[sebbie]

Part LXLVII

Generally I am not a fan of porn videos and watching them is not something I regularly do, though on occasion my curiosity gets the best of me. I suspect that this on occasion happens to other guys as well. In this particular situation, I found myself being interested in the use of what are called VED devices (penis pumps) and estim devices as treatments for Erectile Dysfunction (ED) as in not being able to get it up on your own. I was only vaguely aware that VED devices had both a serious medical use but also were being used by guys without ED for purely “recreational purposes” as in a toy connected to masturbation.

In the process, I learned some interesting details about the video sites. The sites seem be divided into two major sections, gay and straight. If I want videos relating to techniques for employing penis pumps, I am ushered into the gay section of the site. (The estim devices are a bit more complicated in part because females have been known to employ estim too but let me not get into that line of thought right now.}

At one time the term “gay sex” for males was a codeword for two guys engaging in oral or anal sex, and if a viewer was looking at gay videos that would be a key feature. I have often thought that starting with HIV, what gay sex is has changed a lot from this old view. For starters, gay guys increasingly found other ways for being together than engaging in the interchange of bodily fluids. In the process of dealing with the HIV threat the very meaning what gay men do to and with each other has changed pretty drastically over time, at least for many.

But the other thing that I found interesting was that if I were to go to the straight section of the video site, I would expect that nearly all of the videos would include two people, a male and a female, exchanging bodily fluids in one way or another.

However, on the gay video side, there were videos showing gay sex in various forms involving two men. But many, perhaps most, of the videos labeled as gay sex were really videos of guys masturbating themselves alone in a room, cameras rolling.

By the time ANY guy has turned 12, his body is doing all sorts of interesting and fun things to and with him. These things most frequently happen when a guy is alone. But practically any guy likely is HUGELY interested in the basic question of whether or nit his male “buds” are having the same “issues” and how they are dealing with it. But finding out is not easy.

If the guy asks outright, he quickly aware of the possibility that some guys will immediately conclude he is gay merely by asking the question. But to be interested in how your own body works and whether or not other guys are having the same experiences, does not somehow imply that I am gay.

As guys get older a lot of these questions drag on unanswered. Getting a roommate in a college dorm, for example. MOST guys are not going to attempt to go through a 4-year degree avoiding masturbation entirely for the entire four years. That would be downright painful. (Can you say “blue balls”?) The question is not “Will I masturbate in college?” but rather when, where and will jerk off in order to maintain my “image” as a serious student focused on my degree (and not on chasing women). I’ve observed that the masturbators generally do better in college grade-wise than the women chasers do and that the most serious students tend to also be the ones most into engaging in solo sex.

The other complicated problem is that MOST guys, perhaps nearly all of them, at some level find being able to actually observe another guy jerking off, psychologically is at least interesting to see even if they do not openly admit to quietly observing another guy jerking off as being sexually exciting. This is NOT a gay or straight thing, where the straight guys see this as being repulsive versus the gay guys being turned on and “enjoying” what they are getting to observe, perhaps, by accident.

So I start looking at videos that contain penis pumps, and the vast majority of them each show just one guy wearing a VED device and pumping himself up. Typically these are young guys who have zero ED issues and this is merely a form of recreational masturbation. A few of these videos contain several guys wearing pumps and using the devices together in the same room. This is like a VED-inspired “circle jerk” and maybe they pump each other’s VED. Is that somehow a gay act? Who knows!

But more generally, it appears to me that nearly all of the videos showing one guy jerking off are in the gay section not the straight section of the video site VED device employed or not. If I want to find videos of guys ejaculating while wearing a swim brief these will be found here as well. (So you mean other guys besides me have been known to do that too? How interesting!)

Then there are the so called “wrestling” videos in which two guys, sometimes both clad in swim briefs, wrestle each other. These typically involve some initial moves in which both guys avoid touching each others; private parts, but then as the match progresses they almost invariably end up masturbating each other usually with their briefs still on, but sometimes not.

All of this leaves in my mind some really interesting questions with respect to what it really means when a guy claims to be either gay or straight. Maybe, just maybe, guys make an attempt to subdivide themselves in this way because they think that by so doing is the only way to survive into adulthood. But ultimately, what you claim you are is as how you yourself want it to be. Medical questionnaires to be filled out in doctor’s office seriously ask the question “ you gay or straight? And expect a one-or-the-other response. The response “I have no clue” is not an option.

Surely, every guy who enjoys masturbating alone is not gay—nor straight for that matter, Not every guy who gets aroused when he wears a swim brief is gay either. Me, I’m curious if other guys enjoy wearing swim briefs as much as I do and finding out exactly how prevalent my “affliction” might be. And being curious about how other guys cope with their own masculinity is not a valid means to determine your sexual orientation. What does it tell you about a guy’s sexual orientation if a guy likes to see how other guys masturbate and the techniques they employ? Does that somehow make me gay, or am I just “filling in the blanks” with respect to some of the questions I never got good answers to way back when I was a teenager. Are there other guys out there who get a hard-on whenever they pull themselves into a snug Speedo® . Well maybe!

Lots to ponder here. Throwing all the solo masturbation videos in the pile with the gay partner videos was an interesting move on the part of the web sites. Life is sweet but sometimes things happen in unexpected ways. Particularly in what guys enjoy doing to, with, by, and for themselves.

To be continued…