Whole magazines and erotic books more often need to be concealed. People mentioned relatively open, yet obscure places, such as the top or bottom shelf of a bookcase, the rear of a drawer beneath other things that would normally be there, and in a closet inside luggage or a book bag, or beneath a pile of old clothing. Other people became more ingenious, making or finding space in walls, ceilings, box springs – or taping envelopes to the bottoms of drawers or cabinets. Still others concealed items in computer equipment cases or speaker enclosures (being careful not to interfere with the equipment's ventilation).
More revealing were the tales of what happens when hidden things are discovered by friends or family. A number of responses told of parents smiling and winking their acceptance of the discovered stash. Other parents either ignored it or quietly removed it. Some parents, along with most siblings, cousins, and friends, asked to borrow it (or surreptitiously helped themselves).]
I consider myself somewhat of a James Bond when it comes to hiding my "props." I've used many places: magazines and clean-up rags under my mattress, and videotapes and empty toilet-tissue rolls in my dresser drawers (under lots of socks and stuff, of course). I've had some strange adventures, though. Once, as a kid in elementary school, somebody brought an adult magazine to the playground. I hid it in the leg of my jeans as we came back inside. Recently, I got the idea to rename my computer-porn files to look exactly like the map files for a favorite game, Half-Life. Even stranger, my new favorite place to hide my stash of condoms is in a WWII-era German mess tin I have in my room. But even with creativity, getting caught every so often is inevitable. My parents have found my magazines and computer files. Once, one of my tapes went missing. I looked in my dad's drawers, and sure enough, there it was. I wonder how long it took him to realize I had stolen it back!
- age 19, New Jersey
This Week's Wackiest Response:
I give all that stuff to a monkey, who then hands it to a goblin that then buries it in an ancient Aztec pyramid where it is guarded by legions of my hybrid fighting pepper-cabbage troops. Lara Croft once found it, but then she turned into a hippopotamus.
- age 16, Massachusetts
Last year I bragged to my school buddies that I had masturbated a lot while looking at my dad's porn magazines. They all wanted me to bring some to school so they could see, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. I didn't want to just have them in my backpack in case someone looked inside and told the teacher. We eat a lot of Pringle's potato chips at home – the ones with the round cans. So, I took some empty tubes, rolled up the magazines, stuffed them inside, and put the cans in my backpack. Word spread the next day among my friends that "The chips are here!" We all went to the bathroom at the same time and I passed out a can to each of them. We each sat in a stall and masturbated, passing magazines under the stalls to each other.
- age 16, Florida
My concern is to hide my stuff from my teenage son, not my parents. I didn't start using toys until I went away to college, and keeping them in my locked luggage in my closet kept them safe from roommates. However, with my son it is a totally different matter. Since he was a little boy, he has always liked to play in my room, lounge around on my bed, etc. I am a single father, so we each have our own room and bath. I know that he masturbates, but it is not information that we share. I've found that the best hiding place is in a box with my teaching materials, underneath posters and assorted props. The box has never been disturbed. It contains magazines, lube, a couple of videos, two battery-powered oral toys, and one anal toy I haven't tried yet. My underwear drawer and other private spaces have been checked for what I guess are the same reasons we checked our own dad's rooms.
- age 45, California
I have always hidden any masturbation items in my nightstand. Nobody has ever found them because they are well hidden in the back of a small drawer. I also have my own bathroom, so I can hide things in the cabinets; no one ever goes in there.
- age 16, Illinois
Well, it was under my bed for some time. My 17-year-old son is with me on weekends. I came home one Friday night, and he was in *my* room with *my* porn videos on the TV, *my* genital ring on his erection, and using *my* lube! And, yes, he was in VERY BIG TROUBLE!
- age 43, California
I had two or three floppy disks full of porn and hid them under my printer. But now all my porn won't fit onto two or three floppy disks, so I put it in a folder, deep inside Windows, which I also made hidden.
- age 15, Ireland
I used to hide magazines and other stuff in a secret compartment I made in my bed. As I got older, I stopped hiding magazines and instead just kept them discreetly – I told my mother I had them and she didn't mind as long as she didn't see them. I hide only two things now – a sex toy (a substitute vagina), and 4 or 5 hardcore videos. I keep these in a locked cupboard in my bedroom. Although, recently I went to work and accidentally left a magazine open on my bed. My mother saw it and complained quite a bit – I was mortified and embarrassed. I don't know why she couldn't have just ignored it.
