Male masturbation gets a bad rap in media. When it features, it’s usually the butt of a joke, something gross, uncouth, or pathetic. Compare and contrast female masturbation, which is generally cast as alluring and empowering.

This collection of single-writing-session vignettes is my attempt to redress the balance.

For clarity: these pieces are about men pleasuring themselves, including one trans man and some allusions to male/male sexual activity. If you are not attracted to men, you will probably not find much to enjoy here.

Bill

Once a year, in late spring or early summer, Bill disappears. He books time off work, leaves the kids with Marie, and spends a long weekend in a cabin up in Kentucky, with a few easy novels and a sixer of cheap beer.

It’s Saturday afternoon. Bill’s out on the back deck, half-listening to the Steve Miller Band on his old stereo, taking deep breaths of the clean, sleepy air. His stout body slouches in his chair like a bear in the sun. If there’s a deeper peace than this, he hasn’t found it yet.

Back home, he doesn’t jack off. He’s older and busier now than he once was, and, when the moods do strike him, he has Marie. But out here, with a little time to clear his head, he feels that old, familiar itch again, stirring from hibernation as it does every year.

His left hand - his non-beer hand - drifts towards his fly.

Bill’s cock is a fat, healthy one with a little curve to the left. In the spirit of the weekend, he lets it take its time getting hard, resting it in the palm of his hand and focusing on the cool breeze tickling his skin. He’s no exhibitionist, but he likes doing this outdoors; it reminds him of hasty fumbles behind the stables, and of hiking with Marie on their honeymoon.

He rises to attention, and his hand rises with it, thick, strong fingers just about meeting his thumb as they curl around him. He savours that first proper stroke, the shift from teasing to gratification. His mind, already slow and quiet, empties altogether. There is only cool air and warm skin and hot, sticky need.

Bill’s rhythm is brisk and rock-steady, but his shaft is tempered by experience. By the time the first wet streams of pre start to leak down over his fingers, the music’s stopped, but he’s already tuned it out.

Then it hits him, all at once, abrupt but no less potent for it. Bill has to think again, but only for a moment - he knows himself well enough to have a box of tissues ready next to the stereo. A quiet grunt escapes his lips as his balls tighten and the first jet rocks his nervous system.

He has a few minutes to enjoy the afterglow before it starts to fade, and he seizes every second. Then he cleans himself up, finishes his beer, and wanders indoors to answer the sudden growl from his stomach. It’s a little early for dinner, but, out here, his body knows best.

Tyler

Tyler’s straight. 100%, no question. He’s shaken off his dad’s influence enough not to have a problem with the gays (though not quite enough to stop calling them “the gays”), but he likes women - women’s bodies, women’s faces, and one specific woman in microeconomics who wears bows in her hair and always smells vaguely of citrus.

And, whenever his roommate’s out and he has a spare hour or two, Tyler opens his laptop and watches men fuck each other.

You know. Straight guy stuff.

It started with MMF threesomes. It’s simple math, really: Tyler likes fucking, and two guys sharing a girl, that’s twice the fucking. The first time his online wandering took him to that kind of threesome, the kind where the guys touch each other, he was caught off-guard, but he kept watching out of what he told himself was academic curiosity. Next it was “straight bait” videos, where women coerced men into having sex with men ... and that’s how he got here, naked, erect, and browsing hardcore gay porn in bed at eleven o’clock on a Wednesday morning.

The sound’s off for his neighbours’ sake, leaving only the heavy whir of his laptop fan and the soft, wet slicking of fingers on well-lotioned cock. On his screen, as advertised, a “hot stud”, toned and square-shouldered like him, pins a smooth, lithe “tattooed punk” down over a couch, and “roughly rails” him. He’s been replaying the same half-minute for a while now, cursor poised to skip back to just the right spot, and stroking in time with the top’s rock-steady rhythm.

Twenty minutes ago, in Tyler’s head, the citrus-scented girl from micro was challenging him to fuck this sweet little twink, to prove he was strong enough to have her. But she’s all but gone now. All he’s focused on is two bodies, sharp-edged bodies, male bodies, in harmony.

The camera cuts away from the close-up, and he reaches for the trackpad, then hesitates. He lets it roll. They’re changing positions now, the bottom lying on his back, legs up high. They’re facing each other. There’s hunger in their eyes.

