Masturbation Between Friends

What was starting university still half in lockdown like? Well, my grades were solid, I was bored out of my skull, and I masturbated a lot.

It would be fair to say that I felt a little cheated; I had envisaged the start of life as a fresher as being wild. I would finally be away for the first time in my life from the severe, disapproving glare of my parents. They would have blown their collective fuse had they got wind during my sixth-form days of a boy within striking distance of my bedroom, and I was fully intent on making up for lost time as I looked ahead to the start of university life- on bar crawls and impromptu hook-ups and not having to care any longer what other people labelled me as, like every great coming-of-age movie cliché rolled into one.

Then, of course, by the time I was actually heading off to campus, the pandemic was in full swing. Any socialising, raunchy or otherwise, became all but impossible. There were secret parties, of course, and I certainly considered attending a few. But I guess my parents' influence had rubbed off on me more than I realised, and I stayed tediously put in my new room, listening with ire to the music blaring from the accommodation block across from mine, and the knowledge that someone else was having an infinitely better time than I was.

But it was more than just COVID that was cramping my style, I'll admit. When I caught sight of the guys who were hosting those gratingly vibrant parties hanging out in front of their building, or even when I heard snatches of laddish male laughter from across the block at night, I was hit more by apprehension than intrigue. On reflection, I'd picked an all-female accommodation block on campus for a reason. University boys made me nervous. I was more wary of them than I was interested. Hook-ups? Forget it.

As it happened, then, with my less than flourishing social life, the people I

did

get to know fairly well were my neighbours in the building. I had a single room with a kitchen shared with a few others down the hall and an adjoining bathroom that I shared with another girl whose room was just across from mine. My bathroom neighbour was a psychology major named Katie, and she was incredibly sweet. I'd come a long way from home to university- take that, possessive parents- whereas she was from only a few miles away, and so she'd come much better prepared, and was very generous in lending me anything I'd belatedly realised I hadn't brought.

Aside from that, though, my company was pretty stagnant, and I found myself often bored and frustrated and... well, you know. I was stressed, classwork was challenging, my racy dreams of campus life were as of yet unfulfilled, and one of the few bright spots was the novelty of having a bedroom with a locking door and some co-habitants who respected the right to privacy. So I got off. Pretty often. Like I said, it was novel being able to touch myself at more or less any time of the day, and without pausing every time I thought I heard a creaking floorboard or another door opening nearby.

Of course, it was still a shared accommodation block, and so I didn't have total free rein just to cut loose. Most notably, Katie also played for the university's hockey team, and was liable to come home and jump in the shower at odd hours of the day as they struggled to schedule things to accommodate their 'bubble', and I didn't yet feel quite comfortable entertaining anything risqué with her just a single door away. Over time, I ended up more or less reverting to my usual old habit of rubbing one out just before bed, by which time everything had settled down. In our block, at least- the 'mad lads' in the accommodation across from ours were still partying late into the night, and I often found myself resorting to...

other

methods to keep their noise out.

Porn was something I had a bit of an odd relationship with. It had been the one lewd going-on I could actually get away with as an adolescent- my parents might have been conservative, but they were about as computer-illiterate as it was possible to be, and happy for me to have my own laptop as they figured I would need it for schoolwork. I probably first had a look just out of curiosity; my upstanding church-affiliated school took a pretty Victorian line on anything resembling sex education, and my mid-teens probably spawned some pretty questionable Google searches that Katie's psych professors might have had a field day with. Over time, it became just a little indulgence, though one I had thoroughly mixed feelings about. I'd read some truly terrible things about the porn industry, and after the initial teenage novelty had worn off had grown quickly weary of the stilted, mechanical sex that so much of it depicted. Still, I didn't see anything so terrible in principle about watching two attractive people get it on. By the time I started university I had become significantly choosier (and, naturally, a lot more angsty that I hadn't yet graduated to the real thing) but the mood still took me some of the time, provided I could find something that was 100% above board, and where the sex seemed genuinely nice and something I could imagine doing for myself, if I ever managed to get out of my room and meet a guy who didn't gross me out.

