The Jerkoff Diaries, Part IV

The final chapter in Christopher Lucas’ quest to follow 50 Cent’s stop-masturbation plan.

Friday 7 pm. Spent today day working from home and trying not to masturbate. Surprisingly harder than it's been lately. Busy at work, easy. Sleepy AM at home after dropping the kids at school, hard.

Instead of jerking off I watched TV. As if that's any less soul-rotting. I rent documentaries when I’m alone cause I won't feel like shit for spending the time on them, and I can't watch most docs (or anything else really) while the kids are home. Funny how we try to protect them from reality for so long.

Eventually lunchtime came around and I needed to eat and run some errands. There's a goddamn hurricane weather-pocalypse/literal shit-storm coming. And you have to bug out and buy stuff like candles and gasoline.

Errands tend to make me horny. It's a lot of boredom and women in houseclothes and lowered expectations and transactionality. It's like I'm shopping around in more than one sense. Or six senses if you will.

Grocery stores are kind of like dull daytime bar scenes if you factor out the old and young people and leave anyone who's fifteen years from forty in either direction. And the food helps. Particularly produce aisles. And candy aisles, and where they keep aerosol deodorant and pantyhose. And the checkout line is fraught with the potential for being near someone you wanna fuck for a while, for a while.

A side note: So far I've gotten exactly one posted comment about this column and it was in some ways more thoughtful and articulate than anything I've written so far. And it got me wondering; am I gay or not?

Somehow if you wanna look at boobs enough—and often enough—you need to consider whether or not you’re gay or anything else. Whether or not boobs represent something. And if so, what do they represent?

Are you addicted to porn, perhaps? Or addicted to being addicted to porn? Or addicted to something else that's making you a jerkoff addict? Like pot or alcohol or coffee or guilt? Were you abused? Who knows? Maybe. I don’t know.

Here’s what I think. There’s some heavy narcissism involved in jerking off. And sometimes lately I am feeling like my wish for looking better combined with my overall horniness leads to combining what is sexy to look at and what is sexy to imagine being. So a hot dude is attractive to you to fuck or to imagine being while fucking. Again, who knows, but there seems to be something of a fantasy for me in being powerful, sexy, and attractive. Manly in the most two-dimensional way imaginable. I’ve never consciously fantasized about a guy or being another guy, but that doesn’t mean anything. Consciousness and fantasy don’t always make sense in the same sentence, nor the same brain.

Nonetheless I'm sitting here on a weekend night eating Men's Health branded nuts out of a can, contemplating my sexuality while my wife sleeps next to me. As right I should be.

I'm also eating mini carrots out of a bag. But I haven't masturbated in like 26 days. Obviously I think about it a lot. It's now 2:34 AM on the following Thursday, November 8th. I'm lying on the floor of a hotel room in Monmouth County, New Jersey listening to my mother snore loudly as I type this story into my phone. Nothing is less sexy than sharing a hotel room with your mother and stepfather and your kids. Except discovering mom’s got a snore on her like a passed-out Ohio State linebacker with a severely deviated septum and tonsils the size of Volkswagens.

We're all here tonight because my wife and I were dumb enough to move back to New Jersey when she was pregnant with our son and second child four years ago. What can I say? We wanted some trees and safe streets and schools and all the other trappings of traditionalism.

Here's what's happened since we crossed that bridge: The economy tanked. Boom. Crash. Dunzo. This was days after our boy was born. And I found myself riding the rails with lots of guys on their way home from their last day at work. Ever. That was weird. But we held on. Didn't get canned. Everything got more expensive. But we spent our savings and the kids sort of started to fit in and flourish in their new environment. Which sucks because we may have to move back to the city soon.

Then people started dying. First an uncle. Then a stepmom. Then another uncle. We were witnessing a shift in family dynamics. The older were dead already. Now the middle aged had become the new old and begun dying. And we were not young anymore.

Next came Weatherpocalypse: 2010s. That's three epic storms in three years. The first two flooded the basement. This last one has caused massive damage to the town we live in and all the surrounding ones as well. There hasn’t been any power here for ten days. No heat. Temps below freezing at night. And so after ten days surviving under blankets and making fires we finally we succumbed and joined mom in the hotel room she was able to book earlier today.

We’ve all been forced to spend more time together as a family than ever before. Two weeks with limited phone service, less distractions for us all. We eat as a family cause we have to. We are all home at dinnertime. We all ate mac and cheese together the other night and loved it. We’ve sat by the fire every night because there is no TV and it's too damn cold anywhere else. We made up games, and the kids performed little plays about bees and flowers being friends. It was magical.

