Emma and I had known each other since we were kids. We met at Sunday School at St Paul’s Cathedral, our local church. We attended Confirmation Classes together and later joined the youth group, the Fellowship Of St George. In our early teens we were invited by the Dean, Father James McLean, to become Alter Servers, helping officiate during services.
Emma was a pretty girl about five foot six with shoulder length brown hair, freckles and beautiful almond shaped brown eyes. If anything she was a little on the chubby side but I quite liked that because it seemed to emphasise her largish breasts. I’d never considered Emma anything other than a good friend because she was a year or so older than me and seemed rather prim and proper.
When I turned seventeen, being a senior member of the youth group, I was invited to join Emma as a leader of the Fellowship group. Our job was to organise and co-ordinate Friday night meetings at the old church hall. We got to know one another so well over this time, I decided to confide in her, to ask her advice about something that had been troubling me for a long time.
The problem began years earlier when I arrived home from school to find a booklet on the end of my bed. I guess my parents thought, having turned fourteen, it was an appropriate time for me to learn about sexuality.
The booklet, called ‘The Facts Of Life - Sex Education For Boys’, only consisted of a couple of dozen pages of text and a few basic illustrations. I closed my bedroom door, sat on my bed and began flicking through the contents. It didn’t take long to realise there wasn’t much I wasn’t already aware of. I mean boys will be boys.
The exception though, was a page devoted to masturbation. I was surprised to see it mentioned at all because I’d considered masturbation to be a secret thing, something done behind closed doors. It certainly wasn’t something I’d have expected to find in print.
I read and re-read the chapter trying to make sense of it. And the more I read the more it unsettled me. The booklet implied masturbation was sinful and that if you indulged enough, it would become an ‘iron chain’ habit, impossible to break. It suggested it had potentially damaging consequences later in life.
To say I was concerned was an understatement because I was masturbating all the time. To make matters worse, I couldn’t talk to anyone because that would have been an admission I was a serial sinner. I realised there was only one thing I could do, and that was to stop, or at the very least, to cut back. But it didn’t take long to realise the author of the booklet was right, I couldn’t stop doing it, I was addicted. Perhaps, if I hadn't been so involved with the church, I could have lived with it. But knowing I was sinning every day made life very difficult.
So that’s how my journey with Emma Stevens began. One Friday night after a Fellowship meeting at our local church hall... the night I decided to ask her advice about my problem. What I didn't realise at the time, was that it would be the start of a journey neither of us would forget.
It was about nine thirty and just before we locked up for the night, I decided to bite the bullet and talk to her. "Hey Emma, can I ask you something?"
“Sure,” She said.
We walked into the anteroom off the kitchen and she sat on the old three seater vinyl lounge. She patted the seat beside her and invited me to sit down.
"Okay, so what’s on your mind?"
"It’s a bit embarrassing," I said.
"Hey Tony, we know each other well enough now to be able to share things.”
"Yeah Emma, but this is different."
"Why?"
"Well, the fact is I’m doing something I shouldn’t."
"What’s that?"
I told her about the booklet and the chapter on masturbation. I told her how much it worried me because the book said it was sinful and harmful. Emma looked at me and I could see she was shocked, unsure how to respond.
"Maybe You should speak to Father McLean about it Tony."
"Speak to the Dean?" Astonished she would suggest it.
“You'd be surprised," Emma said, “both he and Erin are extremely understanding."
"Yeah, but surely not about that sort of thing?”
"I’ve talked to Erin a lot about very personal things.”
"You mean about sex?”
“Yes!” She said. “As I said earlier, they both have open minds to sexuality."
“I couldn't ask Father McLean, Emma. I'd be much too embarrassed. It's taken me ages to build up the courage to talk to you.”
After another pause she said, "I really don’t know what to say Tony, except that it’s not just you. I mean almost everyone does it. If masturbation is a sin, then we're all guilty of it.
"So you're telling me your guilty of it too?" I asked.
“I guess I am. What made you think I wouldn’t do it too?"
"I never really thought about girls masturbating. I mean my mates do it, but girls?”
