NKd Blog no. 6 My Pleasure Practice.
I started exploring masturbation around 18. My best friend at the time got a job at our local sex shop, which gave me the perfect excuse the start exploring vibrators.
I had explored myself a time or two in the shower but I was excited to explore with a toy and see how the vibrations felt. Thinking back on it, I had a venus razor with a handle that vibrated, which was probably my first true vibration experience. I felt much better about the whole thing when I bought my first bullet vibrator from that sex shop.
It was a good intro into clit stimulation, and finding out where I like the vibration. I started visiting my friend more at work just to browse the toys and the porn titles. I quickly upgraded to a gummy pink rabbit vibrator with the little clit "bunny".
How do I really feel about Bullets? Bullets are a great first vibrator experience, but it's single strength vibration can be quite intense and they just break so quickly.
In my NYC dorm room I felt a lot more comfortable with my own space to explore myself. I really wasn't into the penetration part of the vibrator, so I learned to use it mostly for clit stimulation.
This vibrator lasted me a while, I loved testing out the different strengths and patterns. I was giving myself small orgasms here and there, sometimes a few in a row. I would have to wait a few minutes in between and start with a lower vibration to get back into it. I started exploring free porn on pornhub and really liked to watch lesbian porn.
When I got into a relationship I would stop masturbating unless I was truly alone, and since I had a boyfriend, what did I need to use a vibrator for. Wasn't it going to make him feel bad if I could give myself pleasure. Should I save my sexual energy for him? I felt like it was something I needed to hide.
Fast forward to 2017 when we're living in a tiny bungalo by the beach in Koh Phangan, Thailand. I'm sitting in our double nest eno hammock where no one can see me and start touching myself with my hand. Still hiding and not telling anyone I started trying to do this more when I had some time in the hammock by myself. I wonder... how often does my partner masturbate? We don't talk about this.
We move to Mexico after living in Asia for 3 years. I'm used to finding endocrinologists around the world for Synthroid, but after finding my doctor in Mexico I was shocked at his response. "I'm worried about you. You should see if the birth control you're on could be affecting your hormones and your thyroid negatively." he said to me in Spanish.
Fall of 2019 in Penang, Malaysia I have my birth control implant removed. The same week my partner gets a vasectomy. With the birth control out. I feel an immediate difference in myself, but it's hard to describe what kind of difference, except free. Research has told me that it will take up to 6 months to get all of the hormones out of my body.
Around this time, I had an interview with OMG Yes! That female sex education website where they show real women masturbating. They were doing a second round of research, this time on toys and vibrators. I thought to myself, this would be a radical way of opening myself up. I got on the call and was doing fine until the interviewer said…
"Describe the feeling you get when you masturbate with a vibrator."
I mean.. can YOU describe that feeling?
I fell flat. I had no words. I remember choking up and getting nervous, trying to describe the roller coaster ride that builds up inside me when I masturbate, but my words came out as sounds and I just knew it was over.
I had some work to do.
March of 2020 and I'm living in Mexico, working from home as a remote social media manager. Work gets intense, and I'm still trying to get a handle on all of my emotions and my hormones. My menstrual cycle is a fucking roller coaster with twists and sharp turns, and I'm still not used to it. I needed to work through some negative thought patterns. I take this extra time in the house to read and start exploring myself more. Things are tough and my partner and I start to masturbate together sometimes, it's something new for us, and some how, doing this takes some of the shame away and feeling like it's something that needs to be hidden from our intimate partners. I realize it turns me on to see him masturbate.
Have you ever masturbated with your partner?
I start to take more time for myself and try masturbating multiple days in a row, trying to make it more of a practice. I also start to take pictures of myself, trying to understand my more sexual side. A side I felt like I only explored through partner sex. Was I really enjoying it? I wanted to learn about myself, what I liked, how I liked to be touched. For years I relied on my partner's hands to touch me and make me feel good, but now I was taking the power into my own hands, and figuring out what felt good for myself.
There were a lot of road blocks in the way, putting the breaks on all the time, not being able to disconnect from the daily routine and thought patterns to enjoy sex. Emily Nagoski talks about how to work through this in her book Come As You Are.
I've found a lot of great benefits from cultivating a masturbation practice. Allowing myself to feel pleasure, and give myself pleasure. It's allowed me to "stop and smell the roses" and take a few moments for pure joy.
I've found it helps me focus on writing, or stay in the moment. Masturbation has also helped me craft a playful, sexy, mindset. Something I find extra important for maintaining a balance in my work and life.
Masturbation has helped me fall asleep, it's helped me feel positive and turned my day around. It's helped me communicate how I like things with my partners.
On doing research to write this I checked out Answer the Public to see what people seem to be asking about masturbation, and every search result came up negative. Now I'm sure people are using incognito mode, and shit, but every search was like what happens if I masturbate too much, can masturbation cause such and such ailment. I feel like we really need to change the script on masturbation. It's literally the safest sex! I think as long as you're not using masturbation to avoid living your life, you're probably doing something good for you and your partner.
Do you Jerk Off? and how often? Have you ever jerked off at work?
"How many times a week?" "three - four times " " You gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers in this racket." - Wolf of Wall street.
I keep coming back to this scene from the wolf of Wall Street. The one where the guys end up consenting to jerking off in the bathroom during work, because the stakes are so high in the deals they're negotiating and the wins are huge, so the tensions are high. I don't know how this really goes in the real working world, since this is a movie, but I can't help but find that this would be different in the female end of the spectrum.
The only real life comparison I can come up with is Betty Dodson, Carlin Ross and their Body Sex courses. These are workshops which literally bring together a group of women (vulva owners) to masturbate together and talk about masturbation practice. I'm very curious about the experience of masturbating in a room full of women. Looking past my initial fears of being naked in a group and what if I giggle? I'm curious about the collective energy and learning from watching one another, or just listening.
As for my own masturbation practice. As someone who works from home, I still find it difficult to take the time for myself sometimes. But I'm doing my best to make an effort to do it as many days as I can. (In edition I've added a small journaling exercise where I write an erotic haiku, to set my mind for the day in that playful space. It has genuinely improved my life, I hope to get to a point where I can say hey I have nothing to do today, I think I'm going to spend hours in bed with myself.