Boy, did I have no idea what I was in for.

With nobody to get on my case about it, another small novel enjoyment was being able to let my living space be a little messy. I felt vindicated in this by Katie, who was prone to leaving stuff

everywhere

in our shared bathroom. Shampoo, shower gel, moisturisers, make-up remover, the lot. I didn't particularly mind, and would have been loath to start an argument with one of my few new friends anyway, so it never came up between us. Until, that was, one morning on which I was up earlier than usual for a rescheduled online lecture, and was brushing my teeth at the sink when I spotted something sitting just beside the stainless hot tap. It was a small matte black object that I initially mistook (okay, don't laugh, I was innocent) for a small stick of deodorant. I took a closer look. No, that clearly wasn't it. The slight lip near one end that I'd mistaken for the base of a lid was purely decorative, and as I looked closer I spotted something at the underside, a small opening with a silver protrusion inside. A charging port? But what for? What was-

Then, belatedly, realisation hit me and my heart skipped a beat. Oh no. Katie must have left it in here by accident. It was okay, I told myself. She may not have been awake yet; I could simply finish up here and go for my lecture and she would never need to know that I'd seen it. Good thing too, because she'd surely be mortified. Or, perhaps,

I

would be mortified-

The other door swung open.

I hadn't bothered to lock it. I was only brushing my teeth, after all. "Oh," Katie said brightly. "You're up early. Did one of your-"

Her eyes, predictably, arrived exactly where I'd been praying she'd fail to look. "Oh-" Katie looked briefly at me, then straight down at the tiled floor, blushing like mad. "Uh, sorry, I forgot to- yeah-"

She grabbed the toy and exited back to her room, determinedly not looking at me. I stood there, feeling a flush of my own creeping across my face, and a painful mixture of embarrassment and sympathy for my friend.

The incident remained on my mind throughout my early lecture- I was grateful to be able to merely listen with my camera and mic both switched off- and I felt myself blush again as and when it popped back into my head throughout the day. The best response, I decided, was to act as if nothing had happened. I'd just plough on ahead next time we ran into each other. Katie, surely, would want to forget about twice as much as I did.

I didn't see her again while I was cooking that evening, but I didn't have to wait much longer- my hair-dryer began playing up the following day, and figuring a little embarrassment was preferable to running a dodgy appliance next to my wet hair, I braved the other side of the bathroom door and knocked softly. "Katie? Can I borrow your hair-dryer?"

"Sure, come on through." Katie was sitting at her desk with her headphones on. "It's a pre-recorded lecture, don't worry," she added, shrugging them off. "Over there on the windowsill."

"Thanks." I was maybe a little more stiff than usual, but Katie seemed unbothered, and I made my way over to grab the dryer.

"No problem." She turned back to her screen.

"I'm sorry about yesterday."

I had blurted it out without even thinking.

Great

. So much for carrying on like nothing had happened. I could feel the heat creeping up my face once more.

Katie looked slightly taken aback, and I winced internally. Then, to my immense relief, she half-smiled sheepishly and shook her head. "Oh, no, no, it's fine. It was my fault anyway, you haven't got anything to be sorry about."

I was still certainly blushing and annoyed at myself for bringing it up, but I now also felt a slight twinge of additional annoyance on top. Had my life in fact turned me into a prude after all, if I was more embarrassed at finding someone's intimate toys than they were?

Ugh

, I even winced at that too.

Sex

toys. You can think the word. Indoor acoustic concerts are 'intimate'. Things you use to get off are sexual. "Well, I'm sorry anyway," I said. "Hey, since lockdown's probably killed off hook-ups, we're probably not the only people it's happened to."

I thought I was pushing it there, but Katie merely laughed and nodded. "Yeah," she agreed. "I'd probably have brought more if I'd known I was gonna be flying solo."

I couldn't quite believe I was having this conversation, but I giggled and shrugged. Well, I'd wanted to loosen up a bit after getting away from home, hadn't I? "Good thing you live within driving distance," I said. "I had to take a flight to get here."

Katie grinned conspiratorially. "Oh, God, that'd be a fun trip through airport security.

