Mmm

Also known as: more mindful masturbation. By which I mean more blathering on about mindful masturbation rather than masturbation that is more mindful, though I guess that would work too, more or less. Less, really.

I think that too many people take wanking for granted. Which sort of makes sense when you call it "wanking" because "wanking" sounds like something you ought to take for granted, or even something you should be ashamed of. I would disapprove of using the word, but I love it (the word, that is, though I love the act itself, too, obviously) too much. Wanking.


I was rubbing one out last night, taking breaks from the action to exchange erotic text messages with the guy who was meant to keep me from wanking by playing with my cock. He'd messaged me on one of those hook-up sites, and he'd asked me to call him, and I had, and instead of calling me back, he'd texted me -- after 8pm -- that he was working in Rockville and would be getting off (ahem) in an hour. I was, as it happened, at a Staples in Rockville buying pens at the time, so I offered to stop by his place of employment and say hello. I knew, for a variety of reasons, that he wouldn't take me up on that offer, but I thought he might call me as soon as he was done work and that there might still be time for him to stop by the house and get fucked before b&c was due back from a concert in Baltimore. But then I didn't hear back from him for almost two hours, when I was lying on my bed, cock in hand, and he told me that there'd been an emergency at work. I have no idea what he does for a living, but his excuse didn't exactly ring true.


But I was playing with myself, and I was in a good mood, so rather than ignore him, I decided to tease him as best I could under the circumstances. Given his reactions, I'd have to say I did pretty well. He says he wants to try to get together again this weekend, and I really don't have time, but last night it was all about self-titillation.

A lot of people look at masturbation as something you do when you can't find so-called real sex. I think that masturbation is real sex. I might call it self-sex, as opposed to interactive sex (when another person is involved), but those terms are also imperfect. These days I have interactive sex more frequently than I jerk off, but that mostly tells you how precious little free time I have, though I suppose it also illustrates how little I like the quick wank. Masturbation is not an unfortunate necessity. It's not a cigarette for a nicotine addict.


If your interactive sex is anything like mine, the ejaculation is somewhere way down your list of priorities. Interactive sex is all about the give and take, the lips on lips, the lips on nips, the increasingly agitated moans of the man whose body you're playing like a fine instrument. I clearly have nothing against experiencing, or bringing another man to, a mind-bending orgasm, but I reckon that you out to have bent a guy's psyche well before he's approaching ejaculation. When your bed is your canvas and another man (and your own body) is your medium, your product is two (or more, I suppose) happy guys who are thinking over the entirety of the past hour or two when they say, "That was great!"

When you're jerking off, your work of art is a spectacular ejaculation.


That's not to say that everything leading up to the ejaculation isn't fun fun fun fun fun: the better time you have during the lead up, the more spectacular the ejaculation is likely to be. But wanking is about cumming. It's about cumming if you're the sort of guy who does it in two minutes in the shower, and it's about cumming if you spending an hour doing it while exchanging increasingly explicit text messages with some guy you know only from a few emails and a cock photo. Masturbation is the ultimate self-centered activity, and the center of a solo man is his cock.


I'm certainly not arguing that masturbation is superior to interactive sex. I'm not really saying that interactive sex is superior, either. From a physical standpoint, each has its pluses and minuses. Interactive sex, properly performed, stimulates more of the body, but in a more diffuse way. Masturbation, in my experience, has the advantage of more control which leads, in my experience (which, I recognize, is not universal) to more concentrated and intense orgasm. Interactive sex can be (and usually is, for me anyway) more spiritually satisfying because it's a shared activity, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't avail yourself of every opportunity for a fully awesome wank.


I'm aware that there's a potentially ridiculous aspect to all this ruminating about jerking off. But I'm entirely sincere about it, and if I'm contemplative about wanking, it's because wanking encourages contemplation. Next to a hot shower, there's nothing more conducive to unfocused meditation and thousand-mile journeys of the psyche than a really good wank. Now I, for better or worse, have the sort of mind that would walk five hundred miles pretty much at the drop of a hat, and I am given to inappropriate reflection even when I'm plowing an ass. But, really, you can't go there. I have tried to tell myself -- and I tried in particular to make this argument to myself one time when I was prone on the bed with a bottom bouncing up and down on my cock -- that when you're fucking one boy, thinking about the other boys that you've fucked is a way of celebrating the vast collective unconscious. But it's not: it's just an inability to live in the moment. When you're fucking another guy, you have a responsibility to fuck that guy. I don't believe in sexual exclusivity -- OBVIOUSLY -- but when you're fucking a guy, you have to have a moment of sexual exclusivity: you owe it to the bottom. Even if the bottom's dumber than soot. (I do not, truly, think that bottoms are any less intelligent than tops: it's just that I've come across [and cum in] a few who needed a few years of education to get to the level of soot.) You owe it to yourself, too. Sex is one of the few places where it should be easy to live in the moment.


When you're wanking, though, you are free -- nay, encouraged -- to think about every single ass you've plowed, every throat you've penetrated, every nipple you've bitten, every asshole or armpit you've spent a quarter-hour eating out, every pair of plump lips you've kissed. That's the real purpose of porn. It's not the porn that makes your load hit the wall behind your bed, it's the flood of memories that starts: the recollection of the sensation of all those real bodies that begins when you see those idealized bodies approach and touch each other on the screen. Interactive sex should be all over the body with a focused mind. Masturbation is the opportunity to let your mind roam the cosmos while your pleasure centers firmly in your cock.

Think about all that, and then maybe give yourself an extra half hour the next time you want to crank one out.