When you break down masturbation to its basic elements—privacy, a little bit of inspiration, some elbow grease, and hopefully a modest cleanup routine—there's obviously nothing to be embarrassed about. But for young people who haven't quite figured this out, each attempt has the potential to cause deep shame and/or personal injury.
As something of a public service, VICE asked several self-identified self-pleasurers to share their most embarrassing masturbation stories. Because whether or not you consider yourself skilled in the area of dialing the rotary phone, shakin' the bacon, or whatever euphemism you prefer, you probably didn't start out as a masturbatory pro.
DOM, 25
When I was 10 or 11, my older brother was having a sleepover with a bunch of his buddies. And I guess around that age people start talking about sexy things, sex jokes and stuff, and so I was hovering at the corners of the room, trying to hang out, when I overheard them talking about masturbating. One of them made a joke and was like, "oh are you gonna masturbate later tonight?" and he made the hand gesture that you make for masturbation, which is that closed fist you shake in front of your crotch. And I didn't know how to masturbate, so I saw that gesture and was like, oh my god, that's how you do it.
That night I went to bed—and I didn't have a boner because I was 10 years old and, you know, we don't get many boners at that age—and I got into bed, made a fist and started hitting my flaccid penis with my closed hand. I was like, oh my god that really hurts! So I gave up masturbating for about two years. I thought, well that's not for me.
MARGARET, 24
It was a rainy Sunday and I was making chili. I like my chili nice and hot— muy picante as they say—and so I chopped up all the veggies and things, including many jalapeño peppers, and threw them in a pot. I washed my hands well—at least I thought I did—and sat down to watch a little Project Runway while my chili was boiling away.
During a lull in the show, I thought, well I'm a bit bored and sleepy here in my sweatpants, so why don't I just rub one out? A couple minutes in, I was gearing up, about to roll into O town, and I started to notice that my vagina was burning a bit. I was like, hmm, I wonder what that's all about? And so I ignored it for a while, but then it started to hurt A LOT, like it was lit on fire. I was suddenly very afraid. But then I realized there was likely some jalapeño juice on my fingers, and so naturally I took to google for a remedy. I typed in something like "jalapeño juice on skin burning how stop?"
I didn't want to put in "jalapeño juice in vagina" because it would corrupt my search history. But anyway, Wikihow said to pour cold milk on the "affected area," and so I filled a huge measuring cup with skim milk, sat myself on the toilet, leaned back and doused myself. It was an odd experience, but it did ease my suffering. And so after that I showered and had a nice bowl of chili. Which was delicious.
THEO, 25
So the idea of jerking off into a sock was really popular when I was growing up. Geometrically, the idea made sense, but I guess I'd never considered what I would do with the sock afterward. I was probably about 14, in my bedroom doing my thing, and I decided to try the sock method out. It made the initial clean up a revelation since there was really nothing to be done. But then I had this sock. I couldn't put it in the laundry because my mom did my laundry and she would find it and know that I was a young man doing young man things. Same went for the garbage, because I guess at the time I imagined my mom to be some kind of suspicious raccoon that combed through all the detritus in the house.
Our house backed onto a forest so I decided the sock best belonged there. I walked to the edge of the yard and hurled it into the woods. But you see, it was winter and all of the trees were bare. The sock wrapped itself around the branch of a particularly tall birch. I'm talking like 30 feet up. It stayed up there, bright white, and waved like a shameful flag for months until summer storms came and blew it off. My mom totally noticed, too. She kept asking everyone in the house, who knows what's going on with that sock? My strategy was deny, deny, deny.
