The “Nell” Of Jerking Off
by Audrey Ference
Dear Audrey,
I came of age in the pre-Internet days in a fairly conservative family. I knew masturbation existed, but I didn’t really know all of the mechanics of it, so I ended up kind of inventing my own way. I won’t get into the details, but it involves external labial stimulation. Now that I am old enough to have seen porn and have sex, I know this isn’t the “normal” way of doing things, but I find direct clitoral stimulation painful and unpleasant. So far this hasn’t been an issue in my sex life. I still masturbate this way, but it makes me feel like a weirdo. I feel like I should learn to enjoy vibrators and all the normal stuff. Should I?
No? I guess not? I mean, on any kind of moral or human connection level: no. Do what feels good. It’s nobody’s business that you are basically the Nell of jerking off. Your body likes what it likes. You might end up having to walk sex partners through your preferences the first few times, but that’s fine. To some extent everybody has to do that. You don’t have to explain to them that you were forced to reverse-engineer masturbation because Google hadn’t been invented yet; you can just be like, “do it like this; I don’t like it that way.”
I do wonder if perhaps you’re not cutting yourself off from a potential source of even greater pleasure, though. There is an entire buzzy sex-toy industry built around the idea that gals enjoy clit and clit-adjacent stimulation, and while every body is different—and if all the other girls jumped off a cliff that is no reason to jump yourself—the clitoris is clearly the site of many nerve endings designed specifically for good feelings.
It is possible-to-likely that whatever “external labial stimulation” method you’ve devised is indirectly doing some clitoral stimulation. If you’re looking to try some new moves, you could pick up a cheap vibe and experiment with placing it in various spots around your clit. It doesn’t have to be directly on it! A lot of people find that unpleasant, actually. Who knows, perhaps you’ll discover a whole new world of masturbatory fun.
On the other hand, I also wonder what we would all come up with if we were just handed our bodies and desires and absolutely no further instruction. I think most kids, whether through school-bus whispers or Internet research, are at some point made to understand: here is how you masturbate. Tug, tug, tug, or rub, rub, rub. And you know, that works. But what if it’s the case that every person, if forced to figure it out completely on their own, would devise some highly personal, specialized, completely-to-their-tastes method of pleasuring themselves? That would be kind of amazing! What if the standard way is not, in fact, the best way at all? It’s not like there has been a lot of research on optimizing individual pleasure, or at least not as far as I know.
It’s completely possible that you’re doing it right and everybody else is doing it wrong. Or, not wrong, because there is no wrong. But perhaps your version is like artisan-crafted Serrano ham and everyone else’s is just some deli-counter, machine-made, watery-chunk ham. I don’t know! Bodies are strange things. I am just glad you found something that makes you happy.
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