I don’t know how to masturbate. I don’t know how to pleasure myself. It just did not occur to me at any age growing up. Never. Nobody talked about it either. Our rebellion was limited to buying cigarettes and smoking them in hidden corners of the small towns I grew up in. Touching the self part - just didn’t have that ‘natural’ urge for it.
I never felt like watching porn either. But, I was shown porn by men who just got thrills out of making teenagers watch naked bodies doing weird things. Like dude, at least ask me! This one dude had called me home to play Ludo. So not fair! His guts to show me porn when we would have played Ludo instead! The second time when this other dude showed me porn, he was at least honest. He told me with enough hard work he had landed one of those blue film CDs and that I should watch with him. I watched all of it till the end. The kisses, the sucking, the spanking, the thrusting, the sweat, saliva and the semen. I got deeply terrified and the very next day I got my first ever period.
I was packed with information from friends who had got their periods and were already bleeding-wise. But, my mother just fixed a pad in my panty and handed it to me. Really Mum, don’t you think the information is, you know, just slightly inadequate? I don’t blame her so much. I do, however, blame that porn exposure - it was such a shock for me, an unaware kid, that I got so scared and started bleeding through my vagina instantly. Or so it felt to me.
Anyway, I only felt like masturbating when I heard my friends talk about it and how much they enjoyed it. The curiosity was not so much about pleasure, but just to know first hand ‘Hai kya ye cheez?’ It was also a curiosity about why some say you won’t need a man if you can pleasure yourself. Lol. Isn’t the greater purpose of masturbation emancipation of self, then?
I won’t deny that I had a lot of fun when my friends talked about orgasms and how they would please themselves. Someone used to lick ice to soften the edges and then insert the chill melting ice inside their vagina. Someone wanted to know how it felt, so her friend volunteered to help her masturbate. Someone found spit very erotic. Someone was turned on with an image of a person sucking their own cock. To each their own, I guess.
But, I did not feel a thing. So much so that I can sleep while watching porn. Boring!
I have tried inserting a finger in my butthole. I have tried to suck my own nipples. I have tried to insert a max of three fingers together in my vagina. I once chatted online with a certain ‘married man looking for young girl’(username) on an anonymous website. He was there to jerk off to a young girl. When he realized that I am not game, he started talking casually and told me that life is tougher in 20s and gets better in 30s. And, I want to believe you, ‘married man looking for young girl’.
For the longest, I thought the urethra was the clitoris. But, thanks to all the sudden and frequent female pleasure positive content online - the stand ups, the memes and whatnot that would come on my screen during mindless scrolling - the quest for the clitoris had made a place in my subconscious. Now, I had to find it. (Not that clitoris and I are besties or even know each other well even after I know its address.)
So, orgasm has been a pending project for a very long time now. Next to maybe, learn to swim, get over your fear of riding a scooty, wear a bikini, idk. An important reason perhaps for this is that I have never had a private space. And in all my attempts, I realized that sitting on the floor of the washroom won’t help me.
I did have a private space on rare occasions. This happened when I was in fancy hotel rooms - once for a youth training and once for someone’s wedding. The full-length mirrors there always tempted me to take nudes and admire them. And, I would do that. These rooms also had bathtubs. While the photographer, model, and the ‘art’ admirer in me had a good time, I forgot my oldass orgasm project.
So, later I made elaborate plans to book a hotel room somewhere outside my hometown and do it in a bathtub while drinking beer or wine and/or smoking. This fantasy of mine also featured a silk robe that I don’t own. But, this plan has not been put to action yet.
A few months ago, my parents had to urgently head to another state because of a relative’s death. I was all alone in the house, had my me-time, and binge-watched OTT content. Soon, I realized I had all the time and space to do whatever I wanted to. I thought it was time for my orgasm project now.
It was not difficult. I started old school and my queer ass searched lesbian porn first. I touched and kissed myself wherever I could reach. I was really wet and I was feeling something very different, very hot, very pleasurable. I threw my phone away (cuz porns are boring. Period.) and I was visualizing a threesome with two of my almost-lovers: both super-hot, one was a femme bi, and the other was a soft cis-het guy who had once kissed another guy but was sure he was straight.
I was wondering if I had finally discovered an orgasm at 26 years of age. But then, I started getting bored of the hot almost-lovers. I thought I could stay focused if I saw myself in the act of pleasuring myself. Remember the photographer, model and ‘art’ admirer? So, I turned on the lights. And, I saw blood on my hands and on the bed sheet. I realised that what I had taken to be an orgasm was essentially period blood!
I took a bath, switched off all the lights, changed the bedsheet and went to sleep.
PS – I still haven’t been able to hack it. Or, I have just stopped caring about it.
Moorie is busy thinking about the answers to questions like what even gender is, what does rest and resistance mean for the mentally ill, or if medicine is a propaganda.
