This post was submitted by corey

Start your week with sex… or lack thereof. Delve into the jungle of the newly out and single every Monday morning in Sexual Disorientation.

A few weeks ago, a new friend of mine in Denver came into my hotel room unannounced, climbed up into my bed, and started flipping through my copy of Men’s Fitness. It seemed obvious that he was just looking at the pictures of the buff, shirtless men and not reading the articles about protein bars and sit-ups.

“You won’t find any material in there for your ‘private time’,” I warned him. “The guys aren’t that hot. I only get that magazine because Radar got canceled and I had to pick either this or Star.”

Soon, realizing that I was right, he put the magazine away and transitioned to GQ. We went on to talk about a lot of things that afternoon – sex, threesomes, the perils of oral sex – nothing too unusual. So when I heard from a mutual friend about a scandalous conversation topic we had discussed, I thought she meant lockjaw. “No,” she said, “I didn’t hear that one.”

So what was so outrageous? My comment about using (or not using) the pics in that magazine to lend oneself a hand.

As someone who talks about sex a lot, I probably cross people’s boundaries for acceptable conversation topics regularly. But I find that most of my friends enjoy it more than they’re offended or put off – unless the subject begins with an “M” and ends with an “asturbation.” In light of this revelation, I wondered: is masturbation the last taboo? And if so, when it comes to this “touchy” subject, why I am so comfortable being the master debater?

It began back in high school when, inspired by an old episode of Seinfeld, a friend and I decided to have a contest as to who could go the longest without jerking off. We each lasted close to two weeks, but walking into school on a Tuesday morning we both wore the look of defeat.

“When did you cave?” I asked him.

“Around eleven last night,” he replied.

I smiled as soon as I heard it. “I beat you by seven hours,” I said. “I held out until this morning.”

He went on to lament that it was disgusting to jerk off in the morning before school, to which I replied that it was about as gross as doing it any other time of day. (For the record, I never received the dinner we had wagered.)

In high school, I also began to ask female friends about their habits, if and when I felt like I could get away with it. I was intrigued by questionable statistics that less than half of women report masturbating, considering that I estimated the percentage of male participants to be around 130%. Most of the women I talked to were understandably coy about the subject, but hinted at the information I wanted. (As with any taboo, letting go a little can be a fun experience, even for the proper folk at my Connecticut high school.)

The verdict from the ladies I chatted with was that there was, indeed, mixed participation, with most citing far less frequency then most men with whom I’ve compared figures. My talks with female friends tended to yield results like “once in a while,” whereas with men it was always a certain number of times per week or, in some cases, per day. I have wondered if some women do it just as often but feel silenced or shamed by our society’s sexist hypocrisy; it would hardly surprise me.

I had thought that the queer community would be more open to discuss this subject, as we tend to be (by necessity, if nothing else) more cognizant of our sexuality. But this has proven not to be the case. One friend who I regularly talk to about sex tends to balk at any conversation involving masturbation. He somehow managed to skirt the issue even when he paid me $60 in cash to order him porn, a necessary step as his parents pay his credit card bills.

“If I’m not going to talk to you about this, who will I talk to?” I had asked.

“No one!” he answered. “You don’t talk about that!” His argument, in addition to it being vulgar, was that masturbation was just too private to discuss. It is the only place where we can play out our deepest fantasies without the judgment or condemnation of others, he said – a sexual sanctuary whose walls should never be, well, penetrated.

In my two whole years as a fully-out homosexual, I have found only one person who can always match my interest in and willingness to talk about the sexual oddity that is masturbation: TNG’s own Zack. Whenever I have something to say on the subject, I will open up a new email to Z and begin with something like, “I feel like you would appreciate this.”

As I said above, I find it curious that the rest of the gay community isn’t so willing to engage. Masturbation, if we take the term broadly, is often an integral part of (at least the male) gay sexual experience. As things do not line up biologically quite as they do in heterosexual intercourse, the responsibility for getting off is often handed off to oneself. In addition, anyone who has checked out the craigslist ads knows that there is quite a market for quasi-gay men to sit around and jerk off together.

Maybe we have to venture into psychology to find the answer. Queer people, often forced to spend years repressing their true sexuality, may have felt that their hours spent masturbating were the only time when they could feel their true desires come to fruition, the only safe space in a cold, judgmental society. And perhaps the fact that gay sex sometimes requires one to finish oneself off only rehashes difficult feelings of sex as a detached, lonely act.

Then again, maybe some people just find it weird to talk about. For those who don’t, I’m always here to chat – unless you catch me with my hands full.

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