In high school I noticed something.  I had some friends who were very lucky with girls.  I had some friends who never once had any luck at all.  I pondered this.  I wondered why some charming boys never had a girl call them ever.

Part of this was typical high school bullshit.  Through the magic of Facebook many of these crushes have been blurted out since then.  Why wasn't high school a total fuckfest?  What on earth did we have to lose?  And, seriously, no STDs?  Call me!

Anyway, in highschool I decided for myself that the guys who jerked off all the time never had a chance with girls. 

When I got a car I used to drop off a friend of mine after school  He would hit the garage-button on his parents house and as I was pulling out he made two hand motions.  One was the "jerking-off" hand stroke, but the first was he pointed to an imaginary watch on his arm.  "Time to jerk-off!!"

I should also add that in high school I was always something of a girlfriend guy.  If I didn't have a girlfriend it was because I was completely nutso over an older girl and she didn't think of me like that.  It was actually just one girl, Tori, and I was friends with her brother.  I would sleep over at her house and watch TV all night, falling asleep head-to-toe on her parents couch.

We all had crushes on Tori, so the rest of my friends were at home jerking off about her.

So in high school I never once masturbated.

This was very easy for me because I was a very late bloomer.  I actually suffered from puberty-denial because I was so scrawny and hairless.  I honestly thought that it missed me.  You know when you see teenage boys who wear long-sleeved-shirt-under-short-sleeved-shirt?  That was me because I didn't want anyone to look down my short sleeves and see my hairless armpits when I had my hand raised in class.

This may correlate to why I (almost) failed out of eight grade and had to repeat it.

My thinking at the time was  that I had a small amount of knowledge that might help me get with a certain type of lady.  My specialty was in nice, young girls who had never dated anyone before. They were usually Catholic girls who had been too timid, too focussed on Jane Austen, too busy with extracurriculars to notice the onset of menarche*.

Because I was a girlfriend guy I kind of missed out on that Judd Apatow, dude-time.  I would catch up with my guy friends at odd times.  Either I were with Ben on a double-date (the best way to spend your weekend and see a movie/still get to make out) or I were single and with my completely separate group of boys.  I sang back ups on their records, we had bands together, we skipped sixth period to get burritos.  I am the luckiest guy alive already, but I was extra lucky in high school because I had great friends.

But I'm still Irish with Catholic tendencies.  If there is joy or happiness to be found I will feel guilty about it.  Sometimes when I am really, truly happy about something I think, "Don't worry--you'll fuck it up any day now."

On my parents' dining room table there is a plaque which says, "...being Irish he had an impending sense of doom which sustained him through temporary periods of joy."-WB Yeats.

Then I got to college and I started to have sex!  It was awesome!  And guess what?  I was wicked bad at it!  So bad.  Arrival upon delivery-bad.  Finish-in-your-sheets-because-we're-naked bad.  Super bad.

It was Sophomore Year.  I was in the shower of my 5th floor dorm room in Caples and I noticed that I was a Gender Studies Major with a glistening, soapy erection.  I must have been wearing my contacts because I looked down and I said, "Geez, this is what Lacan means by 'the valorization of the penis.'"

Man did I valorize that penis in that shower with my shower-shoes on.

It was also very, very strange because at the time it was maybe the tenth orgasm of my life--including high school hand-jobs, virginity-loss and wet-dreams (more on that in the YA novel!).

So for the first year I got constructive.  I wore condoms and worked it breathlessly while my gay roommate was asleep (now that I'm older and work gay parties I know that he would have loved to listen).

But I never, ever (still, to this day) jerked off about a girl I intended on nailing.  Why on earth would you?  Imminent disappointment.  

However, since I don't watch porn, this means I rely heavily upon memory.  Some people have this fantasy of meeting a total stranger and fucking each other sideways.  Luckily I've had that.  But, seriously, nothing else keeps my hot water-bill higher than the hours and hours of my adult life I've spent thinking about the girls from college.**

Girls from college are the coda for the difficulties I have in life.  Here I am--an adult who has toured the world--and I still think about the girl who transferred to Oberlin.  Was it because I was bad in bed?  Would she have even called me on my 4-digit college phone number at 4 in-the-college-AM if she weren't transferring the next week?  Why was she so fucking hot?  Why did she talk to me?

I can hear it, perfectly, clearly.  I remember going back to my dorm after hopelessly flirting with this girl and telling her when I would be at the coffee shop, slaving away next week.  I got a message on my dorm-phone from the Provost's daughter, "Brendan, this is ____ I went to the Red Door Cafe looking for you and yoooou weren't there.  You lying piece of shit."

I wish I had any game whatsoever then.  Clearly this girl wanted me to come over right then.  I had a 50cc white moped.  I should have cranked it up and taken her for a ride.  We would have parked under the elm trees of a 19th century stone church in Ohio.  Six miles from the nearest porch light.  We would have made out on a carefully lain windbreaker.  How great the grass would smell!

But that never happened.  Because I have no game.

I have been told that I have girl-masturbation fantasies.  I tend to imagine glorious, daytime romantic situations.  I have never once thought, "This would be so much hotter if I could cum in her eye."  I'm so awkward.  If I really wanted to do that--I would have to bring those Hot-Cabi wipes you get in sushi restaurants.

But to this day I never, ever work-it to a girl I really want to sleep with.  I NEVER think about a girl I'm dating.  I never even think about a girl I wish I were dating.

If necessary I focus on the impossible (girlfriend's business partner?  lost lover?).  I remember the first time I read AHWOSG and Dave Eggers confessed that he masturbates once a day "(usually in the shower)" and I thought, "That's reasonable."

I certainly never go out and talk to a girl and then go home and think about how she would sound with cock in her mouth.  

Who knows what effect this has had on my life.  But I guess it's the only thing I do that keeps me from having unrealistic expectations.  When I finally meet a nice girl and have a wonderful night together: it's really for the first time.

*BOOBIES!!!

**I promised myself that if I really wrote this honestly it had to include that sentence.