Wanking and the Minger’s ‘Sin’ List
I don’t know about ‘me’. I’ve been around for an awfully long time; I’ve lived in virtually every part of the globe. I have seen a lot, and have avoided seeing even more – especially when it came to things that I wouldn’t have wanted to see in the first place. Just call me lucky. And, yes, I have also done a lot of things – perhaps not very well and perhaps I never tried hard enough. But I cannot complain, and if I could, what would I complain about? What would I have to complain about? I only have myself to blame. For you see, I have managed to pack an incredible amount into a life in which I have done absolutely nothing. I kid you not!
The first time I shot a gun; I simply aimed at the target and pulled the trigger. Bulls-eye! But then, the second time, instead of merely aiming and shooting, I started to think about the mechanics of what I was doing. Should I aim higher? Should I aim lower? How many yards away was the target? And, of course, I seldom ever hit the target after that – at least not until I’d put in a great many hours of practice. But even then, I the bulls-eye always managed to be in another place from where I’d fired the bullet.
So, too, with my sex life. Whereas I knew from a very early age that life was a banquet and that every single platter was literally dripping with the choicest morsels, I simply forgot why my first experience had been so simple. Because I had simply done it. But do you want to know what I did immediately after I had done it and had enjoyed it and had found that it was very simply indeed? I forgot how easy it was and started to think about how difficult it was. Consequently, I missed out on a whole lot of fun when I needn’t have missed out on it. After all, I lived in the ‘West’. I had not been indoctrinated by any punitive ideology to speak of. Yes, I was brought up with a sense of responsibility, but that is how it should be. Or at least how it ought to be. As far as I remember there was never any talk of sin. It was always, “think about the consequences.” So what went wrong? Instead of remembering what made me tick (like even the average intelligent mosquito would have done), the only incident I remembered – and which I remember to this very day – was the time my father snapped at me when I was fondling myself. Now, I don’t think he called it ‘dirty’ as so many parents so, but whatever he did say became the all encompassing cloud which overshadowed my entire childhood. And from that very moment, I started to cultivate my own ideology – one which was every bit as narrow and punitive as any to be found in any organised religion. And do you something? I have never forgiven my father. And this, of course, means that I have never forgiven myself for granting him so much power in the first place.
When I first started to become sexually active, I instantly cultivated something we never had a home. A sense of sin. And why should I have cultivated this? It wasn’t as if I ever went to church – except occasionally at evensong, for the music. And it wasn’t as though I knew anybody who actually went to church, or who even went in for that sort of thing. I don’t think I really even knew what ‘sin’ was. Perhaps I thought I was missing out on something I didn’t have? And so I wanted it. So I immediately set about punishing myself; in other words, I decided to repress myself.
Like all healthy young men on the cusp of manhood, I was a mass of jangling, postulating hormones. I didn’t need a reason to get erections. They simply happened, and if I didn’t take care of them, they took care of themselves. Riding a horse? Yes, I think we might say that many a pair of breeches were smuggled in to the washing machine and laundered without the benefit of my mother’s help. Mucking out stalls? Yes. You might say that many a pile of manure got improved by my tiny contributions. And, for God’s sake, if ever I happened to be grooming one of our stallions and he became aroused, I went through agonies. Which reminds me that when our stallions were put out to stud, they normally stood at out trainer’s breeding facilities. Now, I was no stranger to the mating of horses or dogs or pigs or even camels or elephants, and so I took their acrobatics for granted. Which means that, then as now, my voyeurism was focussed on single individuals (fortunately of the human-kind) – and when it came to two or more participants, I was not interested in it as a spectator sport. Either I was or am a party to it, or forget it.
But to get back to our stallions and their lives as rent boys and sperm-donors: I remember when mares were brought to our stallions and the owners would choose to be present to ‘witness’ the act. And every so often these owners, if they were new at the game and hadn’t really seen it before, would develop a certain ‘glow’. Now, I should make it clear that they would have been watching from behind a window in a ‘viewing room’ on the next floor. Very often, the ‘glow’ that some of these inexperienced new owners were feeling, would grow into a shining beacon. Now there was a large sofa in this room. And more than once, these owners very quickly forgot to observe what they had come to observe. As our trainer once remarked to me (for I would usually be the one to tell him, and also to describe in grossly unnecessary and vivid detail what the owners had done), “we could’a bred her to the bull, and saved your lad for a more appreciative audience.” For ‘our lad’ wasn’t getting any younger, and couldn’t always get it up when we wanted him to. And, as for the bull, the trainer had a small dairy herd, and kept a Limousin to keep the cows ‘interested’; he, unlike our stallion, was ready to go anytime, anyplace, and with anything. And he even drooled.
