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When I was a kid, there was a saying that if you asked all the men in the world if they masturbated, 95% would say they did and the other 5% would lie about it. The Kinsey report on female sexuality, which first went into print when I was a young adult, gave somewhat lower figures for women, but then, they might just lie more.

A couple of years back Joycelyn Elders, the Surgeon General of the United States of America lost her job because she advocated that all children all be taught about masturbation...in school, if not in the home. Now she knew and we all know that it ain't the teaching ABOUT it that is necessary. We all have our sex organs completely wired into our nervous systems and, lacking massive repression, will sooner or later discover that rubbing them softly is fun. What she was trying to get at, I believe, is that we should be teaching them that jacking off...rubbing those hot spots until we come...is OK, right on, and an acceptable thing to do. Especially if, in this age of AIDS and rampant sexually transmitted diseases, we are going to urge our children to remain celibate until marriage, or at least until adulthood.

Young boys used to be told that if they masturbated, they would grow hair on the palms of their hands. There is no evidence that this ever stopped any of them from doing it, since the thought of sliding a hairy hand over their stiffened rods on cold winter nights was rather comforting. Besides, for reasons that always escaped me, most young men are really eager to start shaving anyway. Another ineffectual myth was that excessive masturbation would lead to blindness. "But, Mom, can't I just do it until I need to wear glasses?"

But no, the forces of bullshit, prudery and massive repression once more won out. I wonder if, in this new era of presidential blow jobs, Billy Bob would be quite so quick to give her the axe. Oh, right, I forgot, "I didn't have sexual relations with that woman...Monica Lewinsky." Well, maybe next year...

I suspect that Ms. Elders was well aware of all the stuff below and was simply dying to get the word out. Well, girl-friend, I'm gonna do it for you. Here is my take on masturbation:

1. Masturbation is fun and a great passer of time when you are bored.

2. Jacking off, also known as "choking the chicken" or "whacking the weenie" among boys, but usually as just masturbation among girls, who seem to talk about it among each other less (I think it is a sexist thing..."nice" girls don't do it, it is said...by men, of course), is definitely "safe sex." Girls can not get pregnant by doing it and nobody can catch anything (if you be sure to wash your hands BEFORE, AFTER being optional) from doing it.

3. If you get good at it, you will find that you will continue to do it even after you are having steady intercourse. It allows you to fantasize things that you either are too embarrassed to do for real, or your sex partner might disapprove of.

4. Mostly it is done in private, but this may be a result of general prudery and the fact that most young people are usually not aware of how much their friends and associates are doing it. Ignorance breeds shame. I think Joycelyn knew this too.

5. Because of the solitary nature of most masturbation, men seem to enjoy watching women do it and vice versa. Each is intrigued by the unique response of the other. Women especially are interested in studying male ejaculation, a response they not only lack, but is that thing that causes babies to grow within them. Important news, right?

The first printing of the Kinsey report said that only 33% of adult women have orgasms during sex. Of course, when the other two thirds of the women heard about this, they did not say to themselves, "Ah, I am normal...among the majority of good girls." Instead, what they really thought was "What the fuck am I missing?!" So in subsequent years, this percentage began to quickly rise. One thing both Kinsey and I noted...he from a statistically significant population and I by sampling my own admittedly small sample of respondents...is that women who did not masturbate had much more trouble having orgasms than women who did. I also knew only one man who told me he did not masturbate (and I believed him, he wasn't the bullshitting type) and he too had trouble having orgasms...something most of us guys did NOT suffer from during our youth...ask any woman. In fact, most women had trouble counting to thirty before their over eager young lovers popped their corks. Age does bring a little mellowness to this process for men, but the average time to ejaculation for men is still only about three minutes. Guys, that is what foreplay is all about...get it?

One thing I noticed when I was around a lot of other men while they were having sex...you know, during the free love sixties...is that men frequently confuse ejaculation, which is a reflex action, with orgasm, which is not. As every guy knows, if you don't "spank the monkey" (another witty boy-saying), you will wake up some night with wet sheets, perhaps accompanied by a hot dream...perhaps not. But, men and boys can easily ejaculate with just a minimum of associated pleasure (the passage of semen out the penis is itself mildly pleasant, but does not a full blown screaming orgasm make...but does help inform males what MIGHT be possible if they keep at it). The point is that in both women and men, orgasm is a LEARNED RESPONSE. Men with their exposed genitalia and reflex ejaculations just tend to learn about it more easily...BUT NOT NECESSARILY BETTER! In fact, if my limited experience is any guide, women who do come, tend to really, really shake the Earth, because they KNOW they had to learn how to do it, and most learn it well when they do. Men, on the other hand, can go through life making babies and spewing semen like grease guns at Quicky Lube and never really grasp the essentials of sexual pleasure. So it goes...

Many has been the night when Gypsy fell asleep early or was perhaps too tired from work to rock and roll, when I slipped a porn flick into the video player and got it on with myself. Other nights, it would be I who fell asleep early and I would wake up to her moans and groans at come-time. Both of us find it a useful thing to do when we are suffering from insomnia or wake up too early in the morning to get up. It relaxes the mind and the body, making deep sleep much easier to achieve.

One caveat. If you catch your children jacking off, do NOT make a fuss about it. Pretend you didn't see or hear a thing. Given that we still live in a society where a president who fucks around like Caligula can be pressured into firing a decent, caring woman for mentioning the 'M' word, its the only fair thing to do.

So, Joycelyn Elders, you really got a raw deal. I think you were just a hair before your time. But, I love you for trying.

So, what was the word "responsibly" doing in the title of this column? Just baloney, a sop to those who still think that masturbation, like drug use, is an evil to be swept under the rug. When is it responsible to masturbate? That's simple. Masturbation is ALWAYS responsible! The great Latin lover, Palma Handa, never gave a man the clap, while her male counterpart, Uno Fingero, never got anybody's daughter pregnant! Just don't do it in "polite company," or the sex police might lock you up.

See you tomorrow...

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