The Jerkoff Diaries

I like the rapper 50 Cent, though I don’t like him more than I like masturbating. So when 50 tweeted last week that self-love was a sin, I was intrigued, if a little skeptical.

But then an email from work reminded me that I have this weird superstitiousness about masturbation. I sometimes think and feel like if I jerk off it drains me of my vitality, thereby making me a punk and allowing the suckers a way to attack me in my weakness. This email was a first class stress-bomb delivered priority and timed perfectly with the advent of my weekend, and it kinda pissed me off.

So when Fifty followed his initial tweet with four more tweets that detailed his stop-jerking-off diet, I decided to take him up on his challenge.

Fifty’s tweets had followed what had been a binge for me. My little friend and I spent a fair amount of time together last week. It was a bit of a down moment at work. The wife and kids were away. And the house was mine alone. Search terms were utilized. Sites starting with “MILF” and “hot” were consulted. Pleasures were had. Repeated. And had again. I felt relaxed. A little drained.

Now I wondered: How long could I go without going at it alone? Could I follow Fifty’s advice? I didn’t have the same orgasmic opportunities as I assume Fifty does, hot shit rapper and all. Me, I’m a suburban dad with a stressed-out real-life wife with an actual menstrual cycle, new boss, and two kids (4 and 8). In terms of sex, I had become a little reliant on myself.

Says Fifty: Step 1. To avoid the urge to masturbate stop going to porn sites.

This one, if a little obvious, seems damn smart and likely to work. But, fuck me, if I can actually be at home alone in front of my laptop and not surf porn. I’ll probably have to take up knitting or something.

Step 2. Make a conscious decision not to turn your head after people walk by you.

I usually try not to do this anyway. I’m no gangsta, and it’s just sort of creepy for me to ogle strangers.

Step 3. Do not go to strip clubs

Um, yeah, dude’s name should be Common Cents, not 50 Cent. I’ve never really dug breast implants or strip clubs. Both times I’ve actually been to one I’ve met Russian girls with honest-to-God vampire teeth, which is only sexy REALLY late at night… in Moscow.

Step 4. Do not look at lust filled magazines

This one could be tough. I love magazines, and I work for one. An occasionally “lust-filled” one.

Saturday is easy. Soccer. Cool weather. I have to ignore a couple soccer moms in stretch pants, but otherwise I’m on my game. Better yet we go to my inlaws’ in Pennsylvania, which is less sexy than a priest on fire.

Sunday I’m so tired from sleeping on the floor Saturday night in PA that all I’m craving are carbs and a couch to watch football on. The kids actually play outside and don’t make me too crazy. But the stress caused by the impending work week for both my wife and I makes Sunday night a bummer and getting laid impossible. Perhaps I should've tried to score a little harder. That may have been my best window for a while.

It's not gotten any easier at work. And on top of that the family truck is suddenly on injured reserve, which means spending thousands of dollars we don't really have and watching my wife cycle through endless car sites when I'd much rather be using the Internet to uncover as many breasts as humanly possible.

I haven't gone more than a week without masturbating in at least a decade. Probably longer. Maybe since puberty.

Now it's Wednesday morning and I feel like I could kill someone on the train to work. God, I hate these other white douchebags surrounding me. Sack suits and shitty striped shirts and Rumsfeld glasses as far as the eye can see. These motherfuckers eat themselves to death and live desperate lives punctuated by the occasional accomplishment of some progeny into whom they've sublimated their dreams and reading the Journal or the sports page in the Post.

The kids have been a surprising respite from my problems. Seeing them makes me stop thinking about work and sex. And their little shit (“Dad, I want some water.” “Dad, I need a snack.”) isn't really bugging me this week. My wife and I, however, are fighting constantly and need to fuck. But it's not gonna happen unless I get crafty and/or lease a new minivan.

I've stopped reading TMZ entirely, Perez only sporadically and quickly. Work is a minefield of soft angles and the suggestion of sex parts under expensive stylish fabrics cut to enhance and accentuate already alluring, attractive, intelligent young women. I am investing my sexual energy in creative pursuits, cleverly postponing the real pain at work for next week and booking a couple assignments that I think I feel good about. (Though they haven't been seen by an editor yet, which tends to kill that mojo.)

My back hurts. My eyes are dry. And my neck is tighter than my asshole. The only thing more embarrassing than blogging (BLOGGING!) about trying to stop masturbating is blogging about being constipated from not masturbating.

A hot young Jennifer Hudson looking girl just got on the train wearing business attire with one of those tight scoop neck white strechy tops under another blouse. What happens when I see a pretty girl is I start to create a person, a story, to go with the body and face and hair and clothes and perfume that stimulate my senses. And I basically conjure a sympathetic imaginary character (all of which may be true of the real person, if a little two dimensional and reductive), and I start to see the character I've just created and myself together. She understands me. We don't know too much about each other but we want to learn more. We start exploring one another by undressing…

Alright moving on.