Literally

flying solo."

"Oh my

God

-"

We cracked a few more jokes before I took the dryer and left her to return to her studies. My pulse was still going a little quicker than normal, but I didn't mind much. Mainly I was just relieved that I wasn't going to be tiptoeing around my nearest neighbour- and nearest friend here, if I was honest. And she was right. It

was

nothing to really be embarrassed about, when you broke it down. Hell, I'm sure it could easily have been me, if I owned anything like that. I didn't, of course- attempting to smuggle the parcel past my parents would have been a nightmare-

And then it hit me, for the first time, that I no longer needed to. I paused with the dryer in my hand. I had received little mail on campus so far, but I knew the system: everyone had the right to claim a locker, and postal deliveries could be mailed directly there and then collected at our own discretion. Anything I wanted to order I could do so entirely inconspicuously. I filed that little revelation away in the back of my mind. I wasn't quite ready to act on it yet, but I certainly wasn't going to forget it, either.

**

Katie and I's conversation turned out not to be a mere one-off. She was

much

more relaxed in talking about these things than any of my old friends- and I, as it turned out, had things I'd been waiting to get off my chest without realising it for a long time. It was something wholly new to me, having someone to talk to who was genuinely confident and comfortable discussing sexual topics. Not just confident and comfortable, in fact, but sweet and approachable. Having shuffled awkwardly around the issue for some time, I eventually admitted to her that I was still a virgin, genuinely worried that she might laugh or, even worse, take pity on me. But she merely shrugged and nodded calmly. "That's okay. It's nothing to be ashamed of. We're supposed to be done with making people feel bad for having sex- why would making anyone feel bad for

not

having sex be any better?"

"I guess it's not." Even with her nonchalance, I couldn't help but cringe a little. "You know that's easier for you to say, though. It's hard not to be self-conscious about it."

"I know." She reached out and brushed my shoulder affectionately, and it surprised me. I wasn't all that used to affection from friends. Come to think of it, I wasn't all that used to affection from anybody. "But you'll get there. And you don't have to rush. I'll let you in on a secret: when I lost my virginity, it

sucked

. Seriously, it was so underwhelming, and I was too shy to say anything- like I was worrying about it: '

am I bad at this?

' '

Is this just what sex is always like?

'"

"Yeah?" I winced sympathetically.

Katie nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah. So there's definitely nothing wrong with hanging on for a little while for the right person. Cuz there's no point in being with someone who doesn't really care about whether or not you're actually enjoying yourself."

I smiled a little. "That sounds like a good T-shirt quote."

She smiled back. "Thanks."

Hanging out with Katie made me feel a little more comfortable in my own skin for the first time since arriving at university- or perhaps for the first time since I'd gotten old enough to have these worries, really. On a whim one evening, I had a look at the university's postal system again on their web page to make sure it was indeed as discreet as I thought it was. It checked out. I'd been living pretty frugally recently- the still-strict COVID rules had put paid to most social activity, and I had a little money to spare, if something were to catch my eye.

A little shyly, I opened a private browsing window and began perusing. I wasn't going to go for anything too out-there. Just something to spice things up for myself. I went on the first and most reputable-looking site that came up and was greeted by a page of dildos. I cringed once more. The flesh-coloured ones made me uncomfortable. The

non

-flesh coloured ones made me uncomfortable. Why were they all so

veiny

? I shook my head and moved onto the next page.

Vibrators. There were certainly plenty of options. Large wands, tiny bullets. I didn't have time to read the perks of every one. I found a drop-down menu and sorted by the most popular.

Right at the top of the list, a familiar sight popped up. A small round device, more modest than most of the others. It was, I was pretty sure, the same toy that Katie had left by the sink. I felt a little awkward still even at the memory. But the star rating was impressive, and it was probably just about within my price range... I clicked on it curiously.

I did a little more reading. It came with dual vibrating and clit-sucking- that's a word, apparently- functions, charged off the mains, was waterproof and came with ten speeds and patterns. My cursor hovered over the 'add to cart' button. Was I really going to do this?