Sadly for me, when one of our animals was either mounting or being mounted, those were about the only times nothing happened in my nether regions. In fact, they were, perhaps, the only times – other than when I was doing my naturism thing around the house or at the beach – when I didn’t think about sex.
I remember one time we were cleaning out the septic tank, and our ‘hand’ (one was all we ever had – not counting my father) snuck up behind me and pushed me in. All very funny. Everyone laughed. And then I stripped off my clothing and stormed off to the grooming stall, where there was a shower. On the way to the shower, I got so unaccountable horny – I mean rampantly horny – that I blew my wad before I had walked thirty feet. It was probably the most powerful ejaculation I had ever experienced, and it just kept going on and on and on. And, because I was covered with shite from head to toe, it wasn’t as though I was touching anything. But never mind. However I should mention that I had – not one – but two wet-dreams the following night. So if you are having ‘trouble’, just think about your septic tank.
If only most of my sexual experiences with other people had been as good.
There was a reason why it was not – and this is really pathetic – because from the moment I proudly grew my first really grownup-looking pubic hair, my newly cultivated sense of ‘sin’ already had a stranglehold on me. But only when it came to certain things that I decided to classify as ‘sins’. Namely masturbating on school-nights. And before riding in a point-to-point or race (but not before dressage, before which the more wanking I did, the better). And being caught by my parents. Especially by my father, for by that time he was deeply worried about me, and by the fact that I didn’t seem to be cultivating any girlfriends. Never mind that I was going to boarding school, because – to his knowledge – boarding school didn’t seem to prevent any of my friends from rogering each and every girl they encountered. I simply didn’t seem to care. In any case, why did I want to fuck a girl in a ditch by the road? Was that supposed to be appealing or something? But of course, unbeknownst to my father, I had ‘Dickie’ to keep me busy. And who had time for a girlfriend when I had ‘Dickie’ ready and willing and by my side (and besides, he never asked me to make promises). And let me tell you this: come hell or high water, ‘Dickie’ never made in on to my ‘sin’ list.
Now, I haven’t mentioned ‘Dickie’ before. Dickie was not part of my crowd; he didn’t ride; he wasn’t interesting in racing. In fact, he was only interested in going into the army, and after the army, in taking over his father’s farm. I had known him for quite a long time, and we were always good mates. We were also the same age. Then one day, without any particular preamble, or without even talking about it, we simply started masturbating each other whenever we happened to get together. When we first started this routine, he had not quite entered puberty, and so when he reached his climax, it almost invariably resulted in urination. But it didn’t bother either of us – because we both knew that given time, the ‘right stuff’ would – as they say – come out. Now I want to be clear about this. There was no love between us. No crush. At no time did we want to have sex together. We just liked wanking. And since we both liked wanking a lot, we did a lot of it. And it wasn’t as though we were even turned on by each other’s penises. To tell you the truth, I don’t think we ever took any interested in looking each other’s anatomical enhancements. It was all about the wank. Every time we saw each other, it was straight out to the barn. And out they would come. And we would finish up (it was always fast and to the point), and then go our separate ways – ‘Dickie’ back to his father’s cows, and me back to the horses. And I don’t think either of us gave each other a second thought when we were not together. I seem to recall he was very good-looking and had everything in the right place, but I certainly never fanaticised about him. Not like I did about Sheila (but never mind about her – I am saving her for another chapter).
I well remember when our wanking days were over, and it coincided with ‘Dickie’s blossoming into full-fledged puberty. I had been away at school for two terms, after which I had been absent from home for an additional eight months following the death of my brother (the one that had been – when he was alive – ‘the other one’). His death was a tragedy that seemed to provide as good an excuse as any to scrounge cabins on a distant cousin’s tramp-steamer bound for Hong Kong (a voyage which spawned a second voyage – this one for the return journey – on a second and even more decrepit vessel than the first one). On neither journey did I find so much as a single wanking-mate. But, then again, neither of the tubs carried more than six or eight passengers (including the three of us), and all the other passengers seemed to be either antediluvian tea-planters or members of the diplomatic corps on leave. It was a lonely time. And I seem to remember filling the empty hours doing lessons (so ‘thoughtfully’ provided by the school, and which I mailed back to the headmaster from various ports of call), as well as playing endless games of cribbage with the chief steward, playing endless games of bridge and mah-jong with our fellow passengers, and in marching round the boat deck with a woman who was employed by one of the Intelligence services, and who had figured out exactly just how many circuits equalled five miles.
