The Grand Illusion

 

Greetings, lovely friend!

My professional love maker/pornstar name is Malcolm Lovejoy, and I have a thought I’d like you to explore in a way I hope you never have examined it before.

Have you ever masturbated… to REAL sex?

First, let me preface this article as primarily applicable to the upstanding citizens of societies that indulge in the act of auto-eroticism.  We don’t judge around here!

Back to our collective curiosity: have you ever masturbated yourself to climax by inspiration from a natural scene of sexual intimacy occurring in front of you?

If you have, consider yourself special!

Because, removing the possibility of a particularly interactive and liberated night at a sex club, I’m not too sure the opportunity to recreate the elements at work and play during a masturbation session could easily be manifested to this ejaculatory exclamation point!

It’s a sensory fusion on one of the deepest and most private levels of intimacy a human body will ever experience.

With this in mind, I’d like to explore a epidemically-popular but incredibly, still under-analyzed aspect of human sexuality. I say “under-analyzed” because simply talking about masturbation will make some people blush deep red, abruptly change the subject, or simply become a mute cipher, primed for listening, but never to be caught dead speaking about their own masturbation rituals!

I, on the other hand, have no problem talking about my masturbation rituals, self-pleasuring techniques, or anything of the sort! I didn’t need the Surgeon General’s approval to discover that masturbation was a healthy part of my self-discovery and growth during puberty; however, it always helps to have some scientific statement that helps deconstruct the superstitions people may have around sexuality and intimacy.

Understanding masturbation is vital to understanding one’s potential as a human being, as well as one’s sexual freedoms and reproductive responsibilities as a sexual being with parts that can possibly cause undesired repercussions, like infections or childbirth (worst case scenario, if all you wanted was to have a good ol’ time :).

Now, once again, slightly rephrased: COULD you masturbate yourself to orgasmic release, if you had the EXACT same sexual scenario unfolding in front of you as you possibly had when you watched your last XXX video scene online? Or perused a pornographic magazine? Or enjoyed a webcam session, DVD, videotape or… do they have solo booths anymore? (Ah, the ways we wank… so plentiful.)

I’m not going to let you squirm out of this one. Do you think you would be able to stand beside, say, Johnny Sins and Lexington Steele magnificently fucking and sucking Asa Akira, Mia Khalifa and Bonnie Rotten on a king-sized mink sofabed in the living room of a million-dollar Malibu mansion? And if it was completely consensual, on all their behalf, for you to masturbate yourself to your heart’s content and ejaculate on anything, and anyone, even. Could you do it??

If not… why not?

What’s the difference?

Have we built some invisible wall of shame, separation and space between our frothing, fiery fantasies and the actual reality existing in our very hands? I’d say absolutely.

Perhaps your parents did NOT tell you to “Stop touching yourself!” when were a child that discovered the easy joy of playing with yourself at any point, including the time when your parents had guests over, or you were in the middle of a shopping mall with them, or whenever. If so PLEASE STOP READING this article, and continue masturbating freely everywhere you go, as you were apparently raised to do.

The rest of us will continue to measure, weigh and extract the societal shame and hypocritical judgment applied to the most basic of erotic health practices.

So, why do we collectively hide the truth of the most popular form of sexuality in the world? (Almost) everybody touches themselves. In the immortal words of Heath Ledger’s Joker: why so serious?

I inquire deeper: what do we really do to, and for, ourselves when we stimulate ourselves to orgasmic explosions of fleeting fulfillment when we are on our lonesome?

Considering we have established the objects of desire we often masturbate to are RARELY, if EVER actually present in front of our eyes while we touch ourselves, I’d like compare the definition of “masturbation” and “illusion”, and see what comes up, as we inquire deeper into this dimension of sensory fusion!

mas·tur·ba·tion

noun \ˌmas-tər-ˈbā-shən\:  erotic stimulation especially of one’s own genital organs commonly resulting in orgasm and achieved by manual or other bodily contact exclusive of sexual intercourse, by instrumental manipulation, occasionally by sexual fantasies, or by various combinations of these agencies

il·lu·sion

noun \i-ˈlü-zhən\: something that looks or seems different from what it is : something that is false or not real but that seems to be true or real

: an incorrect idea : an idea that is based on something that is not true

1

a obsolete :  the action of deceiving

b (1) :  the state or fact of being intellectually deceived or misled :  misapprehension (2) :  an instance of such deception

2

a (1) :  a misleading image presented to the vision (2) :  something that deceives or misleads intellectually

b (1) :  perception of something objectively existing in such a way as to cause misinterpretation of its actual nature (2) : hallucination

 

Ah, they connect!

“Occasionally by sexual fantasies” may be a slight understatement. Is it possible to masturbate without having any images in one’s own mind? I suppose it is technically possible, but whether one is aroused by images of naked human bodies fucking on the internet, or pictures in Playgirl/Playboy/Penthouse/Hustler/etc., or muscle cars from the 60’s, or clowns, or brunettes in pink ballerina outfits, or the Victoria Secret’s catalog, or [insert infinite possible source of masturbation material here], is it even possible to masturbate with an empty mind?

I think that theory is deserving of its own article, and for our purposes here, I’m just going to assume we all imagine something when we masturbate even if the object we imagine is not another person.

So, paralleling this understanding to “illusion”, it’s interesting to note how often we practice part 2a of the definition of illusion: “a misleading image presented to the vision” / “something that deceives or misleads intellectually” when we “erotically stimulate our genitals”.

We rarely ever masturbate to reality, but in reality, a notable percentage of the population seeks sexual situations and scenarios that are illusions, or are “something that looks different from what it is, something that is false or not real but that seems to be true or real.”

What does it mean that in our society the illusion of sex is more prevalent than sex itself? As our technology trends more and more towards virtual reality, will this innate human desire for the inexhaustible possibilities of imaginative sexuality combined with technological ability lead to a Demolition Man style sex life where each partner plays out their own unique fantasy? Should we be encouraging real life masturbation?

The truth is many people play out sexual fantasies in their mind that they either would not or could not replicate in real life, so it seems that the writing is on the wall, but I wouldn’t say that’s such a bad thing. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up in one of your sexual fantasies and you can come to Toronto to watch it all play out in front of you at one of those interactive and liberated sex clubs I mentioned before ;).

XOXOXO

Malcolm Lovejoy