Paddling the Pink Canoe

Buffin’ the muffin. Tiptoeing through the two lips. Five knuckle gusset shuffle. Coochie cuddling. And, if you’re Irish, Tickling me Elmo. We all do it and we all have our favorite euphemisms for it—so why can’t we talk about it?

For years I tried to hide the fact that masturbation, or Mistress Bation (the preferred nomenclature for many females), was a rather energetic pastime of mine. And yet my life with Mistress Bation was fraught with deception. My favorite fib was the one where I pretended that my current boyfriend was the messiah of mechanical pleasure. “Oh, really! That’s how it’s done. Well, my heavens…I simply didn’t know before you.” I think it was an easy way to assuage many men’s wishes to “boldly go where no man had gone before.” Mostly, it was a technique to engage in a little diddley-doo without the embarrassment of admitting that I was only too thrilled to hop on the five-fingered saddle during sex, and even worse, admitting that I was a true cowgirl when it came down to it.

Here’s where it gets complicated. Once we’ve crossed the bridge of confirmation—“Yes, I do it”—we’re then in the difficult position of becoming comfortable with how we do it. This may come as a surprise to some of you that play your clitar in silent secrecy, but we pretty much all do it differently.

From the beginning, I knew that I was a freak of nature, that there was something terribly wrong with me. At the age of five, I climbed a pole on a swing set, wrapping my legs tightly around the cold metal bar as I ascended with all the energy and speed of a Kindergartner. Lo and behold, although I never made it to the top, I reached a high point of another kind. Sadly, a five year old, although physically equipped to deal with that kind of information, is not yet intellectually qualified to decide the most appropriate course of action. Thus, after a particularly busy week of dry humping everything from bathtubs, arm wrests, and bed frames, my mother took me aside and explained that privacy is often key while engaging in such activities. To this day, I still appreciate the gentle and non-judgmental way she guided me towards propriety—but I still learned shame.