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A Visit to the Dawn of Sex
By Eric Francis . Illustration by Emil Alzamora

Plenty of people in long-term partnerships have told me that their experiences masturbating together are among the hottest erotic moments they’ve ever had. If this has happened to you, then you know what I’m talking about.

Why might this be? With all the possibilities for contact sex and all the fuss we make about it, why is sharing masturbation so hot, both for people who’ve tried it and the downright shocking assortment of people who fantasize about it?

May is officially the eighth annual National Masturbation Month, so it seemed like a good time to give this didge a hoot. Masturbation Month wasn’t declared by the president, but then neither was Pork Appreciation Month. Rather, Good Vibrations, the legendary San Francisco Bay-area self-pleasure stores run by an all-women collective, created the event. “At Good Vibrations, we know that sexual pleasure is a birthright and that masturbation is a powerful source of sexual gratification,” their Web site states. “Since practically everyone masturbates, but few of us talk about it, we created National Masturbation Month, a month-long celebration recognizing the many ways we can pleasure ourselves.”

Good Vibrations is an interesting place to visit, but the most unique thing about it is how open and easygoing the environment is around the theme of self-given pleasure, down to the last detail, with unflinching sales people ready to help answer any questions. Customers freely browse displays of erotic toys that range from the artistically elegant (long, s-shaped clear dildos) to the practical (nipple clamps). Their bookshelf is one-of-a-kind, featuring titles like Joani Blank’s Femalia and the magnificent I Am My Lover, which she edited. The presentation is unpretentious and decidedly unpornographic. The business is owned by its employees, who share the profits. Does it get cooler?
This is a rare kinda place. It’s clear that things are loosening up around the subject; fewer children are chided for pleasuring themselves and more are encouraged to do so at the appropriate time and place. But most of us grew up a few decades ago. For most inhabitants of the Western world, masturbation remains shrouded in the same veils of taboo as ever, which can take the form of privacy, modesty, or aversion to the subject. And there are still tons of places where extreme negative emotions are programmed into many children, like certain unnamed massive institutions.

The subject may arise in some conversations, but it’s still all but ignored in the media and in many discussions of sex education. To the extent that sex is openly discussed in our culture, it’s usually for four reasons: rape, abuse, pregnancy, and disease. These are moot points where masturbation is concerned, so it doesn’t get a free ticket to elementary school most of the time. The theme of masturbation is pleasure; that’s not really considered necessary to discuss, and besides, it’s embarrassing. So we leave out the nitty gritty. Besides—despite the many accoutrements at Good Vibrations—the real details of masturbation are primarily emotional and mental.
Masturbating together, on another note, is the closest two people can come to having group sex. When two people make love, they can seem to merge into one person. When two people masturbate together, they become separate entities. The boundaries are all rearranged, and you notice how many people are there—two, which is quite a few. Suddenly there’s a whole crowd.

Here are a few other ideas about why this activity might be so much fun, and such a wholesome way to grow into your sexuality.

Self Disclosure
Sharing masturbation is intimate. Too intimate for intimacy, some would say. Perhaps too intimate for safe, secure, and predictable intimacy, but whatever.

Masturbation is usually thought of and taught as a solo activity and, more to the mark, something to make an effort to keep private. That makes for mondo repression: we have no idea. When that sealed door is opened, unusual and beautiful things can happen. We open a kind of chest of mysterious wonders. While we may claim we’re not the least bit ashamed of masturbation, we sure have some funny ways of expressing our pride—for instance, by hiding behind a locked door.
What’s in there? We find new things when we open the door in the presence of a witness. One experience is a powerful state of being seen. Some contemporary schools of therapy are addressing the issue of childhood invisibility. People who felt invisible as children can feel equally invisible as adults, and much of this phenomenon surrounds sexuality or at least reaches into it. It’s difficult to be appreciated for who we really are as sexual beings, and when it happens, it’s often difficult to take in the nourishment.

Next case. Many, many people, when they open up on the subject of masturbation, talk about dealing with feelings of shame and guilt, subtle or otherwise. These may be programmed into us on very down-there levels, for example, like how the adults around us vibed to us when we were masturbating as small kids. If they were embarrassed, we might translate that to an inner feeling of shame. If they were controlling, we might translate that into guilt.

Now for the not so strange part. These seemingly negative emotions are usually the veil that’s drawn over our hottest, most necessary, even our most urgent erotic desires. And this is why it feels so good to reveal and set free. The inherent message of masturbating together is: it’s okay.

Inner Erotic Life
Masturbation is usually thought of as physical, but as we all know, it’s much more. True, there are some people who don’t use fantasy when they masturbate. But not most. Ah, here’s an outrageous question though—what details do you reveal to your partner about the content of your fantasy life?

Mmmmm. That image of having wild sex with a great sultan on top of a galloping elephant in 18th-century India might not be the kind of thing you would discuss at breakfast. Or those subtle, hot apple pie hot daytime notions of your co-worker. Or your students. Or your partner’s brother or sister. Hey, or one of their parents. Extremely inappropriate! Fantasized about every day! Anything goes in masturbation fantasy, and it’s often quite surprising what comes up. Would that be too much information?

Masturbating with someone means they might get to watch you fantasize. And you might be inclined to tell them exactly what you’re thinking, or you might be afraid they’ll ask, or in the highly telepathic state of the modern world, you might think they can read your mind.
Thing is, to go there in a totally honest way, most intimate couples will need to take at least a conceptual step past any jealousy that might arise, into the space of appreciating just exactly what their partner is feeling. There’s a word for this—compersion. Compersion is allowing yourself to be turned on by whatever feelings of pleasure your partner is experiencing. It’s about giving up all control over what they feel, and control over what you feel, and all responsibility for the fact that they feel it. Compersion answers jealousy with compassion.

A Visit to the Dawn of Sex
In these decades, our culture is extremely hung-up about the fact that children experience erotic feelings. The mere acknowledgement of this is often reflexively associated with really negative stuff, and less often with the joy of being alive. But we were all kids. We all experienced erotic awakening. And usually that initial awakening has a lot to do with masturbation. That is, if we were lucky.

One thing you can say about masturbating together as opposed to alone is that it’s an experience with greatly enhanced awareness. It’s like a magnifying glass, or a time travel device. At that point there’s a flashback, whether on the surface or deeper in our feelings, to something among our first conscious erotic moments. Very trippy, when you think about it.

At the dawn of sex, all kinds of creatures live. Some are extremely pleasant, some are rather fearful, and some are horrendous beyond comparison. Intimacy gives us opportunities to make peace with the scary ones by helping raise them to awareness. You could say that intimacy is allowing someone to know you as you know yourself, or, with someone’s help, learning to know yourself better than you did before.