It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must masturbate. Despite this, I had sex before I masturbated for the first time, and the masturbation took a great deal of effort. Masturbation is fucking hard, but fucking hard is not masturbation.
To clarify, I learned calculus before I masturbated for the first time but I attempted and failed at masturbating before I attempted calculus. Thus, calculus is easier than masturbation but primarily because there are more guides for it. When I looked up how to do a calculus problem, I generally found a nice guide to walk me through it. I’ve never been able to find a good article that teaches boys how to masturbate. However, there are loads of articles for girls. Apparently and surprisingly, it’s more common for girls to struggle with the mysterious magic of masturbation based on my careful analysis of responses on Yahoo Answers.
But here’s a perfunctory guide of what to do. There are two primary areas for attacking masturbation. The first is physical technique. The motion to masturbation takes practice and some degree of physical strength. I am a small, weak boy with flaccid arms and tight pants, so I struggled with this one at first. But it is a hurdle you may surprisingly easily overcome through focused practice. The second is inspiration. People often talk about what they masturbate to. Some masturbate to pictures, books, picture books, videos, comics, real-live people, and even poorly written Sun columns. You may just need to find the inspiration that’s right for you.
Physical
So first of all, you’re probably already familiar with the motion and the rhythm. You can get that shit from porn videos and Charlie Day’s performance in the uncomfortable after-allegations film I Love You, Daddy. But did you know that you can use both hands? This is already a game changer. All the little, literal bastards at my local regional high school would ask me jokingly whether I go left or right, and I never thought to innovate until the summer after my sophomore year at college while doing research on C*-algebras. There’s just something about noncommutative geometry that makes me think “I need both hands for this.”
So step one if you’re having trouble with the generally suggested, standard run of the mill, pumping method is to try breaking out your leftover hand. After that, it would make sense to start taking advantage of the machinery well known for sexual things. By that, I of course mean the materials you can purchase at that one pretty sketch sex shop in Ithaca. Feel free to attempt butt stuff, introduce lubrication, put your dick in between your mattress and your bed. The world is your oyster, and oysters resemble vaginas when you look at them from the right angle. So go wild. Fuck a roll of toilet paper. Get creative.
Inspiration
Inspiration also requires some degree of creativity. I found this to be the easy part, but it’s primarily about finding out what you like and getting rid of your shame. The most important piece of advice I can provide is to feel no shame unless it can get you arrested. This is a core principle I live by in any area of my life but specifically when it comes to masturbation. If you’ve sacrificed your shame but are still struggling, you may just need to look around more and find things you kinda like and move forward. A good rule of thumb is that if you haven’t tried hentai, you haven’t tried hard enough. So step one if you’re having trouble with inspiration is to acknowledge that whatever you’re watching, I probably watched worse when I was 12, without masturbating, with no shame. And here I am, still surviving. After that, just explore, and you’ll likely find something that somewhat works for you.
Putting it all together
At this point, you have no shame, you’re using both hands, you’re getting creative, and you’veexplored a while. Now it’s just about figuring out how these things fit together. Likely in both of the inspiration and physical categories you’ve found some favorites or at least some things that work well but maybe just can’t get you to finish. I suggest putting them all together. If covering yourself in butter and watching butt stuff work well separately, maybe doing both at once will get you there. Finding out how to masturbate is similar to figuring out how to socialize. You have to develop a personality, figure out your needs, and find out how to get them met. Put all of these suggestions together, and you’ll be firing off loads like your peers in no time.
Erogenous Jones is a student at Cornell University. His column Anals of Mathematics runs periodically this semester.