- age 27, United Kingdom
I used to masturbate with condoms, so I kept them in the computer speakers in my room. The backs attach with screws. I keep 3.5-inch floppy disks in my nightstand so I can look at the porn on them. I keep passwords for sites in my wallet. No one has ever found any of my stuff. My friends knew there was stuff in the speakers, but none of my family members.
- age 15, Ohio
Since I'm perfectly open with my husband about masturbation, I don't need to hide my sex toys and videos. But when I was younger and living with my parents, it was a bit of a challenge. My mother was a snoop and was always looking in my brother's and my bedrooms for things like drugs. I found the safest place to hide my vibrator and sexy books were in the pockets of a winter coat that hung in my closet. It worked, because she never found them!
- age 42, California (female)
I have a special hiding place for my masturbation items. I cut a hole with a pocketknife in the batting beneath my box springs. Now, I can reach under the bed and remove my "items" that lie inside the box springs. It's a good place to hide stuff, and nobody has ever found any of it.
- age 16, Tennessee
The best hiding place is out in the open, but somewhat inconvenient – say, on the top or bottom shelf of a bookcase, camouflaged by all the other books. (Woe be to those who don't own many books!) When I was married, I kept my porn stash in a bureau drawer, handy to my side of the bed so I could get them out for afternoon masturbation sessions. My kids inevitably discovered them, and as they grew older and interested, I would notice various items disappearing and then reappearing. I suppose it was a kind of secret communication between us. As they got older, I would sometimes "borrow" items of theirs as well!
- age 39, Florida
I keep a small bottle of baby oil, a few "off-color" magazines, and a little pack of tissues in my beanbag chair (they end up getting creased from time to time). Many of my friends spend the night, and I know for a fact that most of them masturbate. I show them my stuff and tell them if they need to use them in the middle of the night, to go ahead. But they need to clean up their messes. That's just common courtesy.
- age 14, Iowa
I have one porno DVD I used to keep behind the books on my bedside bookshelf. A female friend was over once and pulled out a book to look at it. I don't know if she saw the porno. After that, I started keeping it in a locked security box. I don't really care if my male friends see or know about my masturbation material, but I would be embarrassed if my female friends did. Unless, of course, they were into it.
- age 24, Illinois
The only thing I have to hide is a videotape my friend made me. I have a great place to hide it – in my VCR! My VCR doesn't work right. It won't eject a tape unless you struggle, and it won't play unless you rewind first. So it's a great hiding place. It's so great not even my older brother knows about it, let alone my parents.
- age 16, California
A few years after I got married, I had some girlie magazines that I put in my dresser drawer. It was an obvious place, I know (and I shouldn't have to explain to JackinWorld readers that I still masturbate after marriage). My wife saw them one day and got angry, but I said I wasn't trying to hide that side of my life and suggested we both look at them if she wanted to. We did just that, and several days later I saw that she had been having her own masturbation sessions looking at the magazines – even leaving them open to the same pictures I had been most interested in. Since then, we have respected each other's need to masturbate privately as part of our sex life together.
- age 50, Ohio
I keep a small bottle of baby oil, a few "off-color" magazines, and a little pack of tissues in my beanbag chair (they end up getting creased from time to time). Many of my friends spend the night and I know for a fact that most of them masturbate. The first opportunity I get, I show them my stuff, and tell them if they need to use them in the middle of the night, to go ahead. But, they need to clean up their own messes. That's just common courtesy.
- age 14, Iowa
I have hidden stories on my computer so I could read a story without having to go on the Net. Even though it is the same story, I still get aroused. I put a password on the file to lock it (Word 2000 is great for that).
- age 15, Ontario, Canada
When I was a teenager, I used to keep a pair of socks tucked up underneath my desk to wear on my penis during masturbation sessions. They weren't completely hidden, but you had to get down on the floor to discover them. One night when I was 20, I was aroused and ready, but when I reached for them, they were gone. Nothing was ever said about it, and to this day I don't know if my mother laundered them or just threw them away.
- age 25, Illinois
I was recently discovered with a weird sex catalog and a couple of printed pictures in my locker/nightstand. My brother-in-law told me that my mom found it and advised me to find a better place. I decided to throw them out to save myself the trouble. All my goods are now on my computer and on disks. My mom has no idea how to work a computer, so I'm safe until she learns how. Why the hell are parents so damn nosy?
