I remember the first time I tried it. My close friends were hanging out one afternoon and the topic came up. Masturbation.

The room got eerily silent.

Then one of my more adventurous and experienced friends proclaimed, “I tried it for the first time in middle school.” We all gasped. “What? None of you have ever tried it?” More silence.

“No one?”

I could hear crickets.

She was astonished. Everyone she knew had done it and not just once; weekly, if not daily! We had to try it! It would change our lives!

So, we made a pact. By the end of the semester we would all try it once (and, since most of us were roommates with at least one person in the room, we vowed to let them have the room to themselves at some point to do so). And to kick off the pact, we took a fieldtrip to the campus sex store for some…er….tools.

I tried the very next day. Why not? I was curious….and my roommate had a 2 hour lecture. It didn’t take long (literally) before I realized just how right my friend was. Why had I waited so long to try it? Why did I always feel so ashamed to want to do it? It truly was life changing!

And in more ways than the obvious. Just like the wonderfully unknown benefits of exercise, masturbation comes with a whole slew of added bonuses. (Mind you, I looked these up when trying to convince one of the other pact-makers that it was not only OK to do it, but necessary for a long and fulfilling life.)

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