What You’re Actually Thinking About

Five in the morning at a club and I haven’t gotten laid. The bus guy didn’t want to come home with me. My parents burst in with a birthday cake right before things could happen. So I lock the door, kill the lights, and beat off to take the edge off.

Masturbation is probably the biggest industry in the world. Nobody wants to admit it but the internet is basically a massive porn library with Wikipedia attached. I bought Bravo every week in school just to see naked teenagers talking about losing their virginity. You can order dildos from the catalog. It’s the most obvious thing on Earth.

But what do I actually think about when I’m alone? Is it the celebrity thing everyone supposedly fantasizes about? Or is it something else—an ex, someone I saw in class, my teacher, some guy from a café, just a random person I passed on the street? Is it something that actually happened or something I made up? A bed or somewhere weirder? It changes depending on my mood, the time of day, whatever.

What goes through your head in those moments is probably as varied as the number of people alive. Everyone’s thinking about something different, doing something different. And we know it’s not actually damaging—no hair on your palms, no degrading your spine. So you do what works, as many times as it takes.

Eventually I close the laptop and get out of the apartment. Go back to the bar or the club. Get some new material. Get some actual human interaction, hopefully. Get the lights off and start the whole thing over again.