Night Terrors

by Ashley Cardiff

  The acumen required to compartmentalize and set aside just how pathetic one looks while trying to get oneself off leads me to believe that everyone who masturbates is either terminally ignorant or a genius. Masturbation is not the listless rustle of a pedestrian mind, it would seem, but the activity of kinetically imaginative ones.

  This is fascinating because ideas aren’t just doled out freely to anyone. As someone who works in a field that requires its labor force to, essentially, generate ideas all day long, I can confirm that it’s challenging (I don’t binge drink because I’m not creative). Tangentially, I really can’t say enough of alcohol, which takes ordinary moments and impregnates them with startling magic, like Russian literature and inhalants. My point is simply that I have what I figure to be an above-average if not occasionally robust imagination and yet, apparently, not one as robust as those who masturbate, which is to say every other human, including ones without limbs.

  It would appear that regular people do have rich inner lives and, trust me—trends in overdiagnosis to the contrary—the entire world does not have a developmental disorder. If it did, life would involve much less eye contact and much more off-putting non sequiturs, spontaneous crying and pronouncements of how quickly you can drink an entire Dr Pepper in one gulp. (Eleven seconds.) Also, wearing costumes would become more socially acceptable for adults.

  When I use that expression, “rich inner life,” I don’t mean it in the sense of trying to sugarcoat these supposed learning disabilities, social anxiety or other stymied development. What I mean is that people—normal, shitty people, the kind you see everywhere, clogging streets and subways with their sagging guts and coughs and half-formed ideas and nonexistent attention spans and their fucking hats—have exceedingly rich inner lives. They must, you see, because they can bring themselves to orgasm. I jerk off ergo sum.*

  Let’s pause a moment and define our terms. When I am astounded by people’s ability to masturbate, I mean without the aid of pornography. That’s really important. If you’re masturbating to porn, you’re not doing anything impressive to anyone. There is nothing magnificent about ejaculating on yourself while watching some guy with a goatee choke out a twenty-five-year-old dressed as a sixteen-year-old.

  More to the point, when I talk about the role of imagination in masturbation, what I’m really describing is sexual fantasy. I’m referring to those intimate narratives, those cinematic movements we pull from the ether of ourselves, to distract us from whatever it is we’re doing long enough to cull an orgasm from our genitals.

  Perhaps largely due to its foreignness, I am profoundly impressed by spontaneous masturbation. For example, a friend of mine—we’ll call him Percy Shelley, thanks to his romantic disposition—was once a teenager and housesitting for a neighbor. I guess “housesitting” isn’t the most accurate term; he was really being paid peanuts to maneuver through the neighbor’s garage and feed their cat a few times while they were out of town. One day, Percy was standing in the neighbor’s garage and decided, for no apparent reason, that he was going to masturbate right then and there. His second thought was much more reasonable: he should, in fact, not masturbate in his neighbor’s garage. Surely that was illegal, somewhere. Then, because outrage is the only sensation that subsumes fear in teenagers, he had a third thought: his distaste for the patriarch of the household, a humorless police officer who lectured him frequently, and it was at that moment, pressed between a Volvo and the stairwell to the house, Percy undid his pants.

  More remarkable still, just as he was nearing climax, the family cat—the very being whose care had been entrusted to Percy—appeared through the cat door. It scurried over, having already come to associate him with food. The cat began to purr and weave at Percy’s ankles, wrapping its tail around his shins. All the while, Percy was still able to masturbate. When he climaxed, intending to hit the greasy, oil-slicked garage floor, he ended up getting a little on the cat. He then filled the food dish and went home.

  I find this spectacular. How can you have an orgasm in a cold, empty garage while a cat tries to manipulate you with affection? At what point do you ignore the little voice that says, This is pretty weird, and just keep on trucking? That is where I identify the role of imagination.

