I used to have a stupid habit. I would go into a social setting and announce a challenge. I'd wager some arbitrary sum of money that no one in the room could make me come in less than ten minutes. I thought it was an innocuous icebreaker, but once somebody actually took me up on it.

I had forgotten the word "handjob" existed until I saw Rushmore. There's a scene in which two fourteen year-olds debate the claim that a mother is giving out handjobs in a local swimming pool. The idea of someone touching my penis in the buildup to sex as being anything worth bragging about is ridiculous. It's just a part of what happens during sex. I wouldn't have singled it out anymore than I would have described the kind of mustard in the sandwich I ate for lunch today. There was definitely mustard in it, and it was an important part of the sandwich. But saying there was mustard does little to really describe the experience as a whole.

Hearing the debate about the sexual version of condiments was a small revelation for me. I had forgotten about the adolescent fixation on sex as achievement. "Oh my god, this is great. I've got to hurry up and finish so I can tell my friends," as the comedian once said. The term handjob is so hairless and deliberate. It's entirely juvenile to think of being in the same room with a woman and emerging with nothing more interesting than a manual pistoning. It's something only a fourteen year-old could marvel at (and I, most definitely, used to be that fourteen year-old).

Coming from an adult, bravura about "handjobs" is absurd. That's why I got stuck in the habit for so long. It amused me to walk into a room of comparative strangers with a crass line soliciting a handjob, in the form of an ineptly transparent wager. To my thinking, it was a good way to loosen a stiff crowd and bend conversation towards territory that was more personal. I become the vulgar buffoon by going too far, but hopefully some people will feel a little bit less timid about taking conversational risks of their own.

Then one time, a friend of mine took me literally. I was trying to pass out on a couch after a party when my friend S coerced a woman into calling my bluff about the handjob bet. I heard some muffled conversation coming from outside and suddenly I felt a warm body lying on top of me. I felt someone's tongue licking my lips, and a hand worked its way into my pants. I had spent the evening drinking rum and snorting Phenobarbital (which was a bad idea).

I opened my eyes and recognized my friend L above me. We had hooked up once before so it made a little more sense that I was suddenly involved in foreplay when I had just wanted to go to sleep. But I knew what was happening and it was disconcerting to be called out about something so openly ridiculous.

I was in bad shape. I felt like the inside of a bar drain, grimy and sick. I liked L. She was smarter than me and wore glasses that darkened in the sun. I wasn't sure if I wanted to have sex with her, but I probably would have been convinced had I been in better shape.

Instead, I became the butt of my own joke. She couldn't make me come in less than ten minutes.

So ended my phase of making handjob jokes.

 

Previous Posts:

Love Machine: The Three-Year Itch

Sex Machine: Show Me Your Penis

Date Machine: The Gun Show or Is That All You Got?

Love Machine: Morning Breath Kisses

 Date Machine: Making Your Online Dating Profile

Sex Machine: Sex with 19 Year-Olds

Love Machine: Making A Scene

Hooksexup Confessions: Oh Hai, You're Pregnant

Sex Machine: Don't Forget to Masturbate

Love Machine: My Mother

Love Machine: Thanks But I'll Pass, or Handling Rejection

Naked Machine: Buying New Underwear, or Sex in a Dressing Room

Date Machine: Look Ugly in a Photograph

Love Machine: On Your Own, or Moving On

Love Machine: Going to Bed Angry

Love Machine: The Hooker on the Corner

Sex Machine: Having Sex on Inauguration Night