And scary. My dad was flooded out. He lost a lot. My brother is still without power and heat. His business has been closed for two weeks. His hometown is wrecked too.

We lost train service to New York. Our new reality is that a two-hour commute by train has become a three-hour commute by bus.

I’m lucky enough that I could work from home while the kids’ schools are closed. My clock is ticking. But I have until Monday until things really blow up. My wife however has run out of runway and needs to be at the office tomorrow. Not so much because it's mission critical for her to sit in her assigned seat, but because her cunty new boss with no kids, no family, and no man "I don't understand, why can't she be here"d in a meeting and that was that. She's going in. No matter that there's now six inches of snow on the ground and she is feverish and awake on a couch in the middle of the night with two kids who have nowhere to go all day tomorrow and no heat or electricity.

Look, I know this sounds whiny and everyone's got it tough. But she's sick and it's not right that sociopathic single people who can't make relationships work end up running businesses because in business hierarchies sociopathy is not only tolerated, but rewarded and encouraged.

And so here we are. It's been over a month since I flogged myself. And it's gotten easier to not do it in genera,l but this week in particular, since the storm hit, it's been a joke. It's like giving up going to the movies in Afghanistan. It's just not available on so many levels.

And it all makes sense suddenly, after a week in the 1800s. We haven't talked about 50 Cent's first tweet much. The one in which he said folks should stop masturbating because it's a sin. He may have “LOL'd” after that. But he was onto something. This whole project is about growing up. Putting away childish things. Yes, your penis is a childish thing, particularly when you use it as a play toy. And I’ve realized my body is not a toy anymore. It's not a temple exactly yet. Maybe it’s a crucible. It’s something to carry carefully.

Self-denial is what adults do. And I knew it was coming. The end of this era of stroke-itude. It just has to stop eventually. It's a young man's game. And the choices and commitments I've made ordained this evolution years ago. What I'm giving up by not masturbating isn’t the masturbating, or the pleasurable sensations, it's the pretending that goes along with them. Pretending I'm not masturbating when I am. Pretending I wasn't just masturbating after I just finished. Pretending masturbating isn't sapping me creatively. It seems simple when you say it, but masturbating is just pretending, in fact, that I may have sex or am having sex with another woman other than my wife.

And it’s all a little sad if you don't know you're pretending. Or why. In my case what I’ve realized is that I was avoiding the reality that I'd made my choices. In doing so I'd become distracted from how much I like the life and lives my wife and I have made together. The one I so desperately want to hang onto right now. Even more than I want to hang on to my penis.

Now it's Friday. The final test. Two weeks since the storm took the power away and created a New Normal in New Jersey and more than a month since I started this diary/quest. I am lying on the floor of a cold, dark house, alone for the first time in 12 days, in front of a fireplace, which contains one wet-ish cherry log and half a Duraflame. I desperately want to jerk off.

My dick is harder than the log and hotter than the Duraflame. I could just rub one out and no one would know, right? I seriously need to cum. I have been checking out the asses of women I would never consider fucking in a normal week. But desperate times…

And man, am I desperate for someone to fuck. Even if it's myself. My wife and I did it last Saturday. She and I just got under the covers and played let's pretend there wasn't a massive game changing storm that felled the trees, ravaged the coastline, and left us in the cold. We knew we were better off than a lot of people. And with help from a few glasses of wine we let ourselves believe things would be okay and fucked a good fuck.

But that was that. No sexuality whatsoever since. It's been an up at six and a constant state of gas lines and generators and building fires to stay warm. And cooking more goddamn hotdogs and eggs (ahem) than any family should eat in week.

Now I want to do it with the mail lady, anyone. I'm hungover from too much vodka with a neighbor who let me and the kids (wife staying in NYC so she can work) crash at his house and enjoy his heat and television. Good guy. I was a little prickish and over-critical of the town last week when I went off about how it's all jocks. That was before the election and the Romney-Ryan lawn placards (I know, as if, right?) were obviously getting to me almost as much as middle-class-ness and work stress and not spanking it are.