  Some of you may be horrified by this. I’m not because I’m a dog person, but I understand why people recoil when I explain my friend ejaculated on someone else’s cat. I guess it doesn’t really matter whose cat it was, so they may just be horrified he ejaculated on anyone’s cat. Still, it’s not all that terrible because it’s not like he did something that made the cat so uncomfortable it would have to go through years of therapy. The cat probably forgot it had semen in its fur two seconds later, if it even noticed at all. Obviously, if Percy had somehow forced the cat to masturbate him, then it would be a different situation because it would be animal abuse and the cat would absolutely have to go to therapy and address its trauma in a direct way. My point is that Percy didn’t do anything wrong, so let’s set aside our judgment and just admire his ability to achieve orgasm in hostile conditions.

  —

  This brings me to what I consider the most spellbinding testament to the capacity of human imagination: masturbating at work. Yes, the workplace. The least thrilling and most oppressive arena of day-to-day life. The phenomenon of the discreet work jerk-off is about as awe-inspiring as the aurora borealis, Keith Richards and time-lapse footage of flowers growing: they all fall under the banner of miracles.

  I don’t know about you, but I have worked many shitty desk jobs in which I go into the office at nine a.m., rotely answer forty emails of varying inconsequence, plug data into multiple templates no one will ever look at, highlight dubiously relevant information in a one-hundred-and-fifty-page document no one will ever read, chew a bag lunch at my desk in a joyless bovine way, get yelled at for doing my job with suspicious competence and then spend an hour mailing things to people they may never look at. All the while I know that, at the end of the day, I’ll stare down a forty-minute commute in a suffocating underground metal tube pressed against a stranger who hasn’t showered seemingly in weeks only to arrive at a squalid hellhole where I will continue gaining weight as I try to better obscure my bachelor’s degree because no matter where I hide it, I can always sense it looming, judging me. Five days a week of this—frankly a very ordinary kind of crushing entry-level job one is lucky to obtain upon graduating college with a nonsense degree—and it’s a wonder that people can still achieve any kind of sexual pleasure at all, much less provide it for themselves.

  And yet . . . yet! Some people manage to enjoy orgasms in the middle of this mind-numbing day. Regular people everywhere can apparently set aside their unrelenting pressures and stress and deadlines and answering those emails with mounting anxiety between the unending ring of phones and the sputter of an always-broken copy machine and they can just duck into the restroom and masturbate, like withdrawing money from an ATM if such a transaction occurred in a cramped toilet stall under urgent silence and was extremely dehumanizing. I know this happens because I have spoken to many friends who are more than willing to admit that the lunch-hour jerk-off can sometimes be the difference between a bad day at work and a better one. Granted, you may be thinking, I’d doubt the integrity of your poll, Ashley, it sounds like your friends are compulsive masturbators. Selection bias is an insidious thing.

  I understand if you work in some job where you make millions a year, something like finance, and you get a private bathroom, in which case I don’t think masturbating at work indicates a stalwartness of character. After all, you don’t have to crush other people with your sadness if they need to use the next stall over because, generally speaking, jobs in finance afford lavish private bathrooms with marble floors and gold fixtures and I’ve even heard they all come with an eighteen-years-and-a-day-old Brazilian girl who quietly sucks you off when you’re done peeing and you never see her again because she gets replaced with
another girl a day younger like so many bath tissues with breasts that point heavenward. Which is weird for the record, Wall Street, and exactly this kind of conspicuous consumption that makes regular folks derisive of your station. We have to worry about our jobs.

  If you’re a normal shitty person like me, however, and your office restroom isn’t padded with hot, sexual favor–giving ESL teenagers, you have to rely on your own shitty imagination and force of will. Which is our focus anyway, masturbation requiring fairly lucid access to the creative faculties. Orgasm achieved through nothing but the imagination. I guess what I’m trying to say is that masturbating at work is proof of God. Or, at least, compelling evidence of a higher power.

