Though I was, at a very young age, aware of the pleasurable sensations associated with rolling naked on the bed, I had no knowledge of masturbation until I was eleven. My grandmother rented out rooms to men and women who worked in nearby hotels and restaurants. My mother visited her quite often, and one evening, while I was watching my cousins playing a game of catch, one of the tenants started talking to me. We talked about a number of regular things, and somehow, the subject turned to sex, and he began telling me about how he loved to fuck his girlfriend. To illustrate his point further, he produced a key chain that had an album of pictures attached to it. On it were pictures of people fucking.
He then asked me to go for a walk with him, and I followed. We stopped at the remnants of a building that was gutted by a fire a few months prior, where an old man was burned to death. The area where the building used to be was filled with rubble, and it reminded me of bombed-out buildings in war movies. It was dark in there, and we were two silhouettes trying our best not to break a bone or twist a ligament as we made our way in. After we found a spot, we sat down. He asked me if I knew how to masturbate. My immediate reaction was how the word "MASTURBATE" is spelt. I told him no, and he told me that he'd show me. So with some spit and a little bit of soap that he carried around with him, he started doing it. And thus the combined bouquet of cockskin and soap is forever imprinted into my memory of the word masturbate. I mean, if I was ever asked to free associate the word, I would definitely riff off "the smell of cockskin and the smell of soap".
The next day, I tried masturbating after I had returned from school. I have to admit it felt a little idiotic, standing there in the bathroom, pulling my foreskin up and down and not really feeling "it". In all fairness my cockhead was a whole lot more sensitive then, where a slight touch on that meaty cap would send me cringing. I gave up the activity soon enough, and stepped out of the bathroom after having neither reached an orgasm nor ejaculated. Approximately an hour later, I was doing my homework when I felt a pronounced wetness in my pants. I took a look and saw that the head was covered with a film of clear, slimy fluid. It was interesting enough to make me want to try shaking my cock again that evening. I don't quite remember when my first orgasm occurred, but I do remember jerking off regularly ever since.
I suppose I have Shanta, the perv who fondled me and then taught me how to masturbate, to thank for a number of things. When I first discovered how to play with my cock, my foreskin was not yet fully detached from my glans, and till today I continue to wonder, had he not taught me how to do it, wouldn't I have become yet another victim of painful (and very likely bloody) first-time sex, and perhaps, circumcision? I mean, just the thought of having no foreskin distresses me.
I saw him three more times after that, and each time, I remember pressing him to show me again how he did it. The last time we met was when he dropped by my house one afternoon, and we went to this shopping mall that was within walking distance from where I lived. My mother, having no idea what he has taught me, allowed us to go. We sat down in a restaurant and predictably, ventured into topics about sex. And yet again, I asked him to show me again how he masturbated. He was reluctant at first, then acquiesced. We went to a public washroom, stepped into a booth and locked the door. He took out his Indian cock, which was completely dark brown, save for the glans, which was pink. I remember that it was pretty thick and long, but then again, when you're eleven, everything looks bigger and longer. He stroked it a few times, and I was relishing that familiar smell of cock when he suddenly stopped and said that it would get him all tired and shit. Which was okay I said, and then we said our goodbyes, after which I have never seen him again.
Objectively, he did seem to have molested me, but I have never felt fear in his company. I suppose if he had tried to violate me in the ass things would be significantly different, and I wouldn't be writing about this in such a lyrically nostalgic manner.
It's strange when I think about the coincidences, the way things seem to fall into place; my early discovery of pornography, and then came along someone who taught me how to masturbate. To me, masturbation is the key to the ritual, to the celebration of pornography. Prior to learning how to masturbate, I had no means to consummate my appreciation, to get involved with the images, to become a part of the space, the mise-en-scene of the imagery. Surely, a great deal of conceit went into this view on masturbation and pornography. The moist mental reverberations, the stroking hand, the fingers, the smell, the sensation, the swollen genitalia, through that empty space, someone resonates the imagined fever, the concentrated stroking, the thrusting, the fucking, the sucking, the heat and the swirling intensity.