I invented masturbation.
You’re welcome.
It’s a feature of my persistent narcissism that I have often assumed I’m the first to discover something inexplicable. I’m the first to stumble into the vortex of writing, that out-of-control spiral of need and greed and forward motion. I’m the first to dice up my skin in the name of despair (though I never felt any pressure relief from cutting; I was an intensely practical self-mutilator, rehearsing for the inevitable main event).
I didn’t come to adolescence loving myself. I got breasts at nine and shit went downhill from there. The sense of body that I’d had before—the body that could climb trees and scale the sides of the creek by my house—vanished. Now I had this brand new vehicle I didn’t know how to drive.
It had never really occurred to me that I was a “girl” and thus not a “boy.” Until puberty any differences between those two states were negligible.
It had never really occurred to me that I was a “girl” and thus not a “boy.” Until puberty any differences between those two states were negligible. When I was the leader of the girls’ tag team in grammar school, I enlisted my best friend Tommy to play on our side. I vividly remember standing on the playground while the other kids tried to explain to me that Tommy couldn’t play on the girls’ side.
Since I wasn’t convinced, I said, “Then I’m not gonna play.” So they gave in. And Tommy played on the girls’ team.
Then I’m not gonna play could accurately asses most of my responses to things that are assumed. If anyone had told me masturbation existed, I probably would have avoided doing it out of sheer antagonism.
However.
I had no idea. I thought I was a fucking genius. This body, that was all sorts of screwed up, which I could only vaguely relate to the bodies of others (while maintaining a level of mental foreignness that served to alienate me from myself), could, when played just right, feel fantastic. Better, in fact, than running the bases at softball, and almost as good as that burst of energy I used to get jetting clear across the soccer field to stop the opposing team’s offense from scoring.
There was a problem, though. A relatively large problem.
I was fucking terrible at masturbating. Oh man. Really, really awful.
I stumbled into physical pleasure through ignorance and experimentation, like I’ve stumbled into most things worth doing. And when I say “ignorance” I’m not kidding. I’d somehow made it to eleven years old without really understanding my own anatomy.
How much I can blame the world for this is debatable. I don’t remember anyone ever using words like “labia” and “clitoris” and “vulva,” but that doesn’t mean they didn’t. In my early memories, I didn’t inhabit my body. I inhabited other people’s bodies, on a somewhat random basis, usually having to do with how cool their bike was, or how interesting I found the way they talked.
Had I been a more social child, I would have probably decided to be an actor. The line blurs between acting and fiction writing; I put on other people’s clothes all the time, I walk in their shoes, I think their thoughts. I have made rather a lifestyle of playing with imaginary friends, and the roots of all that was how I saw the world as a child: as an observer, an outsider, constantly trying to assemble from scraps a complete picture of how things worked. I thought if only I could figure that out, I might be able to find my place.
Not everything I’ve ever experienced is down to being genderqueer; then again, absolutely everything is down to gender. Masturbation was a way to test and observe myself as if from the outside. Finding the key to that particular lock seemed like the holy grail: if I could work it out, maybe everything else would become clear.
But hell, I didn’t even know where the lock was, let alone what kind of key it required. My early efforts at pleasuring the body I happen to have were arduous, exhausting, and frequently acrobatic.
Perhaps if I’d had a mirror I might have made sense of what I was doing. As it was, each time I hunkered down … it was like wandering into the desert anew, disorienting and somewhat hopeless.
I’ve never had a good sense of maps, of visual representations of physical space. Perhaps if I’d had a mirror I might have made sense of what I was doing. As it was, each time I hunkered down—in the dead of night, when the rest of the house was assumed to be unconscious—it was like wandering into the desert anew, disorienting and somewhat hopeless. I was by no means always successful at finding the delicious, indulgent, inveterately sinful feeling of flying, for which I had absolutely no name. (The word “orgasm,” like the word “masturbation,” did not exist in my world. They were ephemeral concepts without anything so concrete as language attached to them.)
How much of my ignorance was because I was so afraid and ashamed of this body? How much was an intentional shying away from everything that reminded me that I was stuck in it like a prison? A prison with, of course, no directions, and constantly changing corridors.
Listen, I know it’s something of a hush-hush thing, but I’m just going to put this out there: I spent a lot of time trying to get off when I was eleven and twelve and thirteen years old.
Listen, I know it’s something of a hush-hush thing, but I’m just going to put this out there: I spent a lot of time trying to get off when I was eleven and twelve and thirteen years old. Insomnia has frequently led me to profound increases in productivity, and that was no exception. I had, at the time, a television with cable in my bedroom, so when my eyes were tired of reading I’d shut off the lights and watch late-night movies.
And masturbate. Because I have always been very good at multitasking.
Remember that I thought this was a sin I’d invented, that I was the only one with the mechanics to do this thing, whatever the hell it was, and that since I had this bit of magic, I’d damn well better learn how to wield it.
I didn’t learn to love my body through masturbation. This body—with its inconvenient shapes, its fat stores, its annoying lack of length—continued to confound and irritate and enrage me for years. On some days it still does. What I did learn, stumbling around in the dark of my brain while vainly attempting to pleasure my body, was that despite how alternately horrifying and transcendent my physical experience was, my emotional journey was oddly ascending.
I understood myself as kinky through fantasy long before I discovered that other people were also freaks. (I never thought I’d invented tying people up and fucking with their heads, though—got enough of that in different forms on primetime.) An extended period of solo experimentation also allowed me to explore gender in ways that I wouldn’t have been able to if my sexual initiation had occurred with other people. In my brain I could play any role, and I did. I was not saddled with the expectations that partners later had, in the dark days before words like “genderqueer” and “gender fluid” and “gender nonbinary” were in common use.
An extended period of solo experimentation also allowed me to explore gender in ways that I wouldn’t have been able to if my sexual initiation had occurred with other people.
After years of vigorous, dedicated practice, I got good at masturbation. Damn good. Getting myself off isn’t better than sex with other people, it’s a totally different sport. And it’s the only one that leads to genuine moments of self-acceptance, the kind of wholeness that you actually need a social vacuum to cultivate. Finding yourself through the medium of your body, your skin and nerve endings, the endless fascination of your own responses to stimuli, is a journey with no beginning and no ending.
If you also manage to find love in that place, where you are the only one who matters, where your needs meet your desires and are answered, that’s a lucky fucking break.
Obviously, I assume I’m the only person who’s ever managed the trick.
The author owes a debt of gratitude to the writers of Roseanne, whose episode about DJ whacking off induced zir to look up “masturbation” in a dictionary—literally, a big heavy hardcover volume of Webster’s—and marvel that, in fact, other perverts had already worked out how to do it. It was quite shocking. The dictionary has been a suspect form of literature ever since.
top photo by Rebecca Matthews on Unsplash
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