out, Joe moved far away, back to where his parents were from. I don't know how our relationship would have progressed had he stayed, but I do know there was never any awkwardness or any hard feelings. Also, as far as I know, neither one of us has ever told a soul about any of it to this day.
I spoke with Joe only a few times after he moved, and I never saw him again. I often wonder, if I were to see him, what would happen? If we were given time to develop a relationship again, would it ever be of a sexual nature? I do not know if Joe is gay or straight, and it doesn't really matter anyway (though I'm fairly sure he's straight), but I have never had a relationship with another man, nor have I ever felt the desire to do so. I have been moderately successful in my relationships with the opposite sex and am in love with a wonderful woman as I write this. Still, I believe that the relationship Joe and I had was a healthy one, and would have been healthy whether either one of us had turned out to be gay, straight, or whatever combination thereof. It helped us figure out who we were. And it was a lot of fun, too!