Yes. Yes I bloody well was. I checked and double-checked the ad and reviews that my order would come in a plain unmarked package, hurriedly keyed in my details- no, you certainly may not remember them for next time, Google- and a moment later the confirmation email arrived in my inbox. I felt my nerves jangling, but an unmistakable glow of satisfaction as well. Who was a prude now?

I'd ordered it in rose gold, though. Not black. That would have reminded me a little too much of Katie. Which would have been weird. Definitely. I closed over my laptop, wondering why I was flushing again all of a sudden.

**

Katie and I continued to keep one another company. It was nice, having someone even to do what little mundane stuff we could like cook together or watch a show holed up in one of our rooms. I told her a little more about my own background, my tense relationship with my parents and my somewhat nerdy reputation at school. I had to feel a little jealous of Katie's own family situation, who sounded immeasurably warmer and more relaxed. But not academic. She'd knuckled down in class of her own volition. It was something I'd never really given much thought to before. I'd had little choice but to succeed academically, but when I'd wanted that new laptop, or to enrol in something else extracurricular, or tuition to come up to scratch in another subject, my parents had known straight away who to contact- and the money had been there. Katie's confident aura wasn't just because she'd seldom been told what to do by anyone- it was because she'd had to figure it out in large part by herself.

The most vulnerable I saw her, meanwhile, was on one occasion when the topic turned back- it had a habit of doing so- to sex and relationships, and I grumbled once again about my lack of action. "You'll be fine," Katie repeated, waving her hand. "You'll know when it feels right. It doesn't change you in the meantime."

I'd heard her say much the same before, but there was something a little too airy about the way she'd waved her arm, and she wasn't quite meeting my eyes. I looked at her, unsure over whether I should broach the topic or just leave it, but the decision was taken for me as she turned back and caught sight of my gaze, and to my surprise seemed to shrink a little before me. "Okay, maybe I'm projecting a little," she said.

"Projecting?" It was a term Katie was fond of using- never try to argue with psych majors- but on this occasion I was confused. "How d'you mean?"

Katie furrowed her brow. "Okay, I... I know I haven't mentioned this before, but, I'm actually bisexual," she said in a sudden rush.

"Oh." I nodded in surprise, then did so again more firmly. "That's totally okay! Why didn't you say? Not that you're obliged to, obviously, but if you'd felt comfortable... wait, you didn't think I'd have a problem with it, did you?"

"Oh, no, no!" Katie said with a shake of her head. "No, I knew you wouldn't have a problem with it that way. I just..." She winced a little and rested her chin on her hand, looking suddenly awkward. "I haven't told that many people," she said. "And it's basically because I'm worried they won't take it seriously. I've had boyfriends, but I've never had a girlfriend, I've never dated or slept with a girl or done anything more than just kiss. I've always known- for as long as I've known what liking someone was, I've known I liked girls as well as boys, but I haven't met a girl I wanted to take that step with yet."

I felt my heart contract in sympathy. "Well, I take you seriously," I said firmly. "And so should anybody else. I mean I've never had a boyfriend, and I know that doesn't make me...

a

sexual. Nobody should act like they know your own sexuality better than you do. You're totally valid."

"Thanks." Katie managed a brief smile, but her eyes remained sad. "But anyway, yeah, that's why I usually bring it up unless someone asks." Her cheeks were now red, and she shifted her gaze to the floor. "Sometimes I sort of feel like I'm still...

half

a virgin, I guess, and it makes me shy about talking about it. Sorry, I know I'm being stupid..."

She lapsed into silence. I felt poorly equipped to be the one giving advice and comfort, but remembering how her support had made me feel when I doubted myself, I reached out and laid my hand gently but firmly over hers. "You're not being stupid," I said. "But, remember to be as kind to yourself as you've been to me. You don't let me get down from what other people might think of me, and I'm going to do the same for you. You're a great person and you know your own sexuality. Anyone who won't respect that or who thinks they can define you better than you can define yourself that can fuck right off."

I gave her hand an affectionate squeeze. There was still a hint of reservation in her expression, but she nodded slightly, and her smile this time was a little more like her usual self. "Thanks."