King of the Wild Frontier

Horatio writes: We have commented before that learning to shoot one off can be the closest we get to being like Peter Parker trying out his newly-found Spidey skills. This is especially true when the discovery is accidental as Edmund Ross of Los Angeles describes. We would love to hear your stories, be they of being taught, self-taught etc.


To this day, I can't remember what made me do it. But it changed my life forever. I was thirteen years old and had jumped into bed at the same time in the same way a thousand times before. But this night, something felt spectacularly different. My penis had liberated itself through the fly of my brown kung-fu style pajamas. The ecstatic shock as the underside rubbed against the light starch of my fresh Scooby-Doo duvet was as pure a feeling as I have experienced, before or after.

When I look back on this definitive moment twenty-something years later, I am amazed at the bravery of my next step. If this kind of thing happened to me today, I would be risk averse. Persuade myself it had not, turn off the bedside light, and try to forget. But in those days, I was fearless. After catching my senses, and making sure I could hear no footsteps -- the sound of my parents downstairs -- I tentatively slipped my hands under the sheets, took hold of my schlong and tried to recreate the move which had provided me with such unknown delight just moments before. After a couple of trial efforts to work out what felt best, I started rubbing and rubbing. Against Daphne, Wilma, Fred, Shaggy, and, yes, even Scooby, with increasing confidence approaching abandon.

Imagine the shock then when it happened -- an explosion of pleasure carelessly shooting out across my duvet cover. After thirteen years, I had learned something absolutely new about my body. I had found a hidden skill. Like a young Evil Kneivel experiencing the thrill of performing a wheelie on a push bike in his back yard for the first time, I recognized I had identified the talent I would devote the rest of my life to. I quickly picked up my new tool and rubbed and rubbed some more.

After this there was no stopping me. All day in class I would count the minutes till I could return to my bedroom and my new trick. Checking my watch at lunchtime, a thrill would spread through my body. Only five hours till home, and home now only meant one thing. After cursorily dispensing with my homework, I would wolf down the bolognese or lamb chop we had for dinner, kiss my parents goodnight and race upstairs to my field of dreams.

I only knew one way to do it. Rubbing it directly against the cotton-polyester mix of my duvet. The friction was intoxicatingly addictive. Even when then that friction shaved off the top layer of my skin and turned my innocent manhood bloody. Possessed, like a junkie searching for a vein, I would fiendishly focus on any small area of my tool that was not scabbed over. My duvet cover was transformed into a crisp and bloodied rag. Lying in my bed breathless after the act, I would look up at the Adam and the Ants poster that was taped to my ceiling. Adam Ant himself looked back with approval.

Great Works of Literature: Cosmopolitan Magazine

Horatio writes: Thanks to Chris Levy of Edgware, London for this fine literature review.


I was fourteen when I discovered one of my Mum's Cosmos lying around the house. After a quick perusal, I soon sequestered it in the bogs where it stayed for the next seven years. There was one full-page lingerie advertisement by some French sounding brand with two models fully decked -out in suspenders, knickers, bras. The works. I must have knocked one out to that picture alone over a thousand times when I lived at home.

The key was that one was blonde, the other brunette. They reminded me of Pepsi and Shirlie who came to fame as Wham!'s backing singers before setting the world alight as a talented pop duo under the tutelage of Mr. George Michael who produced their big hit Heartache. I used to rest the ad on my knee while I was sitting on the bog and mentally transport myself from my suburban home in North West London to a hotel room in New York in which I was doing it with both of them.

Fire all of your guns at once and explode into space

Horatio writes: This critical appreciation of an important piece of literature was submitted by Dov in San Francisco:

The now defunct Bookmonger in San Francisco was the place you went to as a kid for your serious reads. The shelves were packed with second-hand copies of Jack London and The Odyssey. But it was also the place where I tapped into a major source of inadvertent smut, thanks to a semi-regular supply of Easy Rider Magazines which would randomly appear in the periodical section. It was always a great mystery to me -- who would sell their copies of this magazine "for adult bikers" to such an above-board institution as the Bookmonger? In my mind, it must have been someone who looked like Michael Landon circa Highway to Heaven and I bought every copy I could get my hands on. The magazine was packed full of photographs of old biker guys on their tricked out hogs. I could not give a shit about the men or the machines. But every couple of photos or so, these old biker men would be photographed with their old biker girls riding pillion, or as I learned through my dedication to the pages of Easy Rider, in the "Bitch Seat." And it was these ladies, with their dirty hair, missing teeth, sun-blasted, tattooed skin, who thrilled the front of my eleven year old pants, thanks to their predilection for riding topless and exposing their sagging, worn-out boobs to the entire circulation of Easy Rider magazine. I did not have a bike. I did not know anyone who had a bike. But here was a culture that excited me. After rushing the magazine home to give it an adequate "test drive" in my bedroom, I would carefully cut the pictures out and collect them in a large brown envelope I kept in my desk -- the one in which I kept a playing card I had found on the street. A ten of hearts with a naked Asian woman sitting uncomfortably on one side, seemingly embarrassed to have such a great muff.