Keeping with Fifty's advice I gave the JHud girl only a quick passing glance. I did not turn to watch her as she passed. And I can tell you Fifty has a solid, if simple and obvious, point. Not staring at a woman’s ass will help you not jerk off while thinking about her. Basically you have less film in the brain's catalogue to, um, pull from.

Which reminds me, I should mention that I haven’t used the Internet for porn or gone to any strip clubs for the past five days either. And not too surprisingly that also works. It's sort of like dieting by not going to restaurants or eating takeout. It's harder to cook than to simply order what you want, and it's harder to cook up real sexual scenarios rather than dialing them up from your rolodex of fantasies or the internet’s cache of faux-sex.

I need to confess. I did turn around to take another look at awoman I passed as I entered the train, but it was to try to see her face again. Eventually you get so horny you only need to look at her face to fall in love. Which brings me to my wife.

I love my wife but I don't know how to include her in this exactly. For many reasons. First, she's not as public as I am about shit in general. So she's not gonna be too psyched to read about my sexual frustrations and see herself all mixed up in them. She's not the type to kibosh a dude's first amendment rights, especially if that dude is getting some tire money for doing so, but, you know, I'm testing the marriage a bit with this stunt. But also for the sake of the integrity of our little experiment I think it's maybe scientifically more pure if I don't loop her in until at least after we have (“hope, hope”) Saturday night three-position sex.

Usually she and I don’t go more than two weeks between sheet-time. That's probably gonna shock all you American Apparel types reading this and getting yourselves off with each other's feet right now, but for the average married dummies with jobs and two kids, it's just kind of the norm, and we are about average in terms of how often we do it based on the canvassing I’ve done among our friends in similar situations. She and I don’t schedule sex. I'm not against it but I don't really feel the urge to schedule anything else into my calendar. Ever. Even good shit.

So I’m keeping her in the dark for a while. Tonight's one of the presidential debates and we have a friend coming by for some drinks and Salon-level dorkery about the event. That ain't gonna make anyone wanna do it with anyone. Except maybe Erin Burnett.

That leaves Thursday and Friday night, which will likely get gobbled up under the strains of work, practices, homework, car pools, car repairs, runny noses, and self-medication to cope with it. Leaving, somewhat predictably, Saturday night as the last, best chance I’ll have to score.

My ace in the hole is that she's going to lunch and the spa with an old girlfriend Saturday afternoon. That’s married code for: if you (Dad) watch the kids while I luxuriate for a while eating cucumber sandwiches, I will blow you then let you bang me from behind while I (maybe) think about the masseuse doing me and my old high school friend (or maybe that's my fantasy?).

Of course, last time she went out with this friend she came home and cried all night. Toxins? Who the fuck knows. People are sad sometimes. The economy, maybe? Speaking of which I’ve thought it through, and I couldn't fuck Ann Romney unless dressage was involved. And Michelle is a lady I really respect. But man. Seeing her speech at the DNC it was big tent party time.

Now however it's still Wednesday and time to get back to work. I feel a little better about this whole enterprise being able to share it with you all. But as I said above, work presents a little bit of a unique challenge in terms of number four on Fifty's list. I work at what's probably fair to call an occasionally “lust-filled” magazine. It's not Hustler. But I can definitely legitimately surf some NSFW at my desk and/or watch company-produced videos of Brooklyn Decker or Rihanna in a soaked-through mini tank top. That used to mean something good. Today it's more annoying than anything. But the upside is I'll get some shit done.

It’s after lunch on Thursday. Just decided I may need to give up not just porn sites, but the entire Internet. What is it about the Internet that makes me wanna fuck? This used to happen whenever I read for a while in high school and college, so much so that I developed theories (yet to be proven wrong) that smart, academic types are very horny folks in general.

There’s a ten-minute window between when my wife and I get home tonight and when the kids get dropped off. Action may have to be taken. This is a high-probability-of-failure mission. Shit is really going downhill for us at work, and we could be trying (and failing) to live on one income pretty soon. And she’s a mom. And moms don’t take that kind of shit too lightly. So it’s tough for her to segue from nervous adult to nasty fuck toy in less than ten minutes. I forgive her for that. But I honestly could be fucking while getting fired and not give a damn.

Day six. Missed the train, thereby closing the ten-minute window for sex. And now something is happening to me. I’m passing an emotional threshold of some kind. I just watched a documentary about women in Africa that starred actress Olivia Wilde (who is very petite, pretty, and was once photographed nude for the magazine I work for). One of the women interviewed mentioned that she was a sex worker for a brief period before starting her own business. What was she paid in those days for her services? 50 Cents.

Tune in next week to find out how Saturday night sex turns out, whether or not anyone gets fired, and if we get a minivan.