People...I’ve been masturbating for an awfully long time. And boy is my wrist tired (ba dum tssh). Until recently though, I’d never actually really thought about my process. I like saying “my process” as though I’m some kind of artist who only works in the medium of female ejaculate; it makes my wankery feel fancy.

I was a weird kid. I guess that didn’t really change as I grew older, but it did certainly dictate the direction of my early self explorations. As I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t really know what my sexual identity was until fairly late into my teenage years. So when I first started paddling the pink canoe, it was without fantasy. To create a decent fantasy you need to have an idea of what you’re into, who you’re attracted to, what you actually desire. But I started at an age where I hadn’t answered any of these questions. So for me, visiting my bat cave was an almost meditative experience. There was just me, and my naked body. And occasionally a squiggle-wiggle pen which I'd discovered felt pretty damn amazing.

For a year or so I continued with these mindful masturbatory sessions, just enjoying the nice feelings I could give myself. But as I got older it became an exercise in mild frustration. I started to feel like I was so close to something truly amazing, but I just didn’t know how to get there. And that’s when I started to innovate. Despite not having the correct words for the more interesting parts of my anatomy, I'd figured out that the squiggle-wiggle pen worked brilliantly on my clitoris, but what was missing was something to go inside me. I still hadn’t had my first period, so I hadn’t come across tampons or been encouraged to do any of the self-spelunking that goes with your first menses. I was clueless. I just knew I had a hole that was screaming at me to fill it with something.

I’m not going to bore you with the entire list of items that found their way into my vag, but I made a valiant effort in my early attempts at orgasm, and very few phallic objects were safe from my experimentations. These efforts became all the more frantic with the introduction of the internet to my home. Thanks to excite.com and Netscape Navigator I could just type in “pussy” and in under an hour I’d be staring at a half loaded image of a naked woman, and furiously fapping with my squiggle-wiggle pen (now held together by tape and ill-intentions) and whatever dildo-for-now I’d managed to get my hands on. I was living the dream.

Things improved even further, as around this time I started my first lesbian forays. Soon the vegetable crisper drawer was superseded by sapphic fingerings in the hayshed. But as you’ll know, if you’ve ever begun any kind of sexual experimentation, the early days are often heady with emotion and new sensations, but they’re rarely completely satisfying if you’re in pursuit of an orgasm. And while neither myself nor my lady lovers realised that that’s what we were after, we knew we were chasing some elusive sensation that would elevate our experiments to a new plane. We perpetually felt so close, and yet unsatisfied.

One day my luck changed though. I was sneaking around in places I shouldn’t have been and came across an old body massager. I cautiously asked my mother about this antiquated appliance; it looked the 1970’s had brought it to a crock-pot party. I was pretty damn certain that my parents must have used it in exactly the same way I intended to. I was convinced that my mother would completely see through my ruse to use it on my “bung knee”. But my mother, then as now, remains a more or less sexless entity with no suspicions whatsoever about my masturbatory shenanigans. She happily handed over the Holy Grail of Orgasms, who I imaginatively named Brad (because heteronormativity), and left me to my own device.

I can't find the exact "General Electric" model that I used, but this is a pretty close approximation to my beloved "Brad".

Brad and I shared so much together. He needed to be plugged into the mains power to function, which meant he provided a hell of a good time. I’ve since learned that I have a fairly reclusive clitoris, which means that manual or oral stimulation, or even low level vibrations are never really going to do a whole lot for me. Brad made orgasms possible. The first time I used him, I was lying on my back, legs splayed and tentatively touched him to my nethers. My whole body spasmed and I involuntarily rose up like Dracula out of the crypt. Brad gave me so much pleasure that I literally couldn’t lie down to masturbate, the muscles in my body contracted so hard in anticipation of my elusive orgasm that I had to masturbate on my knees. I was using a hairbrush handle as my makeshift dildo, and I still remember fapping away, with Brad on my clit as I had my first orgasm. It was both spectacular and underwhelming. It was, without a shadow of a doubt, the greatest sexual experience that I’d so far come across. But at the same time, part of me was wondering if this was what all the fuss was about, I mean it was over pretty quickly. I’d been chasing the thing for so long that I momentarily forgot that I could enjoy these whenever I wanted for the rest of my life. I remembered about five minutes later, lying on my back, muscles exhausted that I could go again...and again, and again!

