Wanking is ephemeral but some acts of masturbation live on in the memory. It’s not that there is any clear recollection of every stroke and the sensations created ; but something is implanted in the subconscious and every now and again it surfaces and the memory gives intense pleasure.

     As a teen, I’d masturbated with other boys but naturally yearned to be masturbated by a girl. It happened in my parents’ living room with my first serious girlfriend. We were lying on the floor necking and I took her hand and very tentatively and shyly guided it to the waistband of my trousers.

     She smoothly slipped it inside and touched my cock (so not the first time for her). I let my trousers down so that she could move her hand freely and she made me cum. An unforgettable moment whose exact details I have forgotten anyway but I remember it was exhilarating.

    Later on when I married, my wife disapproved of masturbation (she dismissed it as ‘just playing’). She masturbated me just once and it was a revelation but a dim one because I remembered it the next day only through an alcoholic haze.

    I don’t even remember how it happened. But I was lying on my back on our bed and she was kneeling beside me masturbating me. It seemed to go on, beautifully, for ever until at last she brought me off.

    Perhaps because the memory is so hazy and because of her attitude to masturbation, I over romanticise it but I count it the very best wank I ever had from another person.

    Years later, married to someone else, I had an affair with a colleague. She was sparing with her sexual favours so long as I wasn’t prepared to commit myself more deeply but we did go to bed sometimes. As I was leaving her flat after one session, I told her that I wanted to be masturbated by her.

    She made no reply to that. But shortly after, we managed to spend the night together. When I woke her in the morning hoping to be allowed to fuck her again, I sensed at once that she wasn’t going to let me.

    Instead, she put her hand on my cock and started to squeeze and knead it very gently. I began to get hard and her touch slowly became more insistent. I realised that she was going to masturbate me which she did unhurriedly with grave and deliberate application. Neither of us spoke and to me at least the moment was like a sacramental rite.

    Three moments, trivial in themselves and similar to those experienced by millions of others ; but for me, each stands out as a gift from the women concerned.