A Self-Study on Pleasure

Photo by Isabel Ames

I despise self-pleasure and that feels anti-feminist. 

The hatred grows after doing it. I have no problem laying in bed in preparation for a night of relaxation and self-exploration. It seems that most times I am more than eager to do it. I love the whole idea of it: lying in bed, dimming the lights, and turning on a fake candle to set the mood. An evening of intimacy for me, by me. 

A few days after my period, usually around 12:30 a.m., I put my reading aside as blood rushes to my clitoris. I double-check that my door is locked. I turn my phone on do not disturb. A dim light sneaks through my window from the building across the street. The “Great British Baking Show” plays in the background. My pants bunch at my knees. I open my legs for no one but my fingers lying between them. I grimace as they barge in clumsily through the soft, slick tissue of my tense labia. I force my mind to go blank, and they slide in. A substance clings around my fingers, drowning them in its grasp, tight like a vacuum pulling them further towards my cervix. They halt a few centimeters short of it, for a lack of length. As if trudging in mud, my attempts at reaching climax have failed. 

At this point, I regret making contact.

 
Mild engine noises from passing vehicles on the road pull me out of my body. I imagine a shadow of myself observing the scene as I unfold beneath my cotton sheets. They witness a slim figure devouring my insides with my head leaning back. I flinch as my fingers travel further, my body trembles right under their watch. 

Embarrassed, I jerk them out and take a breath. 

And then I brush my teeth, as though I didn’t just almost finish myself. 

At first, I investigated myself in hopes of finding a way to finish.

The first thing I look at is the diversity of things I have used. I assumed that if I don’t like masturbation, then the item may be the culprit inhibiting a good time. This causal relationship can be constructed by addressing the items at our disposal: a pillow, a hairbrush, a vegetable, and my hand. 

Three out of the four achieved the desired outcome of relative satisfaction. One out of the four did not. My hand seemed to lag behind the other contenders. My very own corporeal body could not help getting myself from point A (horniness) to point B (complete satisfaction). 

I began to recall what I was thinking during the process. Once again, all items, excluding the hand, were filled with raunchy memories. I think about the vampire fanfics I used to read, and the details in the story that satisfied me more than the thrumming in my pants. A visual dream compared to the mess of thoughts my hands subjected me to. I conclude that it is self-sabotage. Fingers grasped me and left my desires under the tyranny of its growing coups. 

In the moment, all I could think was: what the hell is that texture down there?  

With little education on women’s bodies at age 11, I assumed from a picture of an expanded uterus and vagina that it would be smooth sailing once my hands came banging on its doors. 

It was like someone shoved a güiro in me instead, rubbing each notchet of its internal facade. Even so, I never produced any sort of orgasmic sounds from all that fiddling. Just awkward silence between me and my extinguished want to reach a petit mort. 

For years now, I have chosen to avoid using my hands. I would hunt around to find at least something that looked durable and hygienic enough.

I would take anything over my fingers, so long as it was easily removable without the emergency room being called on. 

My particular dislike for fingers does not extend to my boyfriend. No thoughts pass my head in the process. Not a truck, nor an overheard conversation between drunk Michiganders on Lexington Ave., can pull my body out of it. I ride his fingers high on dopamine. My pelvic floor clenches up and releases a thick white coat of gelatinous goo. I am engulfed in a glorious rush of body shivers. 

With him, I finish shamelessly. 

When I brush my teeth, with every stroke of my toothbrush, I recall his fingers. I dream and lust after them, because when I finish I know it is his undoing of me. If I cum, it is his fingertips that marinate in it. All of this would be his to claim beside me. I become a bystander of my own sexual motivations. The roots of shame and regret may not sow. There cannot be shame if it was not your doing to begin with. So, by this logic, in my mind, everything is okay. The pleasure is no longer in my hands. 

My fingers meant self-agency. To finish at my own hands meant to lose in the eyes of those who watched. It wasn’t being fucked, but self-fucking. I was fucking myself, by myself, alone. I spread my legs for me. I inserted myself into my being. 

But, there at the tips of my own hands, pleasure could not be found.

This piece was included in our inaugural print issue, Taboo. To explore this edition of MEUF Magazine,  please visit the issues page.