Quit Masturbating: The 100 Word Solution

Masturbation is always a CHOICE. Desire the reward of FREEDOM badly enough to accept some momentary FRUSTRATION. Recognize that the ORGASM caused by masturbation is small REWARD compared to the feelings of POWER and CONTROL that come from viewing pornography and imagining sexual situations with VULNERABLE people. Write down what you really BELIEVE about how people’s HUMANITY, innocence, independence, and privacy should be respected. Acknowledge the difference between your SEX THOUGHTS and your CORE BELIEFS. Daily RECITE out loud your core beliefs. When sex thoughts arise, take DEEP BREATHS and confront them with the truth. RECORD and REWARD your PROGRESS.

Boys, Don’t Twist an Arm to Get a Boner

When you realize what sexual arousal and the erection (boner) that goes with it are for—to make it so a guy’s penis can push its way into a woman’s vagina—it’s easy to assume that every erection will have a predictable starting point. In other words, if you are feeling tight in the crotch, you think you should be able to go, “Oh, yeah, caught some cleavage on that Melissa,” or “What would I expect? Jasmine just brushed up against me.” So, it seems like you should be able to justify erections and ask the question, “What logical reason would there be for my penis to think that I wanted to have sex with a girl right this minute?”

“It’s a common fear: You have an erection and it’s clearly caused by something that should not be stimulating to you.”

Well, of course, things aren’t that simple. You know that. You’ve no doubt awakened with a boner (“morning wood”) and your only real desire at that moment is to urinate. You might try to focus your foggy mind on the night behind you and try to remember a sex dream of some sort, but you won’t necessarily identify a fantasy lover who got you hot and bothered in your sleep. Generally, morning wood is the hardest boner you have (takes forever to go down) and seems the least justified (thoughts that usually seem sexy are pretty lame right then).

It’s a common fear: You have an erection and it’s clearly caused by something that should not be stimulating to you. Assuming you picture yourself an attractive heterosexual guy who will snag a beautiful bride in the coming years, it’s scary to think that something you consider perverted aroused you, particularly another guy or a younger child.

Can a Boy Ever Know Enough About Sex?

I was in sixth grade when they separated us boys and girls to show us sex education films, one for each gender. My classmates already knew me to turn red and turn away from naughty talk and off-color jokes, so when a few of them taunted me with “Did you learn anything?” after the film was shown, it was not out of sincere interest in my education. I remembered enough details about the movie to find it in recent years. It is Boy to Man (Part 1, Part 2). In retrospect, it was so dry and clinical, it probably shouldn’t have embarrassed me as much as it did. With an internal drawing of the erect penis—the external part of the shaft located almost all off-screen—the newscaster voice says, “During masturbation, a boy may handle his penis to cause an ejaculation.” Masturbation? Handle? Ejaculation? It was all lost on me. The trauma of the subject matter simply overwhelmed me and I avoided absorbing the intended medical information. Frankly, it wasn’t until that summer, in the camp shower, that the sight of my friend’s naked body woke me up to the fact that my dad’s type of “penis hair” could arrive at age 12!  Mine came in the months that followed. With it came my curiosity. No, I didn’t want to participate in a classroom viewing of Boy to Man II: Juicer Stuff, but I had my eyes open for as much sex information as I could lay my hands on.

Don’t Be Naked on Facebook

Please don’t be offended, but you can’t friend me on Facebook. If you see any profile for a Monroe, I guarantee it’s not me. I admire people who give advice like mine and fully identify themselves, but that’s not me. Only a small segment of people connected to me offline know that I share my experience with masturbation and pornography and sexual fantasy online. Honestly, I would be happy to share it with more people, but this is a need-to-know category and if you don’t need to know, you don’t want to know. That’s a healthy boundary.

