Boys Who Masturbate

As it turns out, I did not invent masturbation. Oh, sure, you knew that. Well, frankly, I know I’ve known it for a long time, myself, but when I first discovered what a fantastic feeling it was to hold a piece of wood in my lap while I worked on it with an orbital sander, I may have actually thought I was onto something revolutionary. Of course, I soon realized I could produce the same fluid with my hand. I may have realized it wasn’t a capability unique to me by the time I’d identified the word “masturbation” in a book at the city library. (Holy Hot Dog, Batman! There’s a word for what I do in the bathtub!) Still, it was an enormous revelation when during Driver’s Ed, in the summer after my ninth grade year, a guy bragged about asking a Special Ed. kid if he’d masturbated yet. Yet? Like it’s a given and only the timing is variable? Wow! I’d only waited two years for that news bulletin.

You Masturbate? Well, Here’s Your Strait Jacket!

“…in order to prevent the repetition of the act of masturbation and, if possible, permanently to cure the victim of this vice, boys often have to be put in a strait jacket…”, What a Young Boy Ought to Know, Sylvanus Stall, 1897.

Well, yeah, I guess strait jackets “cure” a lot of things. (Important side effect: you may lose the will to live.)