Fapping. Beating your meat. Polishing the banister. Playing 5-on-1. Self-loving. Tapping into your potential. Finding Nemo. For something that has so many alternate names, masturbation remains a taboo topic in Nigeria, thanks to a society saturated with religion and purity culture.
It’s a rite of passage virtually every man goes through at some point in their adolescent lives. Recognising the need to be more open about issues of sex and sexuality, we decided to talk to men about their first encounters with tugging the one-eyed snake. Here’s what they had to say:
Folarin, 25, Gay
It was AMAZING. I think I was 13 at the time. I had just bought one of those plenty-in-1 movie collections. It had one of the American Pie movies. In one of the scenes, a male character was jerking off and this woke something inside me.
Before then, I didn’t know what masturbation was, even though I had fondled a friend before. I decided to try what he was doing and voila.
Another notable incident was when I was in the market with my Mom for school supplies. I wanted to pee so she took me to a public bathroom. In there, I saw different types of dicks and that excited me. So I did it right there and then, in a public bathroom stall.
Biggy, 28, Straight
Back in secondary school, during the famous reproduction class, my biology teacher told the class that the easiest way to test for fertility in males was to ejaculate in a glass of water. If it sinks, it means you are fertile. If it doesn’t, then na God hand you dey.
I should mention that I was already sexually active at this point. I had been having sex since I was 14. Conversations with my older cousins exposed me to the world of sex and I routinely slept with women aged 18-21.
Out of curiosity, I did the glass-of-water test. Luckily for me, my spunk sank right to the bottom of the glass, meaning I was fertile. And that was how I discovered masturbation.
Tobi, 26, Straight
It was during mock WAEC exams in SS2. I was terrible at Math, so immediately I saw the exam questions, I knew I was in trouble. In the tension of the moment, I squeezed my thighs together. Immediately, I noticed my penis feeling nice in between my legs. I was like “Ahan, what is this sweet feeling?”
I was at the back of the exam hall so I continued doing it until I shivered and came. I noticed that my thighs were wet and sticky; I didn’t know what cum was. I didn’t discover that I could masturbate with my hands until my first year in uni. Now, I’m an expert.
Ebuka, 26, Straight
So it was JS2. Everybody claimed that they had cum before, so I lied that I too had cum. So I needed to cum. At the time, I had never seen porn.
There was a popular Sharon Stone clip from the Basic Instinct trailer where she flashed her vagina under the guise of crossing her legs, to confuse investigators. So, one day I was home alone, I played the video on the big TV in the leaving room, paused on that Sharon Stone scene, and began to jerk off to that frame until small cream comot.
I was more proud and relieved to feel any excitement. No guilt, no shame. Just pride.
Oboyege, 26, Straight
I never fapped until my NYSC year in 2016. During my teenage years, I only used to watch porn; I never touched myself. A girl I met during camp came over to stay at my crib for 3 days, after a lot of sexual tension and flirting.
She came over and we started watching movies. While we were watching 50 Shades of Grey, we started making out intensely for over an hour. When I tried to move on to sex, she held me tight and said, “Yes, but no.” When she saw how confused I was, she said she wanted to have sex but she had a boyfriend and she’d feel guilty if she had sex with me.
Meanwhile, I had already worn a condom. So I rolled over and fapped, right there and then, with the condom on. Before then, I used to look down on wankers. Then I became one and never looked back.
Pretty sure you want to read this: All The Places You Can Find A Nigerian Sugar Mummy.
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