The truth is we've made some good friends here. And the truth is also that I'd do his wife if we were in the jungle days, and if I know anything about 40-year-old married guys, he'd do mine, too. The cliché is just true. At some level all married men want to fuck pretty much every woman they meet. And being hungover always makes me horny (What doesn't? Dead nuns, my mom snoring, that's about it). But my resolve is steady, I’ve changed from all this. I will not stroke myself. And I won't cheat. It’s just a product of being a child of divorce: I can’t do it to the kids, they deserve better than an ass-chasing idiot.

Instead I wait. My dick wants out though, and once I even take it out of my sweats to admire it. It feels like a forearm grew out of my prostate, like I could lift myself up with it.

But away it goes. I won't jerk off today. I will wait. And maybe get to fuck my wife tonight if she doesn't work too late, which I'd handicap at a one in ten possibility.

This turns out to be a good decision. Only minutes later the power comes back. And the two events are related. I can't prove it. But I know it in my soul. If I had jerked off my power would still be gone. This was a test of my mettle. And I’ve passed.

Later I had a great story fall in my lap. I'll be covering the New Normal in New Jersey and the way the storm totally destroyed a place I love and challenges the people here every day. It's a good story. And I've waited and prepared all my life for this moment without really knowing it.

I'm not fantasizing anymore. It's a living nightmare not jerking off and seeing homes and lives and beaches destroyed by a super-storm (whatever the fuck that is) named after a Bruce Springsteen song (Sandy? Really?!). But it's real. And it's my life. And I'm sticking to it. Just like I'm sticking to the 50 Cent plan.

CODA/A Letter From A Former Member of the Christopher Lucas Appreciation Society

Dear Christopher,

It's me. Your dick, dick. Where have you been? We never hang out anymore. We used to be so tight. And I've been good to you for a long time. And now you just drop me like all the friends you dropped when you had kids? Cause they didn't. And you were busy and couldn't relate. And all that other bullshit. And all the other other bullshit about all the other people and stuff you gave up on (including yourself)?How's that book coming along? Could've written the fucking Odyssey in the time you spent slapping me around on your little selfish adventures in porn. And, oh yeah, about those kids of ours: you're welcome. That was all me, pal. And now nothin’ from you in weeks? Some thanks that is. I mean, don't you wanna Google "boobs" for old times sake? Just you and me and 20 or 30 thousand images of breasts. Think about it. Who has to know? What's it gonna hurt? No? Really? Actually, you know what? Fuck you. We're through. I'm breaking up with you. I don't wanna see you again unless we're standing in front of a urinal or a vagina. You haven't been good to me for years. In fact now that I think about it you dumped me when you and your wife (god, I love-hate that bitch and her precious little pussy!) had those little monsters in the first place. Sure, I still saw you whenever it was convenient for you. But when we did hang out it was always all about you and your needs. What about my needs, Christopher? You think I like your goddamn ape hands on my shit? I was always doing all the work. All you did was get blissed out while I was cranking up the pleasure centers of that godforsaken brain of ours (that damn organ gets undeserved credit for my work by namby pamby liberal media types like you who are embarrassed to admit you're ruled by me. That, and the wrist. Masturbating isnt in the wrist. If anything it's about the shoulders). You think it's fun for me to get squeezed by those wet mitts of yours? So, yeah, fuck you gently, you goddamn pussified pussy of a man. Leave me out of your fantasies. From now on all I wanna see besides clean skivvies is some tight trim and strands of your DNA covering milky white tits. No more getting you off for free. You gotta earn it with real-life snatch my friend. Nothing else is gonna satisfy this dissatisfied prick. You and me ain't friends anymore. And I got a little secret for you. You're a pathetic loser who likes to act all smart and strong when we both know you're a total jerkoff. And I've let you make me the bad guy for far too long. It's truth or die, baby. And I'm not dyin cause I'm not lyin. I didn't make you do anything. Your precious little brain did. That thing makes me sick. Besides always getting credit for my work it also never gets the blame when it should. And I always get fingered for shit the brain did. Thinking with your dick? Impossible. It's not like I made you fantasize about fucking your kid's teacher. That was your top half, not me. And that shit is fucked up. Sure, she has big tits. But she's more than that. See, you have me all wrong. You think I'm some jackhammering idiot with nothing but friction for brains. But that shit is actually you, buddy. Own it, motherfucker.

Now I'd tell you to go fuck yourself. But then we'd be right back where we started. So I'll leave you with this instead: fuck off, you fucking fucker.

Richard P Johnson Previously

The Jerkoff Diaries, Part I The Jerkoff Diaries, Part II

The Jerkoff Diaries, Part III