"Well, as you know I’m an only child. But a few years ago Mum helped an old school-friend out and allowed her sixteen year old son Timothy to board with us for a while. They were from the bush and he was a promising runner, so she wanted him to get proper training. And that was how I found out that boys do it because I caught him a couple of times. In a strange way, catching him helped me a lot too.”
“How?”
“Well, the first time was about two years ago when I walked into his bedroom late one night to borrow a CD. I didn’t knock before going in and, while it was the wrong thing to do, I wasn’t thinking about him doing that. Anyway, he was lying on his bed naked, you know, stroking his penis.”
“What did he do?”
“He was really miffed. Very angry! He didn’t speak to me for a week or so. And from then on he started locking his door.”
“How did you feel about seeing him doing it?”
“It’s a bit embarrassing to say this, but it really turned me on. Sometimes at night I’d fool around with myself in bed thinking about it. It felt really nice playing around but nothing dramatic happened. You know, back then I didn't even know it was possible to have an orgasm. It wasn't something they taught at school." Emma said with a laugh.
I smiled and nodded in agreement.
"I had to learn the hard way, by trial and error.”
"How?"
“Well, one Saturday morning Mum was getting ready to take Timmy to one of his athletics carnivals. She asked me if I could do the washing while she was away. We were in the kitchen when she suddenly realised they were running late, so she asked me to go and give Timmy a hurry up.
“I went to his bedroom door and it was closed, I didn't dare go in so I knocked and called out to him to hurry. He didn’t answer so I knocked again, harder this time, and told him Mum was getting angry. A few minutes later he flung the door open and pushed past me, slamming it behind him. He was really annoyed! At the time I had no idea why he was so pissed, if you'll excuse the expression. I mean it was early on a Saturday morning so it didn’t occur to me he'd be… you know."
“So what did you do?"
"A few moments later I heard them leave so I went into his room to get his dirty clothes. I found a pile on the floor, and when I went to pick them up, I noticed something under his bed. I reached under and slid it out. It was a magazine, with a handkerchief on top.
"I flicked the magazine open and it was one of those ones with naked girls showing everything all through it."
"Holy cow," I said, "what did you do with it."
Emma laughed and said, "No Tony, you can’t have it."
"Anyway, I picked up the handkerchief by the corner to add to the wash and noticed it was very wet."
"Wet?"
"Yeah! Then it suddenly dawned on me what it was."
"I think I can guess."
“Yes, you probably guessed right. I couldn't believe it. I realised that while I was knocking on his door, he’d been looking at the magazine and masturbating. It explained why he was so annoyed, and why it took him so long to open the door. I’d interrupted him at the wrong time. I sat down on his bed in disbelief at first. But curiosity got the better of me and, having never seen semen before, I opened the handkerchief to take a look. It was saturated and I dipped my finger in to feel it.”
“And?” I said.
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what its like. So I lifted the handkerchief up to my nose to have a smell and was surprised at how nice it was, a sort of sweet musty odour.
“I sat down on his bed and couldn’t stop thinking of him stroking his dick. So I lay back and put the handkerchief over my face to take in that sexy odour. I was so turned-on by the whole thing I started touching myself. But as I said, I’d fooled around with myself plenty of times in the past but always stopped before anything happened. This time though, I was so worked up I kept going until… well, until I had my first orgasm.
“It blew me away. I’d never felt anything like it - the most amazing thing I'd ever experienced. I’d read about it and heard girls talk about it, but nothing I’d read or heard prepared me for what it was actually like… I’m sure you know what I mean."
Listening to Emma's story had me so horny, I was ready to burst. I actually thought of excusing myself and going to the toilet for some quick hand relief but thought better of it.
I finally said, "I do know what you mean Em. That's exactly why I haven’t been able to stop."
"I mean once you’ve experienced the pleasure, that amazing feeling, there’s no going back is there? So," she said, "I fully get why you kept doing it, even after you read that dreadful booklet."
"Gee Em!" I said, “I’d never have guessed.”
"I can't believe I'm telling you all this Tony, but like you, I do it all the time now."
"So you’re going to hell too," I said with a laugh.
"I hope not. But ever since that time, I’ve had this thing about guys masturbating."
"In what way?"
"It's hard to explain, but thinking about Timmy’s semen soaked handkerchief gets me so hot,” She said, “I fantasise about it all the time now.