I remember reading years ago that masturbation was safe provided you didn’t indulge in unrealisable fantasies. Freud, although himself a masturbator and fascinated by the practice, disapproved of it officially, not for its physical effects but because of the fantasies it involved. But why else would we men masturbate other than to explore and enjoy the sexual impossibilities of the real world. Women have told me they masturbate simply for the physical pleasure they procure from caressing themselves. For me, that is not enough. When I masturbate I’m in realms of possibility limited only by the boundaries of my own imagination, magically free from the taboos and disapprovals of the physical world. Extreme events such as incest, public and private humiliations, spankings, acts of submission, being raped by either men or powerful women happen freely in the mind of the masturbator as he plies his penis. So also do more mundane things such as sex with the neighbour’s wife or a colleague at work or a daughter’s pretty best friend which will never happen for real but can do so in the mind. For a delicious moment, they are virtually real.

    Critics like Freud believed the danger was that fantasies, by evoking the impossible while giving the impossible a spurious realness through the strong sensations of masturbation, would damage the masturbator’s ability to have normal sexual relations because these would seem tame in comparison. In my fantasy word, I can do anything I like to or with anyone from a Hollywood star to the girl on the supermarket checkout. What Freud doesn’t go into is the possibility that some masturbators belongs to a specific sexual category in the same way that homosexual and heterosexual men belong to categories. I believe that masturbation is my basic sexual orientation. I have had good sexual relations with women, and occasionally with men, all my life but I am primarily a masturbator. In that sense, my fantasies are necessary to me. It’s also possibly true that Freud is right and that the extremity of my fantasies unconsciously damaged my ability to fully realise the possibilities of sex with another person. The damage would be that I couldn’t sustain my initial sexual appetite for a partner, however strong, because I was unconsciously aware that the real thing was lesser than the imagined thing, as Freud feared. But that, for me, couldn’t be helped because I am a masturbator rather than a lover.

    The truth is that all my life, most of my masturbation fantasies have been about masturbation and being masturbated. Today, I live alone and only masturbate. Naturally, I think sometimes it would be pleasant to have someone to masturbate with but I do nothing to make that happen. I remain my own, exclusive lover in a partnership between my right hand, my penis and my imagination. That is how I realise myself sexually and I find that endlessly satisfying. Our relationship with masturbation is perenially difficult. All of us masturbate. Men talk and joke about it together and with their womenfolk but in a quasi abstract way. There’s always a shadow of stigma and shame. To be called a wanker is an insult. No one would identify himself as being, as I am, a masturbator first and foremost because that would be to admit that he was incapable of  having or obtaining ‘normal’ sexual relations, i.e. with someone else. Notice that in modern literature, masturbation is increasingly referred to, but always as something second best or as an inadequate substitute. Do we really think that ? In reality, to see someone masturbate, with or without their knowledge is fascinating and beautiful. In Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Joyce writes that Connie is electrified when she glimpses Mellors stripped to the waist washing in a tub of water. In fact, what she sees is Mellor stretched out naked and masturbating in the garden of his forest cottage. The revelation of the secret man in a natural setting is for her a moment of sublimity. Joyce felt unable to put it that way but that is what he meant. Freud, I suspect, was also under the spell of masturbation for the sake of itself. In his unpublished papers there are references which, when decoded indicated that he liked to masturbate while reading letters from his Berlin colleague Fliess. When hearing his patients, he sat out of  their line of sight precisely in order to be able to unbutton his trousers and play with his penis while they talked.

    I can’t remember how I discovered masturbation but it was well before the age of 10 and several years before I was able to cum. I have a vivid memory that the first, pre-pubertal emissions from my penis were clear and semen-free. What my first fantasies were I can’t remember but later they usually revolved about the girls I knew where we lived and at school and that they involved being seen naked by them and  masturbating in front of them. It was a strong belief with me that girls should see boys nude and should be privy to their masturbation. This pre-taste for submission and even sexual humiliation has remained with me all my life. To this day, I fantasise about masturbating in the nude in front of fully clothed women or men of being naked in front of clothed people. From the very start, I masturbated as often as I could, often several times a day. In my early teens, I stopped going on holiday with my family. I told them I wasn’t interested in the places I went to but the real reason was that I wanted to spend entire days masturbating alone in the house. It is clear here that my primary orientation as a masturbator had been established naturally and without external influences. It is what I was destined to be. I had plenty of masturbation experiences with other boys but it was never mutual ; each masturbated himself. I was born in 1942 and was a teenager at a time when sexual relations with girls was limited to petting and boys did not expect to have intercourse with them before marriage.  Although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, this inhibition perfectly suited my own sexuality. Despite my commitment to masturbation, I was drawn to girls rather than to other males and Anne, my first girlfriend was a perfect partner. She quickly proved willing to masturbate me, often taking the initiative, and to be an accomplished masturbatrice. It was a long time before she allowed me to masturbate her in return and her masturbation of me established her as the dominant partner. I have never been so intensively masturbated by anyone other than myself since those four years when we were together. I still have a single photograph of her and still regularly pay homage to her skills.

    Even with Anne, I was unable to surmount the sense that my masturbation was somehow shameful and to be kept secretive from women. I think many men are like this. On the masturbation forums I read, it is not uncommon for men to admit that their wives do not realise how often they masturbate. When Anne asked me if I masturbated, I denied it – a huge mistake I know now. Had I been candid, we might have built something together. I’ve since learned to be more open and discussive about what I do, but not to the extent of daring to ‘out’  my masturbation, which has remained a three times daily habit, as my primary orientation. I’ve masturbated everywhere - at work (where I’ve been caught), outdoors (where I’ve also been seen), in cars, cinemas, at hotel windows and in car parks. I’ve done public nudism on motorway embankments and bridges and country roads. But although I know that masturbation is normal and healthy, I still can’t shake the secret fear of being exposed to public ridicule as a wanker which is the hypocritical fate that awaits those who are caught, like Bill Clinton who masturbated in the Oval Office. I yearn to masturbate openly and dare not.