  You’ll recall I don’t believe in God because they didn’t get me early enough, but if they had somehow managed to sit me down as a child and explain that people everywhere can overcome the horrifying banalities of their existence and masturbate with efficacy, I might have opened my heart to Jesus or one of his colleagues. The fact that people can actually fight back against those banalities and check out for fifteen minutes from their oppressive desk jobs and go masturbate under fluorescent lights in a beige bathroom stall while staring at generations of stupid graffiti is phenomenal. It’s so phenomenal that I’m practically shocked I’ve never read about it in the two-page portion of celebrity weeklies allotted to human interest stories, where you always hear about babies surviving hurricanes or some guy who gets disfigured in a tractor accident and everyone in his small town pools their money for reconstructive surgery and then he’s still kind of a mutant so the photographer has to shoot from only one side but none of the townspeople feel ripped off because they’re compassionate. What I’m trying to say is that a much more truthful—and, frankly, inspiring—story in those pages would be BELEAGUERED EDITORIAL ASSISTANT MAKING $27K A YEAR IN NEW YORK CITY WITH STUDENT LOANS MANAGES TO ACHIEVE ORGASM ALONE IN PUTRID OFFICE BATHROOM STALL. I’d read that; I wouldn’t just skip it and keep reading about fictional diets attributed to famous people.

  Although it’s certainly not as impressive in men. For males of the species, sexual fantasy and creative stimulation are simple: first you imagine having a dick so big you have to wrap it around your thigh in order to walk and then, like clockwork, you have an erection. Once men have an erection, climaxing is all but guaranteed (right?) because all sexual fantasies for (straight) men can be reduced to a single idealized image: a marine biologist lingerie model with wings.

  I’ll unpack that briefly: the ideal woman is a marine biologist lingerie model with wings. First, she’s a marine biologist because straight men don’t actively want stupid women but they also don’t want a woman who’s so smart that she might win an argument or have cooler records or better taste in something. Therefore, the ideal woman’s occupation falls in the soft sciences, like marine biology, which is essentially just looking at whales and shit. Next, she’s a lingerie model because her breasts and stomach need to look perfect regardless of the manner in which you’re degrading her, which can be complicated because we’ve already established the vivacity of your fucked-up head. Last, the ideal woman has wings. Obviously, invisible wings, because wings you can see is just weird.

  Once men with erections have even partially envisioned this ideal woman, they can just climax (the actual masturbating part comes mostly from a sense of obligation). Once they’ve ejaculated, they become crushed by self-loathing, which means their imaginations are also remarkable insofar as they must always overcome the certainty they will hate themselves after. But they do and they keep masturbating, because men are survivors.

  All of this is downright desultory compared to the ability of the fairer sex. Men don’t concern themselves with details when compared to their counterparts. In case you didn’t know, women’s sexual fantasies are an infinite cosmos of appalling.

  —

  This is where things become weird to the point of terror. When I originally took to the Internet in a pseudo-scientific effort to understand what people think about when they masturbate, I almost couldn’t believe the twisted portrait of women that emerged. Do me a favor: next time you’re at a coffee shop and you notice a normal-looking woman in line behind you, wearing her unflattering pleated pants, with her long stringy hair and plain face, you need to stop thinking she’s nice and come to terms with the fact that her brain is fucking crazy. See the woman walking past you on the sidewalk, with her little dog in its little sweater, and her orthopedic shoes? You wouldn’t believe the putrid shit tapestries she has to weave in order to make herself come. Look at her.

  It was amid this learning about sexual fantasies that I realized why I didn’t masturbate: women who masturbate are all pathologically insane. This isn’t some Victorian-era “hysteria” misogyny here, it’s true: the only way women get off is by imagining themselves into incredibly sophisticated narratives that make absolutely no sense. At least curvaceous archangels who love dolphins have a pretty universal appeal. Women, on the other hand, fantasize seemingly as an act of madness.

  Here are some real sexual fantasies—culled from friends, lady magazines, and obscure Internet erotica—had by regular women, the kind of women you see every day. This list is what I affectionately call Eight Basic Plots for Female Masturbation:

  Trapped in haunted mansion during Samhain, the Gaelic harvest festival. Thunderstorms rage beyond. Must have revelatory but tender oral sex with every member of an all-male a capella group in separate rooms . . . unbeknownst to each other.

  Saved from getting mugged in alleyway by ruggedly handsome, mysterious stranger. Turns out he’s telekinetic with metal bones and intense, preternatural passion.