- age 16, Michigan
When I was a kid, I kept my magazines and lube in a box similar to a footlocker. When I came back home to my folks' house after my army service, I did the same thing. I was 21 years old. One day, I went into my room and my dad was in my box of goodies. He grinned and asked me if he could have a key so he could look at the stuff, too. He's a cool guy. I shared my stuff with him until I moved out on my own. I want to be cool like that with my sons, too.
- age 38, California
As much as I'd like to have a masturbation toy to play with, I've never had one – but I did occasionally borrow my dad's back massager. He kept it in his closet and never used it, so sometimes, I would take it when no one was home and keep it in my room for a few days. I found that hiding things out in the open is the best way. No one would think you would "hide" something bad in the open, and therefore they'd assume you had it there for reasons other than masturbation. Other items like erotic novels are a bit more difficult to explain if they are found. Yet I still place these in an obvious place, like on my bookshelf. You would have to be close enough to read the title on the spine to know whether it was anything out of the ordinary.
- age 14, Canada (female)
I hide all my erotic materials in my computer in files that require a password to access. I also have several screen names only I know. I use these to read and view Internet erotica. When I was a teenager living at home, I hid my erotica in a plastic bag buried under a tree in the woods behind my house.
- age 60, Texas
Everyone in my family knows that my brother and I masturbate. Still, I like to pretend to be sneaky about it, just for fun. I have a collectible tin lunchbox, which turned out to be the perfect place to hide my masturbation supplies. I use Wondergel for a lube and it goes into the tin, as well as any pictures I might have printed recently. I usually stay away from porn, but once in a while I look at it and print out some pictures. My brother found my stash once and said, "Can I borrow the Wondergel?" Before I had the tin, I kept my supplies hidden in my dresser.
- age 14, Illinois
Some of my friends got me a vibrator for my 16th birthday. I keep it in a shoebox in my closet. I bought a small vibrator that I keep in the bottom of my purse for special occasions, like at school.
- age 17, Michigan (female)
I hide all of my masturbation materials on the very top shelf in my closet. I have kept baby oil up there, and my dad found it. He said he was looking for it "to use after a shower," but I know it's because he masturbates, too. I have 4 brothers, and they know it's there (and have used it before, too). If my mom found it, though, I would die.
- age 16, Massachusetts
I had cool parents. When I was a teen, my mother was always cleaning my room and moving my magazines around so she could clean. She did get upset, though, when I would ejaculate between the mattresses and just leave it there to stain. My brother would always snoop around looking for my magazines. He is only a year younger than I am and would always masturbate in my room. We were open about it. When I was 17, my father caught me copying porno tapes. He just questioned me and forgot about it.
- age 33, New York
Usually I hide my things in my bedroom drawer – if I have anything to hide. To keep suspicion to a minimum (in my family, it's never been talked about), I draw my masturbation material from regular household items that wouldn't require hiding. I swim competitively, so I have lotion to keep the chlorine from irritating my skin. "Coincidentally," this lotion makes a great lube when push comes to shove. Also, I once decided to try a technique involving the mattress, so I grabbed a plastic glove from the pantry to hold the Vaseline (another common lube that wouldn't raise suspicion). When I realized this was the best technique I had tried, the gloves slowly started to disappear, with my family none the wiser. My stuff has never been discovered (at least, to my knowledge), and I make sure that if something becomes a newly found lube, it stays out of everyone else's way.
- age 15, Canada
I have masturbated since I was 14. When I turned 18, I purchased a dildo from a store and kept it locked in a small file cabinet I had in my room. I used this as a hiding place for many years. One day my husband found my things and told me I didn't need to "hide" them. We began using them in our lovemaking. Now, they are kept back in that same cabinet so the children won't find them.
- age 40, Iowa (female)
It's all on the Net. I keep a collection of links and media in a folder "zipped up" with a password in my folder. It's all there – easy to get to and put away.
- age 14, Canada
Thank goodness we moved out of that small apartment and into a *big* house! Back in the apartment, I couldn't hide anything. Now, I hide my videos in a "Just Do It!" box. (My wife knows they are in there; she just doesn't want to waste time going through 20-plus shoeboxes.) I store my lubes in a medicine bag under the guest bathroom sink. My wife *never* goes anywhere near medicine.
- age 28, Florida
I masturbate with socks and keep them between the corner of my bed and the wall. I keep my magazines in a box of old school stuff and my Zip disks and addresses under a box in my room – one too heavy for my mom to lift. I have had my socks found a few times, but I've learned to clean them only when I do my own laundry.
