I cannot remember when I began masturbating, but I must have been 5 or 6. I always did it lying on my stomach and rubbing against a hard mattress. I'd never been told not to do it, didn't know anybody else did, and didn't know any name for it. I somehow had the idea, though, that I shouldn't do it where I could be seen. My sister, a couple years younger, slept in the same room, so I had to wait until she was asleep. I even remember urging her to go on to sleep, so naturally she tried to stay awake.
After I had my own room, I was allowed to keep the door closed. However, either my mother or father would come in sometimes, so I had to be on guard. Looking back I'm sure my father knew what I was doing, but he never mentioned it. I wish he had. The closest my mother came to saying anything was one night when she was reading a bedtime story and suddenly turned back the covers. I had my penis in my hand, but as I stated before, that wasn't the way I did it. She said, "I thought that's what you were doing!" Nothing else, but that enforced my feeling that it must be something bad — so every time I did it, I promised I would never do it again. That might have lasted a couple of nights, but then I'd do it "one more time."
I was 9 years old before I knew anything about sex, and I was a fairly sharp kid. I didn't believe the girl next door when she gave me the distorted details. I even said, "My parents don't do that!" It was after my father took my sister and me to see my cousin's white mice. They had babies, and my sister asked, "Where did they come from?" "They grew up inside their mother," he explained, and now I knew the girl next door wasn't completely wrong! Somehow I was embarrassed, and I would have been even more so if my sister had asked more about how they got there.
My mother gave me a book about growing up when I was in 6th grade. I knew more about it than I'd been told; intuition, I suppose. The book mentioned masturbation, said it was natural and okay as long as you didn't do it too much, but didn't say how much that was. A friend of mine had a book his mother had given him that said it took two spoonfuls of blood to produce an ejaculation. For some reason I put more stock in that than my book. I remember telling him that the book "helped me," and he said it helped him, too — but that was all we said. Masturbation was something we joked about that other people did!
Strangely, I can't remember when I started producing semen, but then there were stains on the sheets. If my mother saw it, she didn't say anything about it. When I began grade 7, we dressed for gym and took showers. There was more discussion, and one boy said his father asked him if he ever played with himself. He admitted he had, and we were in awe of a father who would discuss this.
I had long realized that the penis could get hard. Also, I had never seen that many guys nude, although I knew my penis looked different from my father's or my grandfather's, both of whom I'd seen nude when we changed clothes for swimming. Somebody (maybe me) asked in the locker room what the difference was, and I then learned about circumcision. When we had gym last period, the two gym teachers undressed and went in the shower after the last student came out, but we saw them as they passed the lockers, and we could really tell the difference as one was cut, the other not. Soon after that, I read in the Bible about circumcision, and I used the index to read all I could about it. I especially wondered about Paul telling his followers not to "undo" circumcision. I wondered how that was done, and I decided then that I had been robbed!
I began growing a mustache and then whiskers, and I decided that the hair growth had happened to me earlier than most guys because of masturbating, so I tried to hide the hair by shaving with a dry razor. I also began going with girls sooner than most of the other boys. I knew by this time that sex could be pleasurable, but even before hearing the slogan "true love waits," I wanted to "save it" for marriage. By the time I began college, I knew a little more about masturbation, and since the mattresses I had at that point weren't conducive to rubbing, I began masturbating with my hand. I was anxious to get married and would have done so much younger if the right girl had been as interested in me as I was in her.
When I went into basic training in the army, I had a long masturbation dry spell. I wasn't about to mess around in the shower. The first time we got an overnight pass, 3 other guys and I rented a hotel room. This would have been the perfect time to release tensions, but nobody did or even talked about it, and nobody stayed in the shower long enough to be questioned.
I finally found the girl of my dreams, and we were married before the second part of basic was over. I had a weekend pass, and after the church wedding, my parents took us to a town where I could catch a bus back to camp, so my bride and I had a one-night honeymoon that wasn't too successful. However, I went to the library to look up some how-to-do-it books, and the next weekend was much more successful.
We have two sons, and I promised myself to do a better job than my father instructing them. I told them masturbation isn't wrong and is preferable to getting a girl pregnant. I asked the older one once if he was masturbating, and he replied that he was, but why didn't we talk about other things? Maybe that discouraged me from talking more to the younger son, but they were together a lot and I assumed he had learned to do it from his older brother.
For many years my wife and I didn't even discuss masturbation, but finally we did, and now sometimes we do it together. I still haven't gotten over the earlier secrecy, though, and if I do it anywhere other than as part of our relationship, I say little about it. In the interest of prostate health — makes a good excuse anyhow — I try to have an ejaculation (if it can be called that for a senior citizen) 3 times a week. If for some reason it isn't with my spouse, I do it alone.
There still aren't many people I can talk to about masturbation. But my wife and I have become friends with a couple about our age, and he and I often talk about it, and we even compare notes, mostly by e-mail. We've never done it together and probably won't, but we have compared out equipment. Also, during recent years, a number of men have begun "restoring" their foreskins. It can't really be done, but training the remainder of the foreskin can stretch it out to make the glans more sensitive, providing more good feelings through the added skin. The only time my father and I really discussed anything about sex was when I asked him about circumcision. I knew about it by this time, but I wanted somehow to discuss sex with him. I wish he were still living so I could tell him what I've done. I have told my sons and showed them the success I've had. I think the restoring has really helped my love life as well as made masturbation more successful.
Do you find yourself masturbating more often during some seasons than others? Why?
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Two spoonfuls of blood
Gender:
Male