  An emotionally complicated, brooding vampire has to kidnap me and rape me repeatedly. Not because he wants to . . . because he’s been ordered to by his coven. But he can’t help falling in love along the way.

  I’m friends with a bunch of famous guys and fuck them a lot.

  I’m a cool runaway with ruffian glamour and just met a handsome con man with a mischievous smile. Even though he’s a bad boy, he’s tamed by his feelings and we break into an abandoned asylum to have hungry marathon sex. Then he dies tragically trying to save me.

  A misunderstood mutant and I find solace in each other. I’m an Olympic medalist who can see the future (but not overmuscled). He has a six-foot projectile tongue and a cock like a bear.

  Rescued from a speeding stagecoach by darkly handsome outlaw on horseback. He takes me back to his makeshift camp. He dresses my wounds while undressing me. Then we must bathe.

  I’m a thinner version of myself and clothes look great on me.

  —

  Holy shit, right? Every fantasy had by a single woman is some variation on one of these eight basic plots. It’s important to note “single” woman because the second women start getting sex on the reg, their clitorises retract into their abdomens and then orgasms are boring and they have headaches and feel bloated and didn’t shave their butts that morning and I’d rather eat this waxy American candy bar and recognize the dull alienation I feel from my own body as a poignant metaphor for the alienation that distances me more each day from the man I used to love. Do you want to just order Thai?

  Maybe you don’t believe it. I barely do. This all seems so elaborate that I don’t know how anyone could just lie back in the shower and close her eyes and then “God I’ve missed you, Grimly Resigned to Rape Me Vampire!!” and just come. But it happens every day. It’s happening everywhere right now, all around you. Which takes us back to my initial hang-up: that pleasuring oneself is absurd and deeply sad and no amount of elaborate storytelling is going to distract me from that, therefore I am incapable of something almost everyone else in the world can do and for that I blame my failed imagination. At least you can rest assured that everything I’ve written here is factual and true—after all, how could I make any of this up if my imagination is so atrophied?—and further, I a
m completely trustworthy.

  As a happy ending, never masturbating has made me pretty frustrated and uncomfortable all the time, but it’s also enabled me to pursue countless creative endeavors like obsessive list making, alphabetization of seemingly unrelated ideas and scrawling frenzied Latin over every visible surface of my apartment in my own blood. This is why I’m a pretty firm believer that kids should watch six hours of television a day from infancy to stymie the imagination as much as possible and then no one will masturbate ever and be just as productive as me and not irrationally angry all the time. I’m betting.

  Until that happens, and we all float through our day-to-day existence as listless automatons that never climax, I do find solace in the human race and its ease with and love of masturbating (even at work). It really does demonstrate the influence of a higher power or intelligence. That’s something you should contemplate whenever you relieve yourself at the office. Next time you do so, just know there may be a wad of rich inner life geysering into a handful of toilet paper right beside you. But don’t be grossed out, because it simply means there is God all around us.

  * (“Cogito ergo cum” seemed too precious.)

  SEX, LIES AND PUBIC HAIR

  As a teenager, I used to tell people I didn’t have any body hair below my collarbone. Those people would always look me in the eye and waves of realization would wash over them as they quietly sussed out I was basically volunteering—in a manner I considered quite titillating then—that I had no pubic hair. This was a half-truth for a couple reasons.

  Well, mostly, this demonstrates the fundamental shittiness of teenagers: they will say and do anything for attention (even bad attention). Most of the things you say to people as a teen are just horseshit self-mythology and, especially, the kind of self-mythology that’s supposed to make you seem more desirable. In retrospect, it’s pretty gross that I would ever say in casual conversation, “I have no body hair (You know what that means, right?),” but really I was just trying to seem more alluring, because if porn has taught us anything it’s that vulvas should look like newborn whales without eyelashes. Which is weird, because the consequence of that is some people like vaginas to look like whatever’s going to crown out of them after the copulating has taken place and that’s kind of a roundabout way to express a mating impulse.