- age 15, Iowa
My vibrator is actually one of those wiggly pens, so no one has a clue! My lube is from my parents' room; they never notice it's gone.
- age 15, California (female)
I hide stuff in a hole in my wall. When my room was being redone, I cut a hole in my wall about one foot square. I put a dresser in front of it. What's more, my parents *never* go into my room. Still, it's a cool spot to hide stuff. Now, the only problem is that I get turned on whenever I look at that dresser!
- age 14, New Jersey
I have several places to hide magazines: between my mattress and box springs, and in my desk under a ton of papers. Also, I have an erector set for building stuff like model cars and tanks. A panel opens up for you to store instruction books. Well...let's just say it has become a true "erector" set!
- age 15, Michigan
Normally I hide my stuff, no matter what, in boxes that are everywhere in my room – mostly from old software packages and computer hardware.
- age 20, Germany
The only masturbation item I have hidden was some pictures of naked women in erotic poses I printed off the Internet. I just hid these pictures inside the pages of a sports magazine in the middle of a stack in my closet. I guess it was a pretty good hiding spot for a while, because no one ever found it. But one day my brother (a year older than me) was looking for an old magazine of his. He was looking through my stack of magazines. I didn't want to say anything that would arouse suspicion, but neither did I want him to find my pictures. He didn't say anything to me, but I think he found them and used them often when he masturbated, because I noticed some of my pictures in different pages of the magazine than where I last left them. Well, I guess guys will be guys!
- age 15, Connecticut
I didn't have to hide anything because I lived with my dad. We just kept a huge stack of magazines in the bathroom that we both looked at. Of course, we had the "No sticky pages" rule. My dad was cool. He'd give warnings before he came upstairs, too.
- age 16, Ohio
I usually hide my stuff in my closet on the floor behind a sleeping bag. My little brother is 11 and hasn't started puberty yet, so he likes to snoop for anything he considers "nasty." So far, he hasn't found anything in this hiding place, because the sleeping bag has been there forever and is not "freshly moved there." I hope that one day I won't have to hide my masturbation stuff from him. Maybe I could even share it with him.
- age 13, Texas
I hide all of my paraphernalia in this huge stack of my school papers, which my parents would never attempt to sort through by themselves. My dad found some of my pictures when I carelessly forgot to put them away a year ago, but he just said to get rid of them until I'm 18.
- age 17, Illinois
About a year ago, I found out about JackinWorld. My dad and I aren't open about this subject. So, I printed out information such as the "How-To" articles and hid it in my room. About two weeks afterward, I discovered that he bought me a new bed and found the papers. He confronted me and asked if I had any questions. After all that – I swear – he asked me if he could borrow the papers and then give them back. My mom was gone on vacation (thankfully) for about 3 weeks. I guess he needed them.
- age 16, California
Although I am a heterosexual, sometimes I enjoy reading the articles in gay magazines. I once forgot to put a magazine back under my bed, where I usually hide it. My brother found it and teased me, but I got him back when I took a picture of him masturbating to it an hour later. Now, it's our little secret.
- age 17, Ohio
My nightstand and dresser each have a hidden sliding compartment. It's not very big, but it's big enough. I've kept condoms, K-Y Jelly, Vaseline, and magazines in there. I also keep some panties I have collected from past female companions in there.
- age 20, Georgia
I hide my stuff in the ceiling – above the ceiling tiles!
- age 15, Canada
I tape things to the insides of drawers and cupboards. Read James Bond and you'll learn other tricks as well. My favorite is to put magazines in a plastic pocket taped to the bottom of a drawer.
- age 18, Australia
I normally keep all my pictures and videos on my computer, in a locked folder. Nobody knows about it, or the password, so I feel safe. For lube, I just use my mom's big bottle of lotion – I put some into a small lotion bottle, which I refill occasionally and just put in my desk. I don't think she'll question much if she sees a bottle of lotion. Locked away on the computer is good, because I can never tell when my mom will go through my room – so I don't keep anything there.
- age 14, Oregon
I like to keep my stuff behind the videotapes in my bedroom. They are on a bookshelf, and there are a few inches behind them and the wall. Nobody can see them there, and nobody would ever think of looking there. Once, though, my mom did. (Mothers look everywhere!) She found my baby oil. But happily, it was at the same time I was learning how to do massage in school, so I could use that as a perfect alibi. What's more, I talked my mother into buying some more for me.
- age 16, Arizona