Spring Awakening

Horatio writes: Have social scientists studied what first makes a boy, a man? And if not, why not? We would love to hear tall tales of your early days and the forces which first inspired you. This one from Dave K. now of New York City, but born and bred in London, England:

"I got my first hard-on at the age of six watching Carry on Camping – part of a classic British slapstick comedy movie franchise of the Benny Hill variety. There was an actress called Barbara Windsor in it. A short, stacked, saucy blonde. In every movie she was in, her shirt was guaranteed to get caught in the door of a vehicle about to speed off, removing the garment and leaving her for a second standing there, with those fleshy orbs exposed in the light of day. I would bet that Barbara’s were the first pair of breasts seen by 70% of the boys who grew up in the seventies in England."

See Babs in action for yourself. The grand unveiling occurs exactly a minute into this classic.

Breakfast of Champions

Horatio writes: Does the posting below represent desperate measures for desperate times or genius acts of improvisational creativty? You be the judge.

Submitted by Lesley Batty in St. Louis, MO

For want of material to perform the act to, here is the list of the materials I used in the 1980’s and early '90's to focus my thinking and perform the act. Any of the below were used at various and multiple times:

1. Sears clothing catalog sent with the Sunday Chicago Tribune. Bras and knickers section

2. TV Guide feature on Charlie’s Angel Kate Jackson

3. Mary Lou Retton’s gold medal winning performance in the Los Angeles Olympics

4. A Wheaties box featuring figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi

5. Sheena Easton photograph in Rolling Stone. Prince was also in the shot. I used to cover him over with one hand while performing the act with the other.

Great Advances in the History of Technology, Part III

Horatio writes: This was told to us by a friend of ours from Montreal who does not normally dabble in one-upmanship, but this tale is a fine counter to the tennis loving Texan, Kevin Avon.

At least Kevin Aron was aided by electronically generated televisuals in his efforts to visit his "happy place." Mine were far more primitive. I had to view my next door neighbor's knickers hanging out to dry on the washing line which I would spend hours examining in excruciating detail, thanks to the magnifying power of my grandmother's binoculars. Though heavy, I could manage to hold them with one hand and go to work with my other, whilst staring at the polyester knick-knicks gently wafting in the wind. The hardest part? Putting the fact that the binoculars had that musty smell peculiar only to my grandmother out of my mind.

Fifteen Love

Horatio writes: A lesson to us all from Texas that there is always someone worse off than you. If you have any tales that top this, we would love to hear them.

Submitted by Kevin Avon, Houston,TX:

Allow me to inject a small dose of reality into this debate, without diluting an iota of its importance. But all you gentleman who think they were hard done to for coming of age before the internet in terms of the fight they had put up to aquire porn. Bite me. Where i grew up, we did not even know porn existed!!! And so, come aged twelve, when gripped by the same urges that the rest of you were overcome by, we turned to the next best thing. Women's tennis. Thank you Chris Evert, Evonne Goolagong (nee Cawley), Tracy Austin, and Gabriella Sabatini. I, who have never hit a tennis ball in my life, watched your games obsessively with the same passion as your most dedicated fans. The only difference being, I made a point of watching with my pants around my ankles. One of the toughest matches I had was the 1985 Australian Open Final between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. I believe that "Martini" won. But that was besides the point. Making the magic happen to Chrissie when the camera insisted on cutting away to Navratilova every other shot was delicate, demanding and nuanced work. Some of my finest to that point. By the end of the match, which went to three sets, I was as exhausted as either of the ladies. If you post this, I would like to give a shout out to all those at Virginia Slims who promoted the womens game of tennis for so long. And to Hannah Mandlikova, Betty Stover, and Andrea Jaeger for retiring.