The Charlie Sheen Show: Like Limp Porn

Charlie Sheen taking people’s money and taking to the stage is all kinds of wrong, and after reading this review I know that some his fans agree with me:

From ew.com, the InsideTV blog, comes this 10:03 live update by James Hibberd:

The show is now an unmitigated disaster. There’s a fairly steady stream of people leaving early. Attendee Chris Acchione, a self-described Sheen fan who traveled all the way from Toronto for the show, says his entire mezzanine row walked out. “He’s making a fool of himself,” he says. “Is there a bigger loser in the world? He’ll be [begging] Chuck Lorre for his job back by the end of the week.”

I’m reminded of life years ago, pre-internet, when finding real porn was sometimes a challenge and the only success I found was in proving myself a lustful fool. Specifically, I’m remembering buying an X-rated videotape without realizing that I was in a state with strict pornography restrictions. The video had been converted for sale there. It was rendered flaccid, if you will, by pan-and-scan. The genitalia and therefore all action involving them were always just off-screen. That’s a wake-up call. You can’t help but know acknowledge to yourself what you got the tape for. You feel cheap because your disappointment cuts through lies you told yourself about just wanting to understand the film style of pornography. You feel ripped off because you thought you’d purchased industrial-strength smut.

Did anyone who went to see Charlie’s show think they were going to get something of value? He’s shown his cards quite publicly over the last few months and news reports over the span of his public life have made it clear where his priorities and interests lie. So no one could have gone to that theater in Detroit in search of meaningful insight on the human condition or for a collection of motivational stories. I rather think they were hoping to see something truly obscene or outrageous (beyond what Sheen’s already broadcast for free). Some, I’m sure, were hoping to see a man give up the last of his dignity in a last desperate grab for money. They were banking on that to be funny on the face of it. Maybe they’d witness in person tomorrow’s new big story about the wealthy whacko. So, in a way it’s like pornography. If you are honest with yourself, it’s a disappointment if it’s too soft or edited. The stuff you’ll consider “good” (except when you’re honest with yourself) shocks and disgusts you. It offends the sensibilities. It spits on God’s silly notion about the noble use of genitals and breasts and bottoms. Like the Charlie Sheen stage show, nothing good was ever going to result from it.

Christian Pornography? Church Strip Clubs? Righteous Boner!

There is a small, passionate movement afoot to justify ogling nude dancers and drooling over lewd images of sexual intercourse. This movement suggests that the Bible does not forbid looking at nudity and it’s only lust if you acknowledge to yourself a literal desire to engage in sexual intercourse with someone other than your spouse. Oh, and some would say that ideal Christian pornography would show kind, caring lovemaking between real husband and wife. I’m not yet clear on what makes for a Christian strip club, but there is a notion that if the customers were all Christians, it wouldn’t be a den of sin. After all, if it’s just looking and your interest is in the “appreciation and admiration” of God’s handiwork, it must be Godly.

Undressing Nudity, Part Four of Four

This is the fourth and final part of an essay on nudity. I’m trying to de-mystify it, un-power it, and un-couple it from associations that aren’t healthy.

I’ve always been fascinated by nudist camps, closed-access communities where people give each other complete visual access to their bodies. The idea of privates is meaningless. Back when, as a kid, I feared going to the doctor largely because he might have to see under my clothes, the idea of a nudist camp blew my mind. Even as an adult, when the idea of being a visitor kind of excites me, I imagine that I’d spend the whole time comparing forbidden body parts, hoping that a cross-section of society would be present and I could learn all sorts of things about body types and puberty and aging and so on and so forth. Well, I recently read a serious study about behavior and attitudes of nudists. Basically it was asking if all that exposure to nudity created a sexually-charged environment. Well, the conclusion was that a nudist camp and an orgy are nearly opposite environments. It made the nudist camp sound like prudes at a church supper. They didn’t discuss the human body or sex and they primarily did not look below the neck. They had virtual boundaries for themselves.

Hot New Pornography! Tell Me More! Then Again, Don’t

I was watching some TV show last night about the pursuit of criminal suspects, probably Most Wildly Insane Police Chases III, or similar. This is the one with the narration by a man I believe to be a former police officer. The show began with some verbiage about how the videos would be violent and shocking, but they show them to us for one reason: BECAUSE KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. I hope you had nothing in your mouth when you read that.