Unbidden, Tyler’s stroke quickens.

Normally, he’ll pause the video as he cums, flooding his mind with tits and pussies, his reward, his real desire. But this, the heavy, sweaty thing playing out in grainy 480p before him ... he can’t pretend this isn’t a desire in itself, however hard he tries.

The “hot stud” pulls out a few minutes later, shooting thick white spunk all over the “tattooed punk”. Tyler follows suit. It’ll be a while yet before he’s ready for the word “bisexual”, but that gluey pool of cum cooling on his stomach is a few months ahead of the curve.

Vikram

Vikram’s presentation to the board is ten minutes away, and he’s not ready.

From a technical standpoint, he’s readier than many of his peers have ever been. He’s worked late polishing every rough edge on the slide deck, he’s practiced his speech in the mirror, he’s checked and rechecked and cross-checked his stats from every conceivable angle. But the panic rising in his gut doesn’t seem to care about any of that. He’s not ready, and he’s going to bomb and fail and probably crush any hopes he had for promotion.

In the absence of an official corporate-sanctioned panic room, Vikram’s locked himself in a single-occupancy bathroom, where, having tried some breathing exercises to no avail, he’s taking the nuclear option.

He’s a little startled at how easy it was to get hard, but it makes sense - his whole system is switched on, flooded with adrenaline, the frantic thud of his pulse in his ears now palpable against his palm too. At home, he likes to take his time, savour the moment, but a glance at his smartwatch confirms that he doesn’t have that luxury. This one will be quick and dirty.

His favourite fantasy, then. Old reliable. He closes his eyes, tightens his grip, and lets his mind wander back to a familiar place. He’s chasing a woman through the woods, a naked, ethereal nymph who’s dared him to catch her if he can, and he’s gaining on her, until, at last, she throws herself to the ground, wide open, rewarding his victory...

Vikram is a humble man, his pride kept prisoner by his anxiety, but in this one mindspace he can set it free. He can feel his blood quickening, cold fear slowly giving way to hot passion. He breathes as deeply as he can, each breath coinciding with a wave of pleasure as he works his cock with feverish fervour. And, deep down, right there at the base of his shaft, Vikram feels something he doesn’t feel very often.

He feels powerful.

He must be powerful, to be able to make himself feel this way. (A little slower for a moment, running his thumb over the tip, gathering silvery pre to ease his stroke.) His mind is disciplined. Potent. It can do anything he directs it to. (Faster now, building momentum, wrist trying to outrun his heartbeat.) There’s a reason he was assigned this project. Nobody else could handle it. Nobody but him. He can beat his nerves, he can catch that woman, and he can crush this presentation, because he’s Vikram fucking Doshi, and nothing can stop him now!

He staggers back a step as he cums, caught off-guard by the sheer force. The first jet hits the opposite wall with unusual porn-star accuracy, and he readies the tissue a little too late for the second. He’ll have to clean up. He might be a couple minutes late.

Don’t sweat it, says the endorphin rush. You’re worth the wait.

Oli

Thursday evenings are Oli’s personal Sabbath. He hasn’t been to church in years, but, however packed his work schedule gets, however many socials and game nights he gets roped into, he remembers Thursday evening, and he keeps it holy. That time belongs to him and him alone.

Every stage of shutting down is a weight off his mind. Computer, off. Phone, off. Clothes, off. And he eases himself out of his wheelchair and into the cool embrace of a fresh set of sheets, and at last he can let out the breath he didn’t realise he was holding.

The vibrator is right where Oli left it, under the bed. It’s been charging all day - there should be plenty of playtime in there by now. Perfect.

They offered him an implant to let him get hard again, but he’s come to love the way his soft, sensitive cock feels in a well-lubed hand, the wet enveloping warmth of it. He rolls it back and forth, the underside pressing into his curled fingers, eliciting little zings of sensation and little sighs of satisfaction. But this is just the prelude. The main event sits heavy in his other hand, and, with the press of a button, it starts to rumble.

He holds it high for a moment, almost reverently, and then brings it down gently against the slick tip of his cock. A stuttering shiver of bliss runs through him. It’s a big, heavy beast of a vibe, and a good deal pricier than his old Hitachi, but that shuddering moment of contact alone is worth every last cent.