Anyway, we finally got back home, and before I had even gone out to the yard to say ‘hello’ to the horses I received a call from ‘Dickie’. “Meet me at the usual spot in ten minutes!” And so I did. The ‘Dickie’ whom I had known before was not the ‘Dickie’ who greeted me out back of the barn. Yes, he had the same face and the same goofy smile, and his accent was the same, but other than that, the boy had been supplanted by a man. He was now close on six foot one (whereas I was at the time five foot five and determined not to grow another inch); his face, though still lean and boyish – for after all, he was still only sixteen – was leaner around the jaw-line, and on his chin was a fine beginning of a beard.
“I got somat to show you,” he said, and with that he stepped out of his trousers and presented an erection that was nothing like that I had ever seen on him before. “What d’ya think?” And I had to admit he had grown into a fine-looking hunk of man.
“And wot about you?” he said with a leer. “Still the little same-o-same-o?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “The little same-o-same-o’s the same as ever.”
And that was that. ‘Dickie’ had grown up and could – as they say – get it up without any help from me. He had a girlfriend from the next village; he never went into the army, but he did take over the farm. And after a while – in the way of all things – he and his girlfriend got married, had a son and a daughter, and then a divorce.
And I’m glad it ended there, because it was just a phase, and phases are better outgrown.
No, ‘Dickie’ was never counted as a sin. But somehow masturbating on school nights still remained a bugbear, and so did looking at porn. And so did a long list of other things, some of which I have never outgrown. And so did ‘yes’ when and if I was approached on the street or in a cafe or in a bar by a stranger. And by a stranger, I mean a stranger of either sex. Because, to tell the truth, both are the same under their respective skins, and make absolutely no difference to me. Besides, my willy is definitely an equal-opportunity player. But be that as it may, let a stranger come up to me, and he or she are bound to be met by my special ‘frozen’ stare.
I continue to feel annoyed with my poor father, even though he has been dead for over thirty years. For I can still hear him telling me not to touch myself. And I also can hear him asking me once when I was twenty-three or four, if I had ever had a girlfriend? At the time, I was taking a shower and enjoying the pleasures of the warm water as it flowed down my skin, and he had walked in on me – apparently feeling I was going beyond the point of no-return. He had always tried so hard to be a good father, but he tried so hard he always overstepped the mark. And my problem was I was so bloody well brought up, it didn’t occur to me to tell him to “fuck off.” I can’t remember what I said in return. The word ‘yes’, however, was included, but otherwise it was very, and very distant. And sometimes I wonder if that is one of the reasons I have never had children? Would I have made the same mistakes as he? It was one thing to go through it myself, but quite another to pass it along. And you see, I have never entirely trusted myself.
In conclusion, what else was on my ‘sin’ list? And for that matter, what did the ‘sin’ in ‘sin’ list actually mean? I had made it up, after all; it wasn’t one of those things I had got out of a book, or which I had been threatened with from a pulpit. If it had been forced upon me from either of those sources, I don’t think it would have been as bad. However, when I had somehow ‘fixed’ on the word, I had given it a particularly evil connotation. For you see, in the ‘Church of Me’, a ‘sin’ was something you did before all your luck ran out. In other words, if I sinned on a school night, I would fail not only the next day’s tutorial but the entire term. If I sinned the night before a race or a point-to-point, I was guaranteed to break half the bones in my body. If I sinned before going out on a date, the date would inevitably have the clap or fancy someone else at the next table. And then, of course, being the idiot that I am, I was compelled to enlarge upon my list of ‘sin’, until it encompassed almost everything, including ‘asking someone home for the night’, ‘spending the night at someone else’s house’, ‘happiness’, ‘looking forward to anything (good or bad), ‘wanting to earn money’, and – last but not least – ‘actually doing anything that I was good at and doing it well’. In other words, in my book of ‘sins’ I had all the bases covered.
That being said, the one activity that never made it on to the list was sex with another person. And I rather imagine the reason I neglected to put it on the list was because I’d always thought of myself as a bit of a minger that nobody could possibly want. However, I shall let you in on a secret: in spite of my being a minger, and in spite of my being a hopeless tosser and absolute rubbish at anything and everything I had tried, the very fact that sex with another person never made it on to my ‘sin’ list, meant that I have done it a great many times – more times, in fact, than most people I’ve known. But, alas, not as many times as I could have, for although sex with others does not count as a sin, I have these pesky things called ‘hackles’, and the ‘hackles’ are accompanied by ‘alarm bells’. And just when I find someone really raunchy and downright filthy – with whom sex might even be so good it would count as a ‘sin’ – my ‘hackles’ and my ‘alarm bells’ get all hoity-toity and schoolmarmish. And they remind me that once I have had sex with another that is so good that it counts as a sin, I couldn’t ever have sex with another ‘another’ again. Or at least not without another seven years of bad luck. Or something equally as bad.