guilt

The summer after my 11th birthday I went to Boy Scout camp and learned to masturbate. I'd heard guys at school talk about "jacking off," and I thought it had something to do with sex, but I really didn't know what it meant. One day at camp we were hiking in the woods, and a friend told a group of us that his father, who was a scoutmaster, caught my friend's brother and another boy "jacking off" in their tent. I laughed along with everybody else, but then I asked him what, exactly, they were doing.

I first remember masturbating when I was about 7. I'm sure I was doing it before then, but that is my earliest memory of doing it. I would put my hand in my underpants and, holding my hand flat, move my soft penis up and down. The rubbing of my hand and of my penis head on my cotton underwear felt fantastic, and if I was lucky I would reach a sort-of orgasm before I got too much of an erection for my technique to work. Of course, I didn't use those words — "boner" was what my best friend and I called an erection, and orgasm was just some final, great, nameless feeling.

I started masturbating around 5th grade. We had a talk on it in sex-ed, and I just had to try. It was quite nice. I was kind of a bad student then, and even didn't pick up on most of the sex-ed stuff, but this I did remember. At the time I would just make a fist and jerk away. I liked the feeling a lot. Then after a while something sudden would happen, and everything would be strange and I would stop. I later learned that this was orgasm.

The night I had my very first orgasm (it was also the first time I had ever masturbated) was January 1, 1969. Prior to that, I don't remember paying any particular attention to my penis or having any sexual feelings. But this night I was spending with my nephew, who was about 4 months younger than me. We were to sleep in the same bed. Since boys will be boys, we weren't interested in going to sleep right away — just talking and joking around. Eventually we started talking about sex and how our bodies were changing. He asked me if I could get hard. I already was!

I am a 44-year-old African-American male. I got interested in masturbation long before I could do it. When I was very young I found my parents' stash of erotic magazines and books. There was one story, "Memoirs of a Southern Belle," that I will never forget. It was about a girl's sexual awakening during the Civil War. It is still the basis of many of my masturbation fantasies today. 

It all started when I was 12 1/2. I had always been a curious child, ready to indulge in "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" games at any time. Maybe the curiosity stemmed from seeing an uncircumcised neighbor years earlier, discovering the fact that every boy's penis looked different. Whatever the reason, I was playing one of these games with a younger relative during the summer of 1970.

My first masturbation session was probably at age 15 and a half (yes, I know it's late), in the bathroom during the school holidays. I had read a section on masturbation in a book my parents had bought, and I was trying out the technique. Nothing seemed to happen, but it felt good, so I continued. After about 10 minutes my body was wracked with an incredibly powerful orgasm, causing me to cry out involuntarily. (Fortunately, nobody else was home.). My ejaculation was feeble — a tiny droplet of clear liquid appeared at the end of my penis.

I was 9 or 10 years old when I was first told about masturbation by a friend who was a year older than me. At that stage I did not think there was anything special about it. I shared a room with my younger brother, but fortunately, as I developed and came to enjoy masturbation, I was able to move into a room of my own and enjoy the privilege of masturbating in private without having to wait for my younger brother to get to sleep. I still had lots of "wet-dreams," although my mother did not seem to be fazed by the stains on the sheets.

I first discovered masturbation when I was about 10, almost 11. I lived in a small town with not a lot to do, and I had one friend who was 14 or 15 at the time (can't remember for sure). Anyway he would come over and we would play super Nintendo or screw around or anything. One time he brought over a porn video and asked if I wanted to watch it, so I said, sure -- why not? So we did, and he asked if he could play with his penis. I said go for it. He told me to do it too, and I asked how, and he told me to just rub my penis. So I did.

I masturbated to orgasm for the first time in July 1987. I was 12 years old. I was washing the small amount of pubic hair I had, and noticed that my penis began to get erect. I rubbed my penis with soap using a "two hands praying" method, and it felt very different from how I had remembered it feeling just a few months earlier. Soon I felt my penis becoming very sensitive -- almost ticklish. It felt like I was going to urinate, but more intense. Since I was in the shower anyway, I wasn't that concerned if I did actually did urinate, so I kept rubbing myself.