I’m not going to lie, dear readers, I spent a LOT of time over the next few months perfecting my technique. I was an addict. Orgasms were my drug of choice. They just felt so fucking good! I was diddling Miss Daisy up to three times a day. And the only thing stopping me from going seven or eight times a day was that my poor pussy just couldn’t keep up. Which was how I got into anal. At the time the only other obsession I pursued with equal fervour to masturbation was my desire for free product samples. I know, like I said, I was a weird kid. At the time the internet had whole websites dedicated to which companies were giving away free samples. Everything from cat food, to swatches of hemp fabrics. I was fascinated with this idea of getting free but useless gifts in the mail, so I signed up for every mailing list and survey that came with any kind of reward. One of these just so happened to be Nestle coffee samples. I think the range was something to do with Cuba, because when they arrived the coffee was stored inside aluminium cigar cases. I’m not sure how familiar any of you are with cigars or their containers, but to help illustrate my point, there’s two images below. One is a vibrator and the other one is a cigar container. Your guess is as good as mine as to which is which. So when this parcel rocked up with three aluminium phallic objects...I wasn’t asking questions. I just disappeared into my room to introduce them to Brad.

I’d been thinking about trying anal play for a while, ever since it popped up in an inadvertent porno I’d downloaded while trying to get an illegal copy of Tomb Raider on Napster. Let me tell you, those little aluminium cases were a real eye-opener. Buttsex was probably the greatest discovery I’d made since Brad, and they soon featured heavily in my masturbatory repertoire. Well, until that one heart stopping moment where I lost my grip on one and it very nearly ended up in a trip to the emergency room. Which is how, before I ever worked in the sex industry, I realised makeshift toys are a fool's pursuit and safety should always come before you do.

All of this was a very long time ago now. But not much has really changed. I still enjoy a downstairs disco, quite a bit. My methods have changed a little, since I no longer use a hairbrush handle and instead avail myself of a stainless steel club. But I still use a body massager and dildos, and butt toys...and I still do it on my knees. My most recent masturbatory accomplishment was training myself to have multiple orgasms, a feat of which I was so proud that I trumpeted it across all of my social media channels. I even received a personalised award for it from a very understanding friend. But fine-tuning aside, my paddles in the shallow pond have remained relatively stagnant over the years. Until recently when I was given cause to stop and look back on my life of wankery.

I decided to become involved in an art project (read porno) that involved filming myself masturbating. Not anything exciting, just my head and shoulders. Basically a disembodied head shot of my O-face. Despite fapping for over two decades now, this marked the first time I’d ever actually seen myself. Sure I’ve made sex tapes and taken saucy photos and whatnot, but never of a ménage à moi. Previous multimedia forays were always with someone else, always for someone else. So when I set the camera up on my bed to record my magic moment, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t do anything differently, I was genuinely curious to see what I looked like.

When I was done, had stopped recording and washed my toys, I sat down to watch the footage. Now, this is going to sound a little bit weird, dear readers, but what I saw made me cry. Looking at myself, so unaffected, so natural, was confronting in itself. But it was more than that. The moment felt so private, and so intimate, despite the lack of nudity or genitals on screen. I watched my eyebrows knit in concentration. I watched myself as I bit my lip, knowing it was because I’d found that sweet spot and was now chasing down my orgasm. I watched as I gasped in surprise as my orgasm started. And I watched as I smiled and then laughed a little, post-coital. I looked at myself from ten minutes ago, and saw how happy she was. How clear her mind was. I hadn't realised until then that masturbating is one of the only things in my life I do solely for pleasure. Something I feel no guilt about. It’s literally and figuratively self-love. Watching myself on that screen, rubbing one out, I had tears running down my face because I was watching myself cheerfully and enthusiastically chasing happiness.

The last few months have been rough on my mental health, so this moment was such a jarring thing to have reflected back at me. I’ve spent months telling myself how worthless, and sad and pathetic I am. I have avoided seeing other people, because I'm convinced that they must hate me as much as I hate myself. Every time I contemplate the idea of being happy, I remind myself that I haven't earned it, that I'm never going to be a happy person.

The me on the screen though, she didn’t believe any of that. She knew that I deserved to be happy. Even if it was only for a moment.

So in a very roundabout way, I’ve gone back to masturbating the way I did in the earliest days with my squiggle-wiggle pen. It’s just me, my body, and my toys. When I fap, it’s with the knowledge that I’m doing it because I deserve that orgasm. Every time I touch myself, it’s a gentle reminder that it’s okay to love myself, just a little. And I hope, dear readers, that all of you are loving yourselves on the reg as well. You deserve it. We all do. Chase your happy moment.

That is all.

You may go now.

If you’d like to hear more about my masturbatory journey, you can read about my experience of being an OMGyes cast member here.

A Masturbation Memoir