The Jerkoff Diaries: Part III

Christopher Lucas continues his journey to follow 50 Cent’s “stop masturbating” plan.

Monday morning I woke up horny as hell. A step backwards, if you will. A loop of the previous night's activities—sex with my wife—played enticingly in my head, and my hand and dick desperately wanted to relive the magic in this morning’s shower. I should note that it would've taken maybe forty seconds to come, had I indulged my feverish little demons. But I didn't.

I should also note that this is a pretty common phenomenon for me. Fucking begets more wanting to fuck. We fuck and suddenly I am filled with the urge to jerk off thinking about the sex. It's a war for my sexual soul between real sex and sex the way I remember it. It's also a fairly good indication that I have compulsive tendencies. Which if they are anything are some combination/imbalance of over-rationalization and common sense. Sex feels good. Let's do it constantly.

What's wrong with that? Who knows? Maybe 50 Cent?

We haven't talked about him in a while. I bet he's been flogging himself like a porn-fed Spanish Inquisitor. Or not. His plan is working for me. And since it's his plan…

I have been having a little trouble with the one part of the plan I thought would be the easiest. I am noticing myself wanting to turn around and check out the asses of women I pass on the street. Not cool. But true.

I don't slip up much, statistically speaking. It's like one turnaround for every fifty women. But this is NYC, so effectively I am craning neck every four or five blocks.

Here's the thought process behind the look back (Warning. It's medulla level stuff): "Fuck. She's hot. Great tits. GREAT TITS. Oh my god I wanna fuck her right now. Oh my GOD I am in love. Her ass must be amazing. I have to see that…" [Turn head]. End scene.

I don’t want to break rule number three (“Do not go to strip clubs”), and I don't even know where a good strip club is, but reading the above graph again, I think maybe I should go to one. This tits and ass shit has got its hooks in me.

In high school I had a friend (okay, he was basically the only guy who didn't try to fight me, so I am calling him a pal, which I’ll admit is probably an overstatement). Anyway, this guy would get hard in class. It was Catholic school. There were short plaid skirts, white blouses, the full fantasy. Can you really blame him? And he'd be sitting at his desk at the end of class trying to get un-hard before standing up (on his feet/legs), and he'd mutter to himself, "think of dead nuns. Think of dead nuns" and repeatedly tap the top of his bulge till it receded. (He said picturing them in a flaming bus crash worked best.)

I had become self-proficient by then. I was crushing myself a couple times a day at home. There's a pair of fuzzy-lined slippers in a landfill somewhere in Jersey I should apologize to.

High school was a sexual-frustration-Olympics and I was Michael Phelps. I couldn't close a deal and barely left for college a non-virgin. But I did have a girlfriend who jerked me off a lot. And I got that far with several others. I never thought about it before, but I probably had more than the average amount of hand play as a young man. And apparently that just never stopped. Until last week at least.

Even as a boy I was best friends with my penis. I couldn't really jerkoff obviously, but we were close. The first time I reached a climax I was twelve and I jerked off to a painting -– a nude – but an actual oil-on-canvas. And it curled my toes. And became a habit immediately.

I had a fair amount of alone time in those days, which made my habit habit-forming. I had a copy of a romance novel I can't remember the name of that contained a passage about a tanned breast and brown nipple that I could easily get off to right now from memory alone. It would be probably the fiftieth time I’ve gotten off to that exact fantasy to date.

Later I discovered my dad (parents divorced a few years earlier) had a cable package that included the Playboy Channel. Watching it was like dating. Make some snacks. Turn on the TV. Drop my pants and die le petite mort alone on the couch. Over and over again.

I was always alone but always felt like I was being watched. Catholic guilt? Parental paranoia? Take your pick but it's probably a better guess that I enjoyed thinking on some level that I was being watched and that we all do. It’s not like I fantasized I was being watched by a cop. It was, of course, by a horny, gorgeous brown-nipple possessing imaginary paper babe.

Do porn stars and strippers dig it? Being watched? Being used as a sub for real sex? If they do they probably don't respect themselves for it. And if they don't they probably don't respect you for it.

Still, it's the most natural thing in the world. Kids and old people and even some animals all yank on themselves. It's just not always polite. And probably not good behavior. People and animals and kids also stick their fingers in their noses, eat whole sleeves of mint girl scout cookies, and watch American idol. You think Fido's not DTI?

People are no guide for how to behave. If we were, VICE wouldn't exist. Not that there is a good guide, except maybe a guy like Jesus and no one knows if the dude existed or if he was married or not. And he was always palling around with hookers and said precious little about wanking.

A note on 50's fourth rule (Do not look at lust filled magazines. It’s Tuesday AM, and I am looking at a hi-res photo of a young women in glasses, a chambray shirt splayed across a bed full of novels, her panty-covered (barely) pussy and ass in the air. This is work-related. It hurts.

The pain of sexual denial sucks. Literally. It's been described to me by friends as "like being stabbed with tiny knives," and being stuck in "an endless repeating hell." But I think it's actually best explained thusly: It's like being suffocated by the constriction of a giant boa snake, a crushing limitation and inevitable ending that you can’t muster breath to scream about, arms stuck at your side, chest collapsing. Death.

Maybe I should learn to paint. Sometimes I sit at my desk and draw boobs and other rounded edges. I’ve been doing this as long as I can remember.

It’s funny, but while monogamy and no masturbation is depressing, it’s nothing compared to the rest of my life.

We live in a nice town. But I can’t relate at all to most of the neighbors. It’s the thing about nice towns. If they can afford to live there, they are probably asshole banker types and former homecoming queen wives, desperately self-satisfied traditionalists and advice-handing worldbeaters. Jocks. Douchebags. And their hot-as-shit/vacant-as-hell bored wives in stretch pants.

We, of course, cant afford to live in this comfortable idyll without hustling like chimps at work. And the result is a feeling of never actually being in one place (home or work), or ever feeling like you belong in either.

Work in media and other non-cash-cow fields (my wife is in non-profit) is occasionally interesting and satisfying, but it’s increasingly populated by the only workforce who can afford a boutique career without real cash-generating potential—the young, the family-less, and the already wealthy.

I don’t fit in there. And I don’t fit in at home. And I honestly feel lucky to even feel that way. Because the fact is that either I or my wife could be out of a job very soon.

If that happens we’d be in deep financial shit. The kids have destroyed what savings we have. We’d need to move, which, while enticing in terms of increasing the number of socializing prospects who can talk about anything besides working out, it’s also a fucking killer in terms of not being able to raise the kids in a good school district (I know how that sounds, but walk a mile). It’d be dramatic and hyper-depressing. And I might actually break.

Suck on that, 50. Drug-dealing fucking rapper and Vitamin Water mogul makes a hundred million. I am struggling at a middle-management and reporting career. Somehow it does make sense. And somehow I think quitting masturbating is gonna help me get through all this bitterness and envy to someplace better. Or maybe it’s the cause of it?

Tune in next week to hear about the new car, whether the hammer comes down, and a letter from my penis.

Previously: The Jerkoff Diaries: Part II The Jerkoff Diaries: Part I