I Come Soon—and It’s a Deliberate Choice
I hardly have time to masturbate, let alone have sex
Do you remember my story I Have a Sex Life, After All — I Just Don’t Share It With Any Body? I wrote about finding a new way to masturbate, one based on slowness and intimacy with myself. On making time for a deeper and more pleasurable experience.
I always stand behind all that. It works! You should try it, too!
The problem is that my time frame has got ridiculously tighter. I’m bailing out.
I get back to fast and furious.
I am still doing only solo work
I’ve already written lots of times about how my wife and I are going through a dry season. Our second son wakes up about 40 times a night and the only thing my wife cares about is how to get some sleep.
Since I sleep a little better than my breastfeeding wife, I do miss sex. The only thing I can do, though, is do it by myself.
Solo sex doesn’t have to be fast and furious — despite the cliché image of men masturbating frantically. Still, since I don’t have anybody else to satisfy but myself — and since I have so little time in my hands — I prefer to keep it short.
During the day, I stay home with the baby. I have about 2 hours of writing, when he sleeps and when our cleaner holds him. It’s a ridiculously short amount of time and there is no way I am replacing it with masturbation. Or at least with slow masturbation.
During the night, I get on Twitter, read, and comment on other people’s work — the research and networking aspect of being an online writer. Plus, our baby wakes up almost once every hour. Sometimes my wife breastfeeds him without waking me up. Other times, I go and fix him some extra milk or take over the rocking-and-humming business.
This doesn’t mean I don’t masturbate. I just have to do it quickly.
Blink and you missed it
Night
After everyone has gone to bed, I can have a few moments of peace. That time can be one hour or just five minutes. I never know when I am going to be interrupted.
To masturbate, the safest way is go to the bathroom, take a piss, and quickly get on with it.
Sounds depressing? It depends how you look at it.
Would a quickie with a lover sound depressing?
A lot of our negativity surrounding masturbation dissolves if we see solo sex as sex with someone we love.
Day
I could masturbate during the day, too, right? After all, I work from home, and part of the writing ritual is masturbation. Wait, it isn’t? You mean you don’t do that? Did I share too much?
In the past, I used to masturbate several times during the day, and also during my writing hours. I also browsed porn and this chaotic ritual ruined my productivity.
Today, I respect my work too much to digress. I still take occasional masturbation breaks, but I have settled to three rules:
(1) I do it when I’m already horny from something I am writing.
(2) I do it as a break after closing a draft (or solving a story’s structure problem). Always Be Closing. Then, instead of a diversion, I use it as a celebration.
(3) I don’t browse porn to get there. I stay focused on a fantasy scenario and don’t beat around the bush.
Again, it all happens very quickly and life goes on.
The art of being quick
Focus, Daniel-san
Getting quick can be learnt. It’s not about having exceptional motor skills, but about staying focused.
To come quickly, I need to put my mind to a specific fantasy scenario and stick with it.
In the opposite case, things can take forever. When I can’t decide on the fantasy scenario, masturbation becomes a pathetic chore. It’s like a movie that continuously interrupts itself, keeps introducing irrelevant characters, and drags on forever — until I decide to walk out the theatre.
When this happens, I abort the mission. I walk out. Not one moment wasted.
Mental fluffing
To keep it quick, even before I start masturbating, I have to be already aroused. When I say aroused, I don’t mean hard. I am talking about what goes on in my head. The fantasy scenario must have already occupied my thoughts before I get that bathroom.
I call this mental fluffing. I get myself ready beforehand, just like fluffers get the porn stars aroused, before the cameras roll.
To a slow future
Having developed such a quick style, I can’t help but wonder what will happen when my wife and I restart having sex. I will have to slow down — and rightfully so.
It will be the exact opposite of what has been going on during the solo months. I’ve been training for short sprints, but then I will need to run marathons. I am wondering if I will be able to pull it off. If I can somehow train myself to last longer. I will have to abandon the blitz skills that I have acquired during my solo months. Start developing stamina, rhythm, energy, and self-control. Learn how to hold my orgasms. To work on techniques and pacing. To practice my Kegels.
In my story I Fantasise About Acting in a Feminist Porno, I mention that, although I don’t last exceptionally long, I usually climax simultaneously with my wife. This is because she, too, is in quick mode — with the sleeping baby and all. And because we have found the pacing that helps both of us come.
Getting slower will not be about her having more orgasms, but about us celebrating sex.
Allowing it to become important again. To take its share of our time and energy.
Oh, and she will have more orgasms, alright.
Masturbation is nice. And kids are a miracle. But I just miss sex so much. When it happens again, I don’t want to blink and miss it.
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