Sunday night, 10:00 pm. I am supposed to be writing this article, but I can’t concentrate. I am too damn horny. Contemplating the joys of oral sex while not getting any at this very moment certainly isn’t helping. Since frustration is on my mind, I decide to write about that, but all I can come up with is mournful “Aaaargh!” Sincere, but not really enough to fill a whole column.

Sexual frustration is like being hungry; it can turn you into a rabid dog. However, I am a girl who likes simple solutions to life’s problems. Hungry, but no food in the house? Call the chipper. Horny, but partner gone AWOL? Luckily there is a handy solution, with the added bonus that you don’t have to wait half an hour for delivery. I cast the keyboard aside, and head off to the privacy of my bedroom.
I wouldn’t want you to think that my boyfriend Conor is a slouch when it comes to bedroom gymnastics. Having exhausted him once that morning and twice in the afternoon, he’d crawled home to lick his wounds. Well, actually because he had no clean clothes, but we’ll pretend it was my sexual prowess that drove him out! Thus he left me, several orgasms notwithstanding, still horny as hell. The weird and wonderful thing about sexual satisfaction is that the more you get, the more you want.
Many people believe that masturbation is only for sexually frustrated teens, and that you’re supposed to grow out of it. Like playing air guitar. One of my friends was very disturbed when she interrupted her partner having a little hand-action in the bathroom. She felt it was some kind of insult or that she was not enough to satisfy him.
I disagree. Sex and masturbation may both result in orgasm, but they are different things. Even if you are getting plenty of the former, there’s no harm in indulging in a little solitaire.
The received wisdom even among sexual liberals seems to be that we are free to indulge in all sorts of sexual antics as long as they involve at least one other person, but when it comes to masturbation we need an excuse. Women’s magazines recommend jerking off as part of a healthy sexual lifestyle. Masturbation, we are told, helps you and your partner to understand how your body works. Men’s glossies will suggest tossing off either to stop sperm build-up, or as a means of preventing premature ejaculation.
It’s all part of the same healthy lifestyle schtick. A bit like checking for lumps in your breasts or going to the gym. Yeah, yeah, right. While there may be some validity in the reasons they advance, this jolly-hockey sticks attitude to masturbation seems like neo-conservatism to me. Pleasure is the bogeyman these days.
This neo-con attitude to masturbation in the media is bizarre, especially since everybody knows that all men are wankers. Well about 98% of them any way. (And as the fella said, the rest are just plain weird).
Searching for statistics on how many women masturbate regularly is like searching for the Holy Grail. Those who confess to a little quality time alone, vary from around 40% to 90%. Being an inveterate snoop, I decided to do some research myself. Like sex, masturbation is an individual thing, and the answers I received were as diverse as the positions in the Kama Sutra.
Most of my male friends came in at around the four times a week mark. I think that maybe they were being coy. Conor tells me he belts off between one and five times a day. But then he is a horny bastard. My buddy Matt really surprised me. He didn’t learn how to masturbate, he claimed, until he was 27. But he assures me that he’s being making up for lost time.
Because we have the great ability to come and come again, girls do things a little differently. My girlfriends like to pleasure themselves anything from once a month to three times a week. We may not pleasure ourselves as frequently, but when we do it tends to be a mini-marathon.
My friend Elaine was the grateful recipient of a Rampant Rabbit for Christmas and the novelty factor hasn’t worn off yet. She whips it out whenever her housemate isn’t around. Two or three sessions a week, she says, makes her feel like the first woman on the moon.
On the rare Saturday that I have no pressing engagements, I like to masturbate all morning. Pure bliss. I reckon, given enough time and privacy, I could make myself orgasm over a hundred times. I only wish it was an Olympic event. I’d be coming home with the gold.
Oscar Wilde said that learning to love yourself was the beginning of a life-long romance. Tossing off, pleasuring yourself, wanking, self-abuse, slapping the one-eyed monkey, belting, choking the chicken or whatever you chose to call it, masturbation is one of life’s simple delights. And when you think of all the pleasures that the governesses that pass for governments have regulated or tried to tax out of existence, you should proclaim your right to be a wanker proudly.
Stand tall. Be counted. And don’t forget to buy the T-shirt. You can always use it